That’s right, yours truly is the number #1 Google hit on "mind games to mess with your wife."
P.S.—
Dear Woman Whose Husband Was Looking That Up,
I hope he was kidding.
Category Archives: Blog
Better than a Blogroll
If you’re reading this on my blog itself (as opposed to your RSS reader), you’ll see there’s something new in my lefthand sidebar. I’ve been experimenting with Google Reader lately, comparing it to Bloglines, and yesterday I discovered (courtesy of Mom’s Daily Dose) the "Share" function of Google Reader, and oh boy, it’s great.
I had already decided to declutter my sidebars soon. I will probably ditch most of my blogrolls in favor of the Share widget. It updates automatically with the individual posts I’ve read and enjoyed—such as Dawn’s wonderful Late Winter Field Day, which went up today. Gorgeous collection of gorgeous posts.
Also worth sharing is CityMom’s request for suggestions for her Very Good Books project. If you lived in a small Manhattan apartment with four little ones and not much space, what books would you consider important enough to own?
Cottage Blessed
Happy First Blog Anniversary (a day late) to one of my favorite people in the whole world!
Maybe it’s because we just watched It’s a Wonderful Life, but all this week I’ve been thinking about Alice and the gentle, quiet, beautiful influence she has on everyone who encounters her, both in the world and on these here internets. She is a gem, a regular George Bailey: a person humbly oblivious to the effect she has on the lives of those who know her, and those who read her words.
I was thrilled—nay, triumphant unto gloating!—when Alice the Best (as she is known in my household; just ask her goddaughter Beanie) began blogging a year ago. Her zest for motherhood, her celebration of the merriment and mishaps that make up life in a house full of small children, her genius for creating crafts that enliven the traditions of our shared faith—all these things have enriched my life since we met (at a bakery, of course) ten years ago, and the lives of hundreds of homeschooling mothers since the first day she plugged in her modem. Now her blog brings those gifts to a whole new audience.
In a sphere full of lovely, intelligent, inspiring blogs, hers stands out. One day she has me laughing so loud I wake up my baby, and the next day I’m bawling at how beautifully she captures a fleeting moment of childhood. And no one does crafts like Alice. Time and again she has shown us, in pictures, how she puts together her beautiful crafts step by step. And then there are her liturgical teas! I’ve been harrassing urging Alice to put together a book of teas ever since she dazzled her children and me with a Shakespearean "tempest in a teapot" long, long ago. Instead, she shares them freely with the whole world.
This is why I keep coming back to this image of Alice as the George Bailey of the internet. It’s hard to imagine what the homeschooling world would be like without her. Her brainstorms are contagious. Years ago, her fabulous idea to help her daughter put together a First Communion notebook met with such enthusiasm among the Catholic homeschooling crowd that the concept is now almost a given. Her Easter Vigil notebook and Pope John Paul II memorial notebook were embraced with similar zeal.
I remember a time years ago when she eagerly showed me a copy of Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady and spoke of how one day, when her tiny girls were old enough, she would like to help them keep a family nature journal. Ooh, good idea! I said, mentally adding this notion to my already bursting-at-the-seams collection of Alice’s Ideas to Copy. Blogging inspired her to take the family nature journal to a new medium, and thus was Cottage Garden born. From fairy houses to spring soups, mantis adventures to epic battles, there is always something interesting to discover in that garden. The kids’ narrations and observations make you want to let your own kids stay outside all day from now on. When you read their pieces, you can see how much they have absorbed their mom’s merry sense of humor and appreciation for nature.
Most of all, I think Alice reminds us what a privilege it is to be entrusted with the children we’ve been given. She writes eloquently and movingly of the profound gratitude she feels for her husband and growing family. Reading her blog, I am suffused with exactly the same sense of joy and wonder I have always found in her comfortable kitchen. There is such a spirit of fun there: the fun that fills the atmosphere of a home in which the mother is cherishing every precious day of the happy golden years when her children are young.
Thank you, dear friend, for inviting us into your cottage day after day. Here’s to many more years of happy posting.
Happy Three-Month Anniversary
To one of my favorite bloggers. You’ve brought an extra zing to my Bloglines list, and I thank you!
What Embarrasses Me Is that I Really Sort of Do Want to Live There
Or in a house like these, at least.
Via Fuse #8: the latest thing in housing developments. And yes, I totally agree with Fuse #8. This concept makes me shudder. And yet: a thatched roof, shiny appliances, and hardwood floors? I admit it. Some of the pictures made me go, Ooh!
A whole neighborhood full of them, mind you, would be too much even for a geek like me. And the sales pitch? Ew ew ew.
Ooh, Prizes!
Click here to find out how you could win a $50 gift card for a blogging mom you know—and another for yourself. Kristen of The Mom Trap is offering prizes for the best post about an inspiring mom who deserves a treat.
