19 Tuesday Jun 2012
Posted in Memes, My Blag is on the Interwebs
Tags
Blogging, blogs, first memories, memes, questions, sports, tag, tests, travel, web browsers
I’ve been tagged by Life Starts Now, so the game is afoot!
The rules for playing blog tag are simple:
1- You must post the rules
2- Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post
3- Create eleven new questions to ask the people you’ve tagged
4- Tag eleven people with a link to your post
5- Let them know they’ve been tagged
Here are the questions I was given.
25 Thursday Aug 2011
Tags
No, "Angel" is DEFINITELY not on the list
So, I’ve talked about re-nicknaming Babby, since he will soon not be so much a Babby as a toddler, and also because he is developing a personality and deserves to have that acknowledged.
Thanks to all who made suggestions! If you think of others, feel free to toss them out there, but in the meantime, please give your opinion on existing ideas.
I have considered, and tossed away, the following options:
Stubborn (too negative, since he is not so much STUBBORN as… strong willed/opinionated)
Cheerful (positive and mostly true, but will seem weird when I complain about his tantrums during the toddler years or when I post pictures like this)
Screamy McGee (it fits him less every day, although I am sure there will be days, during the terrible twos, when it will fit him to a tee…)
Perfect Son (an appropos suggestion, but possibly damaging emotionally to Babby’s future siblings, and untrue in any case)
% (another suggestion, to which I will not apply adjectives)
Toddy (makes him sound like a night cap)
I am also concerned that it will be confusing to those who think of him as “Babby” to go to a totally different name, so I have considered similar sounding names such as:
Bobby
Billy
Buddy (an actual nickname we use)
However, since these are actual people names, but not HIS name, I am afraid people might think my son’s name actually is Billy or Buddy, and that’s not quite right, either.
Other names still on the table:
Owl or Little Owl (a great suggestion, since my mother calls him this all the time, and he DOES have massive eyes, and he sure doesn’t sleep well at night)
Wol (because “owl” is awkward to say out loud, and because Owl in Winnie The Pooh spells his name Wol)
Willful (a more positive trait name, which I feel fits his personality more)
Goobs/Goobergeiger (a real life nickname of ours, taken from Mission Hill)
What names do you like?
There’s also the problem that I have a mild form of synaesthesia. I am concerned that people will be confused if I go to a different COLOURED name. For example, “Babby” is a blue word, and his real name is a gold/brown word. I’m afraid that people will be confused if he goes from being blue to being, say, purple or green.
That is a normal concern, right? Am I misleading you all by making you think he is blue or another colour, when he is actually gold/brown?
Should his new name be another blue name, so as not to confuse my readership, or should it fit his real name in colour, thus aligning his nickname with reality better?
So, if it affects your judgement, Buddy/Bobby/Billy are more or less the same colour as Babby (because b is blue, you see). Owl and Willful are similar in colour to his ACTUAL name.
Just in case it matters to you.
It might.
18 Saturday Jun 2011
This blog is officially two years old today.
Is it just me or does it feel like a lot longer? And yet, the time has flown by between then an now. It’s very strange.
When If By Yes began I was renting, working, depressed, and whining about how I wanted a baby.
Now I’m a home owner (albeit of a musty, small, falling-down townhouse), looking for a job, anxious but happy, and whining about how I don’t want to leave my baby.
I’ve fancied up my blog theme a bit. Feel free to complain. If you all hate it I can always change it back. I”m still tweaking the background and such. How is it loading, for you?
As another part of my celebration of Two Years of Blogging On My Ass, I’m introducing a new segment to If By Yes:
The Early Writings of Carol The Genius
While I was home, I dug out some of “books” that I wrote as a child.
The first, written when I was in grade 4, is called Follow The Animals Home and chronicles the adventures of two Mary Sue characters who own a ridiculous number of pets and end up wandering around the wilderness around the Niagra Escarpment. The second, All That Glitters is a slightly better effort about a motley assortment of kittens, puppies, and a horse who go tramping all over the countryside looking for the “perfect owner”, only to be continually disappointed.
Both are hysterically funny, although I don’t think I was trying to be at the time.
I also found a book of my early poems.
Now you, too, can enjoy selected segments from these early efforts! Marvel in the genius!
Or laugh uncontrollably.
Whichever seems appropriate.
Shall I start you off with a poem?
Canadians
there isn’t a Canadian that doesn’t feel for creatures,
not even one, I’m not kidding it’s really quite a feature.
Even people that start out shooting as a child,
soon realise there doing and become gentle and mild,
with animals,
why?
– Me, age 11
06 Friday May 2011
Posted in My Blag is on the Interwebs
26 Saturday Mar 2011
Posted in Memes, My Blag is on the Interwebs
Recently two amazing fellow bloggers, Big Dog Momma and Curiosity, tagged me with the Stylish Blogger award that has been going around. I am honoured, blushing, etc etc. I’ve taken forever to respond, because it requires the following:
1. Link back and thank the person who gave you the award.
That’s easy enough. I’ll even do it twice! Check out
Canis Majoris Madre – it has dogs, kids, and occasional poop. What else could you ask for?
Emotional Umbrella – Curiosity may be my secret