Thanks, Ladies, for the wonderful community.

I don't post here much anymore, just the occasional pithy comment, or three.

Alas, even the tiny bit of time I do spend lurking around here appears to be too much. Work is stacking up on my desk; I'm really, really struggling to get my writing work done; I need to take advantage of the last, lovely days of summer weather; and now that Fall is practically upon us (oy! Fall? Already?) I expect to be even busier.

So I'm going to sign off Hipmama, indefinitely, but first I wanted to say Thank You to all of you. I can only speak for myself, of course, when I say that I believe this community provides real refuge and intelligent dialogue and wonderful company for a lot of women who don't have much by way of a mama network IRL--through circumstance or geography or, in my case, their own crankiness (I can't STAND most of the mamas in my neighborhood. Seriously. Ugh. Wretched yuppies! But I digress.).

Hipmama--cantankerous as it can be sometimes--has kept me sane, provided me with loving and humorous guidance as I try to wend my way through the bewildering cloister walk of mamahood, and, I daresay, even saved my life a time or two. Hell, just the fact that I no longer feel compelled to wrench my fingers into mock quotation marks when I refer to myself as "Mama" is a big step forward. DS is also grateful for this, I'm sure.

I am so, so truly grateful to all of you. Take care, Ladies, and good luck to each and every one of you. Fight the good fight. Love, VP