And Spunky is having a contest, too! Find out how you could win a digital camera! Spunky writes:
This contest is open to ALL public and private teachers, parents, home schoolers and students (18 and older).
One winner, chosen at random will receive the Canon PowerShot SD600 and a Timbuk2 Messenger Bag. (Combined value over $350)
Wow!
Off Centered
So how horrified was I to look at my blog on Elizabeth‘s computer yesterday and see that all the text was showing up centered? Answer: VERY. That is NOT how it looked in MY browser. Or on Alice‘s for that matter.
I scoured my code and found a duplicate center tag that only had one corresponding end tag. Ugh. Anyway, if my entries were showing up centered on YOUR screen and you were wondering whether I thought I was being arty or something, nope, I’m definitely a fan of the old left justify. I don’t think I want to know how many of you were seeing the screwed-up version. Maybe it was just AOL’s browser that didn’t like my code? I hope?
But really, who can fret overmuch about blog woes when there is such delightful company and conversation all around? Yesterday, the kids and I zipped up to Northern Virginia for an overnight with Elizabeth and her gang. It was far too short a visit. Wonderboy’s jaw was on the floor the whole time: all those boys! I hardly saw Jane the whole time; she disappeared with Mary Beth the moment we arrived. Elizabeth is weeks away from giving birth to her eighth baby, but she served up feast after feast like I was royalty. There was even chocolate on my pillow. Is that a good friend, or what?
BlogHer in Spirit: Building Traffic
In BlogHer in Spirit Topics for Friday, PHATMommy asks:
- What service/software do you use to track your site’s traffic? What’s good (or bad) about it?
- What’s been your most successful tool in generating more traffic to your blog?
- What do you know about syndication and subscriptions? Share!
I use SiteMeter and MyBlogLog, which I wrote about not long ago. I check my SiteMeter page view numbers daily, but I find that the BlogLog information is the most useful: it shows me what links people have clicked on to come to my blog, what pages they’re visiting within my blog, and what outgoing links they’re clicking on. For example, after the Homeschooling Carnival I hosted at Lilting House last week, I could see that Janine Cate’s post on why some people are hostile to homeschooling got the most out-clicks, with Karen Edmisten’s "A mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom" post coming in second.
The search engine information is always amusing. Recently someone found my site after a search for "homeschooling your obnoxious fifteen-year-old son." I fear this person did not find much practical advice on that topic here, as my only son is two years old. I hope useful advice turned up somewhere else.
Lately I’m getting a lot of hits from people Googling "homeschool planners," "planners for moms," and other variations. When I started my planner series I had no idea it would generate so much interest; I was really just indulging myself in a favorite obsession topic. Lilting House also gets a steady trickle of traffic from people Googling "speech banana." Here at Bonny Glen, it’s Little House-related searches that pop up most often, along with a fair number of searches for my name. Variations on "homeschoolers and socialization" are also common. Also, I am apparently the top hit for "gatto bondage education chained."
I’m afraid I was no help to the person looking for "pictures of a broken toe." And I would really love to know what the person who Googled "painting mossy moot fox" was looking for.
(A caveat about MyBlogLog: they have added a new "communities" feature which automatically subscribes you to communities for other BlogLog subscriber blogs you link to.)
As for traffic generation, participating in and hosting blog carnivals always brings a lot of new readers to the site, and it appears that many of them stick around afterward.
My favorite source of blogging advice is ProBlogger, which I read on Bloglines.
Overall, though, I don’t worry a lot about how much traffic I’m getting. My primary topics (home education, children’s literature, parenting) are niche topics that don’t draw the same numbers as, say, politics. And that’s fine. The main reason I began this blog was because I was getting a lot of mail from people asking similar questions, and as my time was limited I figured it made sense to have one central place where I could store the answers instead of rewriting them every time. I love getting that kind of mail and didn’t want to disappoint anyone with rushed answers lacking in substance. Now I can say, "Here’s a link to a post I wrote on that subject"—and since the post probably links to several other blogs, the questioner gets the benefit of input from people wiser than I.
Then I discovered an unexpected and delightful advantage of blogging. I have never been a journaler (I so dislike writing by hand, and journaling on the computer just never worked for me), but I have often regretted not writing down the funny or endearing things Jane and Rose said when they were younger, or recording all our little family adventures. Bonny Glen became a place for me to do that. And what I have found, to my surprise, was that blogging makes me a better mother. I’m more conscious and appreciative of those sweet or funny moments with the kids; I’m taking better note of the small beats of connection between us. I don’t want to be a hypocrite or present an inaccurate picture of who we are (that’s why I’m quick to point out my failings in the cooking and laundry departments), so I find that blogging makes me work harder to maintain my ideals. I would never want one of my children to read a post here and think, "That doesn’t sound like us." So this blog makes me work at keeping the atmosphere of this home as joyful as the moments I’ve shared here.
