July 2010

For Whom The Blog Tolls

by Lori Dwyer on July 31, 2010 · 22 comments

Welcome to the Carnival of Personal Blogging

This post was written for inclusion in the Carnival of Personal Blogging hosted by Good Goog and Blogs With Wings. This month our participants have shared their journey to personal blogging. Please visit Good Goog – Begin By Being Personal to view everyone’s posts.

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Ding Dong,

Is it just me, or is this place jumping the shark?

Maybe.

You see, I am having a wee bit of a blogging breakdown over here. An Interweb identity crises. Some writing performance anxiety. The dreaded bloggers block.

This is what happens when I think about sh*t too much.

Allow me to explain. (Everything but the Fonze. You can figure him out for yourself.)

The blue-sky-flow-chart-question-table I have going on in my head at the moment runs something like- For whom do I blog? Why am I blogging…? Is it because I purely enjoy the writing, or because I enjoy people reading it too…? If people hated my stuff and no one read it, would I still be here? How long till everyone gets jack of me, and takes their bat and ball and goes home? Will I still hang around the ballpark if they do?

And herein, I think, lies the problem.

Don’t get me wrong- I love to blog. And I love to write. Every time I finish a post, complete one ready to publish with links and stolen piccies and tags, I get an enormous ~~swell of satisfaction~~ ~~it feels really good~~ ~~it makes me hot~~ all of those sound wrong, but you know what I mean. Blogging makes me happy. But if the question is- if no one was reading, would I still blog?

And… uh…. probably not.

I’ll be honest- I never started to blog as a private journal, a record for me. While I’m proud to wear both my personal blogger and mummy blogger name tags, this blog is only a teeny tiny part of me and it’s a very rare occurrence to see anything that’s too dark, or too personal, that cuts me too deep, or infringes of the privacy of people I love. I have plenty of other playgrounds for my demons to run around in. My litmus test for blog inclusion is a simple question- “would I be happy to put this on the side of a bus, or announce it from a loudspeaker in Martin Place at lunchtime?”

If the answer is yes, then I hit Publish.

Erm. I’m the honest, open type, obviously. There’s honesty and then there’s, well, honesty. I practice both.

I don’t write anything on here that I’m not happy to share publicly, or that I wouldn’t want my mother knowing, or that I wouldn’t want my children to see in 15 years time. (While we’re on that topic, I find it astonishing that anyone thinks my blog will be still be around in 15 years. I do have a relatively short attention span, and there must be a limit on the amount of crap Google cache’s).

I started my blog because I was bored and needed a hobby that wasn’t physical enough to strip away any of the remaining energy I require to hang on to my last remaining shred of sanity. But this ain’t therapy. I blog for amusement purposes only. The amusement of myself. And other people are amused, too, which is helpful. I’m narcissistic and conceited, and I bore of things easily- if people were not reading, I would not still be blogging.

But people are reading, bless you all and your little cotton socks. And I am feeling the pressure, just a wee bit. You see, part of my problem is- you people think I’m funny. I’m not sure why..? I can never tell which posts are actually funny and which posts are just funny-in-my-head-funny. I’ll have an idea for a post these days and say to myself “Is that funny? Or just dumb?” (Such as- is buying haemorrhoid cream really an amusing subject? Or is that just me…?)

I thinks I need to stop this. I think I need to go back to the ol’ school blog style- if it makes me giggle, then it’s funny. If it makes me tingle, then it’s good writing. I’m taking my lesson from B’s Letter to Her Bloggy Self, and reminding me to blog for… well.. me. Some cliches, they are cliches for a reason. And that’s cause they work.

I’m scraping in just in time with this for the Blogs With Wings Blog carnival being held at the Good Goog. Just call me a carnivaloholic.
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A whip crackin’, blog floggin’ Friday.

by Lori Dwyer on July 30, 2010 · 15 comments

Yeehaaa,

And welcome back BlogFloggers!

I must say thank you all berry much for crossing over from Mummytime last week to play here on RRSAHM. I had a fantastic time blog hopping mah way through the linky list. I laughed, cried, got clucky (not quite that clucky) and entered me a few competitions.

Now, I note there has been a wee bit of confooosion with getting the blog hop code into your post. So here is Lori’s Fail Proof Guide To Stuffing Up Your HTML TM. (See? The little ‘TM’ means that’s trademarked. Heh.)

Whatever.

If you’re on Blogger, click on the bottom of the linky list where it says “Click here to get the code” (as shown above in my super cool Picniking efforts). Copy the short code that comes up. Then, in your post editor, click on the “Edit HTML” tab (as shown below in my super cool Picniking efforts) and paste the code at the very bottom of your post. Don’t panic if you click back to “Compose” and it comes up as nothing at all, it will show up when you hit Publish Post.

