Subtitle: Sometimes It Pays to Procrastinate

I started this post two three weeks ago, honest I did. In that span of time, three six more people have tagged me for the Thinking Blogger meme. Meredith, Dawn, Kathryn, KC, Jane, and Alice C.: thank you for the compliment. Wow. Gosh.

I’m pretty sure the people I named Thinking Bloggers have already been recognized by someone else. I know Theresa* beat me to it with #5…I must commend her excellent taste! I’m sticking with my original picks anyway. These are the people who most often make make me think until the smoke starts coming out of my ears.

*And also KC! I swear, I’m even prouder of Scott’s talents being recognized than of my own.

I’m a little embarrassed to write this. I have been quadruply honored. In the past couple of weeks, four people have given me a Thinking Blogger award. Jenny, Monica, Loni, and Chocolachillie: thank you very much!

Here’s how this award works:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the €˜Thinking Blogger Award€™ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’€™t fit your blog).

So it’s my turn to name some bloggers who make me think. It’s so hard to pick only five. But here goes:

1. Becky at Farm School. Becky writes smart, period. Her posts about children’s literature dig deep. I like how she invariably looks beyond the surface to get at the meaty questions.

**Edited to fix broken link! Thanks, Jeanne.**

2. Seems like every day, Willa gives me something new to ponder. Take this post, one example of many.

3. What Willa does for education, Gail Gauthier does for children’s literature. Original Content makes my daily short list.

4. Moreena probably makes me cry more than any other blogger, but she makes me think, too. She writes with brisk honesty about some pretty raw issues, and the thing that impresses me so much about her work is that while her posts about her daughter’s illness are by definition emotionally charged, they are also smart and sane and insightful. I learn something from her every single day.

5. And last, but most certainly not least, is the
person who constantly, daily, on blog and off, challenges to me to
really think an issue through before weighing in on it. Readers of my
husband’s blog will not be surprised to hear me name Scott
as a Thinking Blogger extraordinaire. Even if you don’t agree with him
on every issue, you can’t deny that the
guy makes you think. And having a window behind the scenes as I do, I can attest to how hard he works, doing his homework. He reads a staggering number of blogs, books, and periodicals. (In our old hometown, the librarians used to take turns passing around all the books on Scott’s hold list, because they knew they could count on him for a good read.) He is a ponderer, is my husband, and even having the tremendous home court advantage of living with him, I STILL always come away from his blog with new ideas to chew on. I am still congratulating myself on having given the blog to him for a Valentine’s Day present two years ago. Well done, me. Hee.

Okay!! I am posting this now! Finally! And thanks again to everyone who tagged me. It really does make my day to know you’ve gotten something out of this site.

Friday’s the last day to vote for the 2006 Homeschool Blog Awards. Thank you so much for the nominations! (Best Homeschool Mom Blog, Best Eclectic or Unschooling Blog, Super-Homeschooler, Best Encourager, Funniest.)

Seriously. I’m not for a moment suggesting you should run right over to the Homeschool Blog Awards website and nominate The Lilting House in six or seven categories. Really! That is totally not what I am saying!

I’m just saying that nominations will be accepted now through April 7th. That’s all I’m saying. Also, did I mention how pretty you look today?*

*I’m kidding! With the thinly disguised trolling for nominations, I mean, not about your looking pretty. If I could see you, I bet I would think you are lovely. The readers of Lilting House all have a certain je ne sais quoi,** don’t you think? Anyway, I really am just kidding with the other stuff. I was honored to be the recipient of a Homeschool Blog Award last year, over at Here in the Bonny Glen, and I think it’s nice to spread the honors around. And this year there are so many more new and fabulous homeschooling blogs to enjoy. It’s hard to get anything done, what with all the excellent posts to be read. So go! Nominate your favorites! Have fun!

**Do you have any idea how hard it is to find the correct spelling of a foreign-language phrase you have no idea how to spell? In this particular instance, I recommend Googling as follows: "a certain" French. Voila!***

***Make that "Voilà!"

Have you heard about the Ultimate Blog Party? It’s happening even as we speak. The host is 5 Minutes for Mom, and about a zillion bloggers are joining in the fun. Check out those links and you’ll see how to take part, including how to qualify for one of the many nifty prizes.

If you’re a fellow partier dropping in to see what kind of chips I’ve got in my snack bowl, welcome! We’re a pretty chipper bunch here at the Lilting House. We are mad for books and have been known to get giddy over a really great day planner. We like to spend our mornings travelling the world vicariously in the company of our pals Mr. Putty and Miss Mason, but not all our journeys are vicarious, oh no. We can muster up a Westward Ho! with the best of ’em when necessary.

One of the smallest among us brings adventure right into the house on a daily basis; and the smallest of all? She is scrumptiousness personified.