Tags: BlogHer, blogs, BlogHer in Spirit, blogging, blog traffic
Taking Care of Blogness
I’m here, I really am. Just: five kids, one me, and of course if something’s gotta give, it’s going to be Mr. iMac. (Fred, I call him. Ole Fred, actually, in honor of my former professor and favorite living writer.)
(And yes, Down to the Bonny Glen was dedicated to the author, not the computer. I didn’t even have this computer when I wrote this book. I think that one was named Harvey. After the rabbit.)
Anyway, right now, at this moment, both my little ones are asleep and the three older girls are occupied. In descending order: Where the Red Fern Grows; a giant dirt hill and the little boy across the street; Zoombinis. Now, I am aware that my calling attention to this fact (that none of my children need me at this moment) all but guarantees someone is about to—
UNBELIEVABLE. I am not making this up: at the very second I was typing that, the door opened and one of the children DID need me. Well, sort of. She needed to tell me that she’d come home for her jaguar. Because, you know, what good is a giant dirt hill and the little boy across the street if you’re short one jaguar? Priorities, you know.
OK. She’s gone again, wild beast in hand. What I should do now is typereallyfast and finish this post before someone needs (a) feeding, (b) hugging, or (c) wiping. So let me think. What was I going to write about today. Well, first, there was this: I have a brief sequel to my post about the funny things you hear in the background when you talk to Alice on the phone. (Such as: "Mommy, may I please jump on the bed?" Her children may be hard on the mattress springs, but they are so POLITE!) I took my gang to the pool this morning and I snuck in a phone call to Alice while the big girls were splashing and hollering "She splashed me!" in indignant tones swimming.
Alice: So when you come visit what we’ll do is—
Me (interrupting): No, no, DON’T THROW THE STRING CHEESE IN THE POOL! Oh, shoot.
(Question: would you let your two-year-old eat a stick of string cheese that had been fished out of the neighborhood pool? I mean, what’s a little chlorine marinade, right?)
Next. Lots of interesting reading elsewhere in the ‘sphere today. Spunky has three or four posts I’d like to sink my teeth into, as soon as I have a bit of a lull around here (a less tenuous lull than this one, I mean).
(For example, during that paragraph the Zoombinis had a heated argument with the upstairs computer, also known as Marge the Barely-Functioning Laptop, requiring intervention from local peacekeeping agencies.)
(Operation Reconciliation: a success. Marge has somewhat grudgingly permitted the ‘Binis access to her territory. She is temperamental, though, and their position is precarious in the extreme.)
(Personally I think she is just sulking because she heard me say it was a shame I wouldn’t be able to live-blog our cross-country trip, whenever that actually happens, because Marge doesn’t have Wi-Fi capability. She takes these things very personally.)
There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on at Liz’s place today, too, such as this post on how people get started reading the classics. (I’d like to respond to this topic, too, at some point, but today is all about the meta-blogging, not the actual Blogging of Intelligent Stuff.) She also links to the list of 100 Cool Teachers in Literature list being compiled by the teachers at A Year of Reading, which will make a great companion to the fascinating lists of Cool Boys and Cool Girls in Children’s Lit that Jen Robinson has assembled. Up next, Cool Mothers? Seems like someone had a list like that going not long ago. High on my list: Marmee (obviously—and Mrs. Jo, too; she grew up rather nicely), Anne Blythe (but of course), Mrs. Austin, and the light-footed, lighthearted Mrs. Ray, mother of Betsy. But tops on my list has to be Susan Sowerby from The Secret Garden. Smart, down-to-earth, cheerful, observant, plain-spoken, unflappable, and a good cook to boot.
The Coolest Dad in Fiction has got to be Atticus, right?
(I’m having deja vu. Surely we have discussed this before.)
Moving on: Spunky mentions this too but I first read it on Bloglines, ’cause I’m a PHATMommy subscriber. Shannon reminds us that this weekend is the big BlogHer conference in San Jose where hundreds (thousands?) of female bloggers are getting together for panel discussions, networking, and cocktails. Lots of cocktails. Shannon has posted some BlogHer-in-Spirit discussion questions for those of us who are not at the convention in body. I hope to tackle them myself later on, but right now I can hear that Marge is being inhospitable to the Zoombinis again, and I think my own little Zoom-Beanie is in need of a Cool Mom in body, not just in spirit.
Tags: homeschooling, homeschool, education, kidlit, children’s literature, BlogHer, blogs, BlogHer in Spirit
Congratulations to Spunky!
And all the other winners of the Blogs of Beauty awards. Spunky is one of my daily reads and her two awards are well-deserved!