If you happen to be on WordPress ~~you’re on your own~~ ~~I have no freaking idea~~ Mr McLinky tells me that this code may be a good idea…. (another Picniky thing to stop Mr Helpie Helperton Blogger converting the HTML to rich text. Sorry. Can you even copy and paste that…? I don’t know. Whatever. There is probably an easier, quicker way to do this, but I don’t know how. I can actually hear Brenda wishing she had given FYBF to someone who actually knows what they’re doing with this InterWebby thing).

Try it out, let me know how it goes. Please don’t hold me responsible if it crashes your template.

If you haven’t Flogged your Blog before, please feel free to jump on in and your link to your list. To add the button, just copy the code underneath it and add it your post, as per the directions above. If that’s all a bit too much, don’t worry about it this week and add your link anyway. OK? OK.

The whole point of it is to find cool new blogs to read, and get your blog out there to find other cool new people to read it. So what are you are standing around here gawking at me for? Grab your aviator sunnies, slap on your social-like trilby hats and get Floggy wit’ it.

The New Rules (which are kinda almost pretty much the same as the Old Rules)

Follow my blog. (*ahem* *cough* My Blog. Me me me. Me me. You get the picture.)
Grab B’s bubbly button and post it on your sidebar.
Link your First Name and/or Blog Name and URL of your linked post (not your homepage) below.
Add a short description (max of 125 chars). It could be a description of yourself, your blog or a teaser to your latest post.
Follow at least 1 linkyer/blogger (Be nice and spread the love).
The list will be open for linkyers on Fridays (and for the foreigners Friday as well).
A new and fresh link list will open every Friday. And you will have to link up AGAIN. The previous link list does not carry over to the following week.
And lastly, have lotsa fun. I mean it. If I detect anyone not totally loving the awesomeness, I will bump you off the linky list. (Joking) (Kinda).

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{ 15 comments }

My Dodie Boy.

by Lori Dwyer on July 28, 2010 · 19 comments

Nom nom,

My little Chop, at two and half has been a hardcore dummy addict for most of his life. That’s a ‘soother’ or a ‘pacifier’, I think, for the non-Aussies. The Chop was given a dummy by a midwife when he was 24 hours old. I had buzzed her, desperate- why would this small, undeniably cute but wriggling, screaming child not sleep? Surely 4 hours was a very long time for a newborn to have been awake….?

“Do you have any objections to a dummy?”

Erm… I think, maybe, I did have, at one stage. Whatever. Right now I just needed to get my exhausted, battered body and muddled mind off to sleep.

The Chop slept for three blessed hours that night, with his dummy firmly plugged in his mouth. It was one of the longest stretches of sleep he had for the next eight months. And he and his precious ‘dodie’ were, from that point on, the best of friends. When he stopped breastfeeding at fourteen months old, he got really attached to it. And after his sister was born, when he was 21 months old, it almost broke my heart to see how much he needed that comfort when my hands were otherwise full.

Despite all the very positive things his friend the dodie did for him, the Chop was showing all the signs of a serious addiction. He wanted his dummy all the time. He would get agitated if he could see it but couldn’t get to it. He’d even tell me about the adventures of his dodie when he got from Mummy’s Respite Day While The Chop Plays With The Nice Ladies At The DayCare Centre.

And me? I’m the enabler. As many dramas as the silly thing caused it if got lost, dirty, broken, or- heaven forbid- forgotten, I just couldn’t bring myself to take away the cheap, multi-colored piece of plastic that bought the little guy so much comfort.

So imagine my surprise when we picked him up from Mummy’s Respite Day and discovered he hadn’t had his dodie all day. Even for a sleep.

Hmm.

“Do you think, if the dummy fairy came and bought you a present, she could take your dodies away? You’re a big boy now, you don’t need them anymore. Maybe the fairy will take them for some babies who need them?”

The Chop looks at me. He’s sizing me up, estimating the strength of my resolve and how much bargaining room he has to wiggle around in. I’m sure of it.

“Fairy come, take dodies, bring chocolate eggs?”

OK, kid, deal-io. I can’t argue with that.

The dummy even made an appearance in our wedding photos…

Best of luck, Man, sourcing chocolate eggs at this time of year. But hey, you volunteered to fetch the bribery.

Long story, short (not… really?) the dummy fairy will be visiting us in the Purple House just as soon as the Chop wakes up from his nap, or the Man gets home from work with the required ~~bribery~~ supplies.

I’ll let you know how the trade off goes.

And I’m not 100% sure how I feel about trading a comfort object for food. Surely that can’t be healthy….?

I’ll have to think on that one a bit more. I’ll let you know how that goes, too.

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