The big comeback

When I signed off 5 years ago I left things a little open ended. It was nice having my own wall to throw stuff up against. It was fun having others actually read that stuff and leave a few words. As much as I knew I needed a break from blogging, I also knew that one day the words would build up inside again and I'd need to dust off my little slice of the web. That time has come. I can't promise I'll be consistent with frequency. I can't promise it will always be entertaining. It's just me, just like it's always been. Me and Me only and whatever it is that happened to crawl up into that itchy place of my brain and demand my fingers set it free. Are you ready to go along for the ride?

Catching my breath

Six years ago, I made the choice to quit full-time work and find a solution that allowed me to meet our financial needs without giving up more time at home then necessary. It was an easy choice to make but a hard one to implement. In the back of my mind was Harry Chapin's song "Cats in the Cradle." I never wanted to be "that" parent. So far. So good.

Lately, however, the corner of the blogosphere I'd been frequenting could easily say I've been neglectful. I don't blog regularly and I surely don't read elsewhere all that often. I'm not apologizing for it; it's simply been a causality of a busy life. It does mean, however, that I've fallen out of touch with some friends. I'm slowly trying to catch up here and there. Bear with me.

Back to the kids and the cat. Well no, I don't own a cat. Real cats make my eyes itch and my nose stuff up. I'm talking about that song again. It's been a while, so you might have forgotten - I'm one of those stream-of-consciousness writers.

In January I struggled to find a "50% off calender" I really liked. This thing has to hang on my wall for 12 months, I need to adore the images at least a little. I finally settled upon one of those "family organizers" with big, lined blocks that stretched the wall calender to two pages and the graphic to a mere header. I never thought I'd fill up those blocks, but I went with it.

The truth?

I've run out of room in some of those blocks.

Sometimes it's the incredibly mundane. Other times its a tad off the wall. "2 slices of bread into K. Easter Grass for K. Press release to T. Dog sit - Let S out am." That's my Monday. And that's just what I fit in the little space on my wall calender.

There's dance class and t-ball games. There's "read Dr. Seuss to Kindergarten" and "Family Fun night at preschool." There's meetings. There's haircuts. There's work. There's all that stuff that makes a family dash.

And it's all good.

Somewhere between scheduling and the fullness of life, we sneak in some down time too. These are the moments I cherish. The ones I think about jotting down in a blog or a journal somewhere so I can preserve the daily nuances that make these quirky people mine. Yet the intent barely makes it past the idea stage.

The truth, however, is that I'm ok with that. I'm too caught up in living it to document it - well ok, so I do often photograph it.

Here's the quick summary. The boy is mind-boggling good with numbers. He's 5 1/2. He multiples stuff like 15 x 3 or 12 x 12 in his head without missing a beat. He subtracts stuff like 247 - 24 or 1299 - 20 - 100 without pause. He's constantly asking for equations to play with or pelting us with numbers to manipulate for him. If this stuff is inherited, then he's got some mutated genes. Math and me? We do not get along. Numbers aren't a big fan of Dad either.

The girl is determined to read. We work on it when she wants; she is, after all, only 3. There's no hurry. Last night she wanted to try. She proceeded to sound out most of the words on the first 5 pages of Hop on Pop. Logan reads everything in sight - Meg will be there sooner rather than later. Clearly their blog fodderness will need to find it's way 'press' after bed time.

Girl is in love with her dance classes. Boy is loving t-ball. They have picked up a passion for photographing anything in their path. They're really pretty good at it. They play. They sing. They write. They draw and create. They love. They are the two best huggers I know. That makes all those challeneging moments worth it.

Best of 2007

I know. I'm a little late. Not quite a week late, but late just the same. Last week, probably when it was actually New Year's, Jenn tagged me for the "Best of" meme. In the interest of being a good blog-bud, I now give you, albeit belated (have I said that enough?), my best of 2007 entry.

There were rules and all that too - start copy and typing and end copy and...well it's a meme so there was some tagging. Yet, as we've already covered ad nauseum I'm late to the party so we'll skip the formatlities of the meme rules. Work for you? I thought so.

Vacation, all I ever wanted
BK (Before Kids) we traveled quite a bit. Sometimes to exotic places. Sometimes to the inlaws. After kids the trips took a drastic cut back. Some of it logisitics. Some of it budget. The last week of January 2007 we moved back to the "on the go" mode for a trip to Disney World. The kids loved it. The husband loved it. I loved it. All is right with the world.



As a matter of fact, I am glued to this camera
When we were deciding when to get married I put up quite a "mature" argument that I did not want to get married in May. Why you ask? Because my birthday is in May. I didn't want my birthday and my anniversary to get all mushed up together. I wanted to get married in April. The man, however, assured me that if we got married in April, he'd still find a way to mush together my birthday with our anniversary and that the weather in Bermuda (where he was advocating for our honeymoon) was so much nicer in late May, early June. In the end I relented. My birthday and anniversary are 1 week apart. Sometimes they do get squished together...along with Mother's Day like it they did in 2007. And I'm ok with that because this year the man decided to splurge BIG time on an anniversary, birthday, mother's day gift -- he bought me the Nikon D80 I'd been lusting over for quite some time.

My finger is rarely far from the shutter button.

Speaking of Anniversary
May 31st, 2007 marked 10 years of marriage for the man and me. We celebrated the milestone by taking our first long-weekend trip sans kids, which of course simply gave us permission to act like children:



Since we're on the topic of weddings
My brother got married this year. Not so much a highlight.

The kids, however, were adorable in their flower girl-tux attire.



Bucket full of milestones
The first half of September was a really busy month for us. Within the first two weeks, Logan started Kindgergarten, Megan started preschool...and then she went and turned 3-years old. I'm all teary-eyed and proud just remembering it.