Despite all this adventure, we like to live life at a mellow pace, and there are only a handful of things we try to fit into a day.

We’re glad to have you here. Make yourself at home. We encourage lounging in pajamas and finding creative uses for dryer lint. And we always, always have chocolate.

Over at The Mom Trap, Kristen is sponsoring a contest:

I’ve decided to put together a little contest to help support a mom in need. Here are the basic rules:

1. Write a post on your blog about a mom WHO BLOGS who you think
needs a little splurge. Think stretched thin single mom, military mom
with a deployed husband, mom with a child with special needs who could
use a break, new mom with no family around, mom with an illness, or mom
who just needs a big CYBER hug. You get the picture.

*International moms are welcome so long as you can use a Spafinder.com gift card in your country.

How does she inspire you? Tell me about her and why you’ve chosen her. Make it good.

(And by mom I mean any kind of mom – adoptive, stepmom, grandmom…)

2. Email me the link to your post (put CONTEST in the subject), or leave me the link in the comments IN THIS POST. Make sure you link the actual post and not just your blog. I won’t be searching for it, so make sure your link works.

3. Make sure you link your nominee’s blog IN your post. I want to visit and read their blog as well. So, they MUST have a blog in order for you to nominate them.

4. Do all this by 10PM EST, September 20.

5. I’ll pick 5 finalists and link them in a post and my readers (or whoever else wants to stop by) will vote. I’m looking for awesome inspiring posts and moms that REALLY need support. Winners will be
announced on Monday, September 25.

So, WHY ENTER? Well, the mom you nominate that gets picked will win a $50 Spafinder gift card OR a $50 Merry Maids gift card.

And guess what? SO WILL YOU.

A Merry Maids gift card! That is almost as exciting as, say, a Godiva gift card. Ohhh, I can think of several moms I know who deserve a treat. (I started to link to some of them in that sentence, but there weren’t enough words. I’d need a positively Dickensian sentence to even come close.)  The trick will be choosing one, just one, to write about.

Like many bloggers, I am fascinated by my referral stats, especially the search engine referrals. Some people keep lists of the funniest hits that brought people to their site; I wish I had done that from the beginning. I’ve had some doozies, but I forget what most of them were. I did get a kick out of the time someone found my blog by Googling "homeschooling your obnoxious teenage son." I don’t suppose I was much help that time: sorry about that, whoever you were.

Jane reminded me of the time someone searched for "popsicle sticks peacock." I wasn’t much help there either, but we sure had a good time exploring the other links Google brings up for that string.

These days I’m getting a lot of hits from variations on "mom planners" and "planner for moms." My favorite: "planner obsession." (Which: I’m the number three hit on Google for that string. A dubious honor!)

But I’m glad the planner series has been helpful—and guess what! More to come! I have two more planners awaiting review. Oh, the giddy joy!

Another topic that appears frequently in my stats is hearing loss. Here’s a sampling from the past week:

speech banana
funny asl photos
deaf aid hearing funny home
funny american sign language quotes
preschool sign language curriculum
asl videos lending libraries
is montessori education a good option for hard of hearing children?

I’m afraid I wasn’t much help on that last question, but it’s sort of gratifying to come up on three different searches for the humor in hearing loss.

There are always many hits from people looking for homeschooling information, curriculum recommendations, unit studies (especially for specific books), Charlotte Mason, unschooling, and related topics. Lately I’m seeing more and more searches for "classical education" and "Latin-centered." It’s fun to track the waves of interest in certain educational methods by their frequency in the stats.

At first I was excited by this hit: "caterpillar parsley fennel." I know the answer! It’s a black swallowtail! Then it struck me that that person would have landed on our grisly and tragic adventures with poor Homer, and that probably isn’t what he or she was bargaining for.

Someone Googled "charlie brown linus cracker bend" and I felt a rush of warmth—oh! a friend! someone who appreciates the brilliance of Snoopy! (The musical, and also the dog.) And it’s true, you know: you CAN’T bend a cracker, no matter how hard you try.

How proud am I to be the number one hit on Google for "Schoolhouse Rock 30th"? All those hours spent sitting through bad Saturday morning TV, waaaaaiiiiiting for the next Grammar Rock spot—not a waste after all! I know my parts of speech AND I’m a search-engine top spot for the, um, must be millions? of people who are interested enough in the fact that Schoolhouse Rock celebrated its thirtieth anniversary to actually look it up. Okay, maybe not millions. Maybe two. Or one. But you, whoever you are: I am so with you. It was a day well worth celebrating. I’m willing to bet that ninety percent of the American children who learned the preamble to the Constitution in the last thirty years owe that knowledge to Schoolhouse Rock.

(Admit it. You’re singing it right now, aren’t you?)