Category: How I love the Interwebs

Friday comment game – it’s all about you!

I’ve been staring at this empty interface for long enough. I give up, I got nothing for you today. Well, that’s not exactly true. I’ve got a rant about diapers, but I think it follows a little too closely on my rant about BBQ chips and my rant about punctuation spacing, and maybe I need to take a break from the rants. And I could tell you about some of the really cool stuff coming up next week – but then what would I brag blog about next week?

So instead, let’s play another comment game. Even if you read only occassionally, you all know a LOT about me, but I can’t always say the same. This game is all about you, and getting to know you better. (I can’t remember where I saw this one – if I subconsciously stole it from you, please let me know and I’ll be sure to give you credit!)

It’s a cocktail party, and you all have to make small talk. Pay attention, cuz if you play there’s TWO parts to each comment. Each person who comments will answer the question in the comment directly above theirs, and then pose a question of their own for the next person. Got it? Each comment has the answer to the previous question, and the question for the next person.

The questions can be on whatever topic you like, and you can take as long or as little to answer as you like. The kind of questions I imagined should be about personal preferences, attitudes and opinions, along the lines of the ones you see in those e-mail memes: what’s the last book you read? What’s your favourite movie? What’s under your bed? Vanilla or chocolate? What’s the best vacation you ever took? What are your pets’ names and why? (Yes, I know, these are lame questions. But I trust that you can do oh so much better.)

Okay, so my question for the first commenter is: What’s your favourite breakfast cereal?

Mommy blogging

I’m supposed to have a coherent, polished presentation ready to show my Motherlode conference co-presenters by the end of the day today. I have spent many, many hours thinking about this, but only about two hours actually committing any of those thoughts to paper or pixels.

I really should have done this about a month ago, but if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done around here. And my life has been ever so slightly out of control this past six weeks or so, for reasons which you are well aware. (Ah, you think, she has no shame. She will play that pregnancy card to death by the time she enters the second trimester. And you are right.)

So here’s what I want to ask you. I need your ideas and experiences to flesh out my themes. One of the subjects I want to discuss in my part of the conversation is why blogs are a communication tool to which mothers in particular are drawn. What is it about blogging that we find so addictive and so compelling? Is it in the reading, or the writing? More specifically, would you be willing to share (either in the comment box, or more privately, via e-mail to danicanada at gmail dot com) an anecdote about how blogging helped you as a mother? Was there a time when you were at the end of your rope, and blogging helped you find another inch to hang on to? Did reading someone else’s experience help you realize you were not alone, not the only person struggling with something?

Myself, I always think back to my epic “is this my life” whine last year. I was so tired, so frustrated, so overwhelmed by everything, and just sending it out into the blogosphere helped me get it off my chest. Then so many people responded, either with a ‘there, there’ virtual pat on my shoulder, or a “me too”, and I felt so relieved. It was okay to be overwhelmed, and having you all acknowledge it helped me be okay with it too.

There have been other more practical things I’ve gotten from the community of blogging. I learned about cheap OPKs online, got great gift ideas for Simon’s birthday, and got some great tips on potty training, to name just a few.

And the fact that I’ve blogged so much of the minutia of our lives means that I have it here, recorded in cyberspace. I love it when I happen to be flipping through my own archives looking for something and I stumble across an anecdote or set of photos I had completely forgotten about.

So that’s three things I love about blogging: the sense of community, the connection with other people, and the chance to tell my stories to a receptive audience.

It’s your turn, because I’m just too lazy to do this whole thing on my own. What about you? Why blogging? What is it about the medium that makes it so popular with mothers? What has blogging done for you lately?

Edited to add: In reading your comments, you made me realize that my own questions were very leading. Maybe there is a darker aspect to blogging that I didn’t consider. What are the detriments to blogging? What do you think about the idea of blogging as a popularity contest, of the accusations of clique-ishness, of blogging as exclusionary instead of community-building. Thoughts?

One book meme

Stolen from Rebecca at Clumsy Kisses:

1. One book that changed your life:
Generation X. It made me take a very critical look at my life and who I was and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. It was an awakening that gave me the strength I needed shortly thereafter to leave a less than ideal marriage at the tender age of 24.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once:
Contact, by Carl Sagan. Each time I read it, I get something new from it.

3. One book you would want on a desert island:
Any of Alice Munro’s short story collections. I’d spend all my time trying to figure out how she works her magic.

4. One book that made you laugh:
I read some of the autobiographical bits of Stephen King’s On Writing out loud to Beloved and had tears running down my cheeks from laughing so hard.

5. One book that made you cry:
I can’t read the newspaper these days without crying. The first time I read S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders when I was thirteen, I couldn’t see the page for sobbing when Johnny died.

6. One book that you wish had been written:
The owner’s manual for my kids.

7. One book that you wish had never been written:
Should any book not have been written? Some time around the 400th reading, I was beginning to feel that way about Where’s Spot?

8. The book that you are currently reading:
The Continuity Girl by Leah McLaren. (Thanks, Nancy!)

9. One book that you have been meaning to read:
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.

10. Books you don’t enjoy:
Formulaic chick lit; serial-killer/FBI crime fiction (although I do like a good legal thriller).

11. Book you remember as a real page-turner:
The Time-Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I also got some serious late fines recently on Zadie Smith’s On Beauty because I ran out of time but couldn’t stop reading it.

12. Non-fiction books you have enjoyed:
I love books on astronomy and cosmology, and reading about things like superstring theory and chaos theory. A Brief History of Time, The Elegant Universe, The Left Hand of Creation.

13. Children’s books your family has loved:
Tristan really enjoyed books in the Matthew’s Midnight Adventure series. Funny, a little bit silly, great illustrations and Canadian, too! When they were little (as opposed to now, being all grown up and all) they both absolutely adored the book If You See A Kitten, by John Butler. Possibly one of the most beautifully illustrated children’s books I have ever seen.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but if you want it please feel free to steal it and let me know so I can check out your answers – or you can answer in the comment box.