Sitting in our hotel lobby eating our breakfast this morning, a woman approached us tentatively.

“Sorry to interrupt…” she began.

Oh great, we both thought. She’s going to tell us that we haven’t dressed Flynn warmly enough. Or that we really shouldn’t be letting him eat whatever it is he’s currently putting in his mouth. For all you non-parents out there, you would be amazed how much unsolicited advice comes along with bringing a baby  in public. This is one of my least favorite things about being back in the U.S. Maybe the same thing happened in Benin too, but luckily I couldn’t understand what people were telling me so I just assumed they were saying he was cute.

But no, that’s not the direction this particular woman was going. “Do you have a blog…?” she continued.

“Why yes, yes we do.”

It turns out her husband is in the current A-100 class, and they poured through Foreign Service blogs, including ours, to know what to expect. This sort of thing has happened to us a number of times in the past few years, and each time we’re surprised to learn that anyone besides our parents is actually reading. So this blog does have a readership, albeit one specific to the sort of people who hang out at hotels close to the FSI shuttle. Still, it’s a readership nonetheless, and that makes what I’m about to tell you all the more shocking.

A few months ago my mom starting blogging on Open Salon — you know, the place where Julie of Julie & Julia fame blogged about her cooking adventures. Very quickly my mom built a circle of loyal followers, getting more views and comments than we could dream about. She very quickly outdid us, and now it seems she’s outdone even herself. She’s gone viral. A week ago my mom posted “25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore” and as of right now she’s received 47,000 page views.

47,000!

For a bit of perspective, let me point out than in all of 2011 our blog got 37,000 page views. Yes, your math is correct: that’s 10,000 less in a whole year than my mom got in one week.

We admit defeat.

But go read her posts! And tell your literary agent friends. 🙂

(Note: In the two hours since I originally posted this she’s already jumped up to 54,000 views. Almost 7,000 views in hours? Man.)

(And a day later? 100,000!)