Coming Back - Low Key

I'd like to blog more often. Really, I would. I can't even say that I don't have time to blog, because some very busy people I know are active bloggers. I do have chunks of time now and then when I, ahem, must sit still with Little Rag, and that's often my computer time.

So the time is there, but then there's the emotional part to contend with. Nothing major, but just this overall feeling that if I am going to Put Up a Blog Post, it has to be a Grand Event with Something Meaningful to say. So thoughts of what to post about quickly get shooed away:

"People have already posted extensively about that topic."

"That's not important enough to warrant a blog posting."

"What will [insert particular imagined reader] think about THAT?! Forget it."

"It will take way too much time and effort to make that sound as eloquent as I'd like."

And so on. So the quest for perfection/pleasing people/impressing people with some witty observation about life actually becomes a major Blog-Kill.

Clearly, we are all flawed and simple in our own way. With the intent of writing something special, I usually wind up writing (or finishing drafts of), well, nothing.

So I'd like to post on a more frequent basis. And I think I will. But I'll be doing less self-editing, and less self-evaluating. Sometimes it'll be silly, or lame, or my ideas may be deemed insignificant or even wrong by some of you. But I think that at nearly 30, I'm starting to grow up enough to realize that that's really . . . okay.

So hi again!

Names, Pseudonyms

Things here are in that delicious post-baby's arrival upheaval and nowhere near settling down.

In the meantime, we're preparing for the upcoming bris, and as RaggedyDad and I get ready to name our son, I'm also trying to come up with a blog name for him.

Needless to say (or is it?) our kids are not really named Ann and Andy. Rather, they do have names that sound somewhat similar to one another, and it goes with the whole Raggedy theme. Those names are more or less how this blog name was born.

Now that we've got a third Raggedy in the picture, I'm trying to think of how to refer to him on the blog. I'm not familiar with the extensive lore of Raggedy Ann and Andy and whether there are any another character names.

We're open to suggestions.

Lots and Lots of Shots

This morning, Ann was subjected to that other birthday rite of passage, the annual physical. I was warned by the receptionists when I made this appointment that the four-year-old visit would be rough in terms of shots and blood drawn.

I tried to play up the exciting parts of a well-visit to Ann early this morning: "Dr. L. has known you since you were born! I remember when he held you on your belly suspended over the palm of his hand to see you holding yourself up! Now that you're bigger, you can talk to him yourself and answer his questions about how nicely you're growing up!"

Ann knew there were shots coming, and sure enough, after the hearing test, vision test, blood pressure, weighing (still a skinny beanpole! 32 lbs. at 4 years, Ezzie!), etc., it was time for drawing blood from her fingertip (will the squeezing never stop?!), a forearm PPD (heading back to check it on Wednesday), a tetanus shot (aaack!), booster shots (I think it was 3 boosters and they combined 2 of them into one shot). Yikes! For her part, Ann was a real trooper, stoic at times and quietly whimpering a few times. I don't think I'd be able to take it as well myself.

I'm glad I was able to be there for her, and I'm glad it's over with!!



On an unrelated note, Happy 100th Post to me!

B is for BeHatzlacha (Good Luck)

***Update***
Although RaggedyMom didn't make it into the top two to qualify, it was an honor just to be nominated :) Thanks for the votes, guys, and I know we all got a look at some interesting blogs out there. Thank you to the organizers!



Here at RaggedyMom, things are usually fairly low-key and understated. I do what I do, and I think that for those who visit, read, and comment, we have a good time together.

I'm not a former grade-school macher, student body president, or team captain. Except for a brief, spoofed stint as "Communist Party Leader" of my high school, which as I've mentioned before, is a convoluted story for another day. Also, I think I acted as captain of the school trivia bowl team when the regular captain was sick. Otherwise, I've been a mostly 'behind the music' kinda gal.

But I was nominated for a JIB Award this year in the Best New Blog category, and I'm still blushing! Go Group B! And it's full of some other blogs I hadn't seen before, which makes for some interesting reading.

Until now, the only thing I associated with the term "Group B" was the test that the obstetrician does for Group B Strep a few weeks before a woman's due date. Now, it will forever be immortalized as my brief moment in the sun.

Label Me (Sell-Out!)

In my adolescence, I thought that any reliance on labels was a conformist plot of the masses. Questions that started with "What kind of . . . " often led me to launch into a rant about how labels belong on cans, not people.

And then I grew up. A little. To some degree, I still feel like labeling has a real dark side when it becomes a means to classify and limit the total of a person. But I think that many mature people are able to make some use of labels in order to better understand and organize the world and the extreme amount of information with which we are perpetually assaulted.

Recently, I started noticing that some of my regular blog reads started using those little optional label tags at the end of each post. For a while, I felt like these things were kind of silly, and didn't see the real point in reading someone's post and then seeing a bunch of Cliff-Notesy catch phrases hanging off at the end. Disjointed and odd. It seemed like a great way to take blogging too seriously - does this stuff really need to be archived like something at a university library?

But as I thought about it, and after a couple of times trying to find a post about a particular something, I realized that the little labels are not that foolish after all. If someone's been blogging for a while, and I'm interested in other posts of hers about . . . a holiday . . . finances . . . childrearing . . . driving . . . anything, the labels are actually quite useful.

Arranging posts by topic can help my own writing in showing me whether there are topics I haven't looked back on in a while . . . topics I write about so often it's probably a drag . . . or some interesting subject I started exploring and abandoned.

So I went back the other day and played around with the template a bit, and then went back and labeled all of my posts. Now, since there were only 54 of them, and they are somewhat unified in subject matter, it was not that difficult. The blogger cult has also made it pretty easy by automatically suggesting existing labels while you're typing based on the first letter or two. Lazy labels.

We'll see how the labeling thing turns out, and whether it continues to spread. And I guess I'm not that cool, edgy, and different after all!

International Promote-a-Blog Week

[Updated: In the interest of not getting lost in the erev Shabbos shuffle, I am going to extend this to a week-long festivity ;)]

Who says I can't start a new holiday? Despite my own (highly) limited readership, I'm going to see if I can promote two blogs, and encourage others to do the same. Most of us do this already via our blogrolls and posts, but I'm going to go ahead and suggest that the first week of December henceforth be known International Promote-a-Blog Week.

Here are the two blogs I'm promoting:

1. Swedish, single, and Jewish - Hila is a cool girl who often has perceptive and witty things to say over at RaggedyMom. Her story, the bits and pieces that I've gathered by reading, is fascinating. How many of us actually know someone Swedish? Who's also converting to Judaism? And in college in the Midwest? I particularly like reading about the quality of relationships between Hilahoney and her family members. Go check out Hila's blog!

2. Table Nine is a brand-new blog by my very good friend, neighbor, and, according to some, the girl who could pass for my sister. And I don't have any sisters. So just in terms of biological improbability, this is of high interest to our national security. A brave, intelligent, gluten-free gal, Table Nine is sure to have some crazy-amazing (crazamazing) things to say in the future. Having friends who start blogs is almost as great as becoming frum and then encouraging your family members to become frum, too. Well. Of course I'm kidding. It's better than that. Have a look at what Tableninemama is talking about!

So there you have it. It's the first week in December. Go out there, and promote two blogs you feel deserve an extra boost of attention!