About Sweetney
Hi, my name is Tracey Gaughran-Perez, formerly Tracey Gaughran, of the Jersey Gaughrans (screw those Pennsylvania Gaughrans! I spit on them!). I am married to the infamous Jamie Gaughran-Perez, formerly Jamie Perez, of the Basque Saint Perezes (not the Hispanic Rosie Perezes, for those keeping score at home). We have a 6-year-old daughter whose middle name is James, just to confuse you further.
Prior to marriage and domesticity, I was a graduate student in English Literature... for most of my adult life. Remaining in school forever allowed me to delay my entry into Responsible Adulthood while simultaneously gaining really useful, practical knowledge of things like Continental Philosophy, Deconstructivist Theory, and the ravages of Postmodernism. Despite all this, I am indeed still fun at parties.
Somewhere in there I also taught college English Literature, Composition, and Humanities, worked as a writer for AARP (yes, the old people), experimented with hair dyes, and lived a somewhat Holly Golightly-ish existence in both the wilds of Michigan and Washington, DC. I now live in Charm City, USA (Baltimore, MD, to all you non-Hons out there), home of John Waters, HL Mencken, The American Visionary Art Museum, and the final resting place of Edgar Allen Poe. This site -- which I established in 2004 after years blogging on both Diaryland and LiveJournal (yes, I'm a total dork) -- chronicles my life and interests, and much of my daughter M's toddlerhood and preschoolerdom, from that year up to the present day. During that time, Sweetney has been featured on NPR, CBC Radio (Canada), in print media such as The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun, and on web sites like BoingBoing and ParentDish. Over the life of this blog I've also been a speaker at BlogHer and SXSW interactive conferences, and contributed two personal essays to the anthology Sleep Is For The Weak (Chicago Review Press, 2008).
In addition to writing here, I co-own and co-edit two additional blogs: the very awesometastic pop culture blog MamaPop, and the shopping/design blog We Covet.
I am also a BlogHer Contributing Editor, in their Entertainment & Culture section. You can follow my BlogHer CE contributions here, under the "Me On BlogHer" section. And, finally, I am a proud Kirtsy Editor. You can follow my Kirtsy contributions here.
I also own a blog and twitter background design shop called Sweet Blog. I like to keep busy.
I adore Jon Stewart, all things pirate-y, Elliott Smith, science geekery, and underdogs in all their various incarnations. Surprising though it may be, I do not have any tattoos.
If you're new to Sweetney, you can catch-up a bit by reading some of my favorite posts, listed on this handy-dandy "Best Of Sweetney" page.
You also might be interested in reading about the time FOX stole a photo of my dog, Truman, and broadcast it on national TV. That was, umm, fun. cough.
