Wednesday, January 09, 2013

Sunshine in Middle England......

Rodent news from the Casa de la Rocking Chair is that my neighbours also saw a rat in their garden and a call to the rat man will be made soon. So maybe I need more rat poison. Something has eaten all of the stuff I put down. Charming. And on a beautiful sunny day here in Middle England too. I do not want to think about emptying the shed and organising everything in it. I do know it has to be done and that 90% will be tossed out, but it all seems a little daunting. Undesirable. And I may find a live mouse. Or a dead rat. Or something I do not wish to make acquaintance with at all.

I want to think of pretty flowers and warm sunshine and happy thoughts.

Not about rodents.

022

Now that is more like it. 

My sister has asked for Spring bunting in yellow and green, and the stash could provide the necessary to make the bunting, and so I have zapped up a few metres, and now we have ground to a halt because I have no idea how long it needs to be. I happened to give her some a couple of years ago which was the perfect length, but that was pure luck. I now need to know the exact length. Pure luck would not be able to get it right again. So we have to wait until she gets home from work. I did try asking my brother-in-law, but really, men just do not understand this sort of thing. They don't actually get the need for bunting either. And his English/my Germlish are not up to the technical details, so we will wait. 

I was lucky enough to get some M&Ms of the peanut butter variety for Christmas. You have NO IDEA how excited this made me!!!! I have a bag here, hidden in my study, because I am not sharing. I am rationing them. How come we get M&Ms here, but never the peanut butter ones unless you want to pay an arm and a leg from a specialist importer?? The nation is being deprived. Thank heavens I have travelling friends, is all I can say. 

Ah, my friends - I was reading some blogs in my reader last night, and they sort of followed a theme. How to improve, market, promote, identify target readers, use different engines and up ones stats and you know what? Most of them have only been blogging for a couple of years. I am more thankful than ever that I started blogging when it was the relationships we built with each other that counted. The connections made, and lives shared. Some, along the way, have developed into mega blogs, because of the outstanding talent of the bloggers. Well deserved recognition. But the sadder side is that there is no longer any personal communication between the blogger and reader - like me. It is just not possible time-wise. I miss that. And I find myself reading, but seldom commenting as I used to once upon a time. I miss that. I miss them, actually. The people I used to feel I was talking with - not to or at. 

I LOVE the big bloggers. I love what they write, but you see, it now feels like it does when I pick up a newspaper or a book. Mind you, half the books I am picking up are books written by those very people, and I LOVE reading them. And remembering the days when.......

It has nothing to do with envy, because I look at their schedules and wonder how they manage to fit it all in. My admiration is enormous. It all sort of fits with the things mulling around in my head, though, and there is a definite sadness for the loss of the innocence and openness there was just 5 or 6 or 7 years ago. 

It is as if a box of Lego was placed on the floor for children to build and play with, happily using their imagination, and suddenly, these grown engineers sat down between the children, grabbed the Lego and built elaborate, complicated buildings which held no appeal for the children and stripped the fun away from their toy at the same time. 

When I started blogging, I discovered a great many women my sort of age out there, and we have become friends. The sad thing is that many of them no longer blog. Making sure their templates were appealing, making sure they used the proper links/stats/widgets/privacy controls is enough to kill off the fun for anyone. Just stick around when I need to change my template. I mean, for goodness sake - keeping a template of telephone boxes over Christmas on the grounds it was red is an indication of one very technically frustrated blogger. It never mattered much before. 

But what do I know. I am just barrelling along merrily here and am ignoring all the big blogging "Must Do/Have" details. Hah. Linds can do what she likes right here. It is much more fun. I have turned away advertisers for the same reason - I want this to be me, and my place. I like knowing the people who visit, even though I have no idea who most of you are. I have a good imagination! 

Longing for the old days is something older people do. BUT OH MY WORD the old days can't be just 6 years ago. Can they? I suppose in terms of the Internet, then yes, 6 years ago is equivalent to the Dark Ages. Give me strength. I am an Internet Dinosaur. (I have a sudden vision of what an Internet Dinosaur looks like. I nearly choked on the coffee. )

Enough of dinosaur pondering. That wasn't what I came to chat about. I came to chat about rodents and sunshine and bunting. Maybe I need a nap, being a dinosaur and all.............



4 comments:

Chris said...

I do wonder why it is that those of us who used to blog almost daily now find there is no time? Could we (I) have become lazy? I do miss it at times, and that's when I find myself writing a bit. What I miss more are the relationships.

I think of Barb and Bev and Sarah especially sometimes. I miss hearing of their everyday lives on more than a sporadic blog or so, and yet the log in my eye is so much bigger than the splinter in theirs!

And PLEASE don't get me started on the money-making blogs. I used to think it was imperative to have a Great Big Readership, because that meant I was SOMEBODY. Am I now more secure because I don't care? I wonder.

But in all of it, I am most thankful for friendships I developed early on - for readers who became friends. That, to me, is the value of blogging!

Vee said...

I have avoided the blog "party" about growing one's blog like the flipping plague. Who needs it? Not I! Exhausting as you say and not worth the time and effort to me. Just to me. It may be fine for the others...not you, I see.

Very cheerful bunting. I never did get to bunting, but when I do, I know how to do it easily and well now. I just hope that I am not asked to whack it out anytime soon as the entire upstairs looks like Santa's workshop after 11 months of creating. I am without excuse as mine was only thirty days or so.

Oh...good...a neighbor who will call the rat man. Lovely. Better all the way around. May you never find a dead rat nor a live one either.

Kelli said...

Amen. and love :)

Dawn said...

Good grief! I just wrote a half a book here and it didn't go! It seems you have to do more than hit Publish these days to get a comment to register. Now I'm really aggravated.

I have to try to remember what all I said. I think I started by saying that I agree with you 100% about the loss of blogging relationships. I sort of ran out words last spring and quit posting. Then our crisis began and the words came flowing out - but they flowed onto FB instead of here. If I had been thinking, I would have cut and pasted my FB posts to my blog and kept everyone in the loop - some of my blogging friends are not and will not be on FB. But the FB thing just took off and turned into the World Wide Web Prayer Chain, which ultimately brought Dwight back from the brink of death. What a blessing it has been. Since I wasn't one of those bloggers with a massive following, this became such an avenue for prayer as my FB friends shared with theirs, and on and on it went.

But - I think so often of those days when we celebrated each others' daily triumphs and tragedies, celebrated our bloggiversaries, and our 100th, 200th, etc. with giveaways and contests. Does anybody still do that? Fortunately, most of my dear blogging friends are still in touch through FB, but it definitely is not the same.

I need to go back and see what's been going on with you, in more depth. I love your thought processes and your way with words. I am wondering what is happening that you alluded to this morning - I imagine it has to do with the lawsuit.

I am so thankful we became friends in this way and do hope someday to meet you IRL! Does anybody ever use these terms any more? I'm thankful I don't know about all the widgets, etc. It would definitely take all the fun away that we so innocently had!