Sometimes curiosity is bad

After my massive brainstorm to update my blog (which was inspired by Peggie's mission to update her's as a Christmas present to herself*), I volunteered to help Jenn update her template.

And that's when the bad thing happened.

I am not a web designer by trade. I only know enough HTML to get myself in trouble. I knew enough to alter the basic template I had to make it Jenn's very own lovely new home on the web. Except the code I gave her wasn't working.

I was baffled. It was bugging me. I wasn't going to rest until I figured out where I had slipped up. And then I started to tinker. Tinker is bad. Very bad.

I clicked that neat button on one of the blogger template tabs that said "update" and suddenly my innocent little HTML based blog was now an XML blog...and my lovely bold red blog with the header I pieced together with stock art was gone. Poof. No more. I was left with standard templates and a header to squish into it. I almost went with it too -- except it meant no bold, flashy red background. Zip. Gone.

Sigh.

And so I set out on a mission to find templates offered up at the very good price of free. :) We like free. We like templates.

Which brings us to the fish - voila. The new, new template.

I did nothing. I designed nothing. I used not an ounce of my right brain...unless googling counts for useage.

But for now, at least, this template speaks to me. We're happy together. Me and the template. We're buds.

Perhaps another day when I'm not staring at the clock wondering how many cups of java I will need to prop me up at my desk in the office tomorrow I will try to resurrect the bold, red and "by me with the nice stock art" header template. But for now, I give you fish.

(But hey, I *did* make Jenn's header. Go see it. Wave hi while you're there. Ask her how the Eagles are doing and then take cover.


* If you're wondering, Peggie's new blog dwelling is NOT live yet. You'll have to keep pestering her until it debuts.

Work in Progress

Yes, I'm tinkering with the template again. That sea shell design was ready to go. I know there's a spelling mistake in the header graphic. I also know I somehow lost a second color in the background. I'm not sure I like the red I settled on. I'm tinkering.

It may evolve over time. Or not.

Got an opinion on the change? Let me know.

UPDATED (12/12) - Well I found my second color, made some text changes to the header (good call on centering Nicole!) and now I think I'm set. At least for now. You never know when a new graphic might grab me and demand to be used.

Sometimes you just have to leap

The thing about blogging is it's a lot like riding a bike. They say once you know how to ride a bike you can take a hiatus of any length and return to the point at which you left off. Well, I've tried it and I've got to say, it's only half true. I took a long hiatus from riding actual bikes that have two moving wheels. Years later I climbed back on and guess what. I could pedal sure. I could keep myself balanced without the training wheels reappearing. BUT, and it's a big but, I was shaky. I lacked confidence. I was quivering a little and the bike quivered with me. Certainly in short order it was smooth sailing again, but those first few pedal strokes were almost painful.

Blogging is a lot like that. You take a break and then as you decide to return you falter a bit. What will you write? Where do you leap back in? How do you get those folks you've abandoned to return to you? You start with a few words. You peck at the keys and you pound the backspace. Start. Restart. Gather speed. Gather confidence and go. You're back in the groove.

And *that* is where I hope to be after tonight.

I slowed down my writing prior to our trip in the hopes that it wouldn't be quite as obvious I wasn't around. We left here January 27th and returned February 2nd. I posted the Mickey-eared kids as a way to explain the absence. I had full intentions of actually picking up the virtual pen again but I fell off the bike. I had no idea what to write. Or, more accurately, I had too many ideas and no clarity of where to begin.

This morning I answered a question about blogging. It made me stop and reflect a bit. Why do I blog? I had to go back. I had to retrace my steps and remember why I began. It was the muscle -- the writing one. I blogged to keep my muscle moving even when I wasn't using it professionally. I wrote to get the ideas bursting in my mind onto some virtual paper. I wrote to keep in touch with new and old friends. I wrote for love of it not the glory.

And I was letting a little thing like a hiatus get in my way.

Well not any more. I can't promise I'll be regular, but I can promise I won't disappear.

Give a wave, friends inside the computer - those of you that lurk and those that don't. It's sometimes easier to get myself moving when I know I'm not talking to myself. Not that I'm begging or anything.

ARGH!!!

So I finally figure out something I wanted to write and I even have a picture I wanted to put with it...and I can't get a damn photo to upload.

Sure, I could blog it without the illustration but what fun would that be? Instead I will go off and pout now. I'm sure there is something not worth my effort watching on TV.

Shameless Plug

So there's this bloggity friend of mine that had a pretty neat idea. First, let me say, that outside of this pretty neat idea, Nicole of Sitting Still is one of those bloggers that make you thankful you took the time to poke around sites beyond your 'inner circle.' Seriously, if it was possible to hold a coffee and/or drinks mom-a-thon across the world wide web, she's the sort of person I'd want to include. I know we'd have a great time.

So anyway, she has this great idea - a political blog. But not just a political blog, mind you, a political blog centering around the voices of an important voting block: The Soccer Mom. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. That mini-van driving, carpooling, thinking-all-the-same block of voters either side of an election likes to woo. Except we don't all think alike (and some of us don't even have mini-vans.)

This blog, The Soccer Mom Vote, gathers many different voices from this demographic in one place. Each day a different team member waxes poetically (or debates fervently, depending on your view) on the political or social issue of her chosing. And who is that wearing Jersey #2 (and therefore posting on the 2nd of each month)? Why it's me.

First post goes up tomorrow. It's nothing earth shattering. I'm sure neither political party will be quaking in their boots in the aftermath. But it's a start.

If you're blog hopping around, come and say hi. You don't even have to wait until tomorrow. Go say hi to some of the other roster members now. Great stuff showing up there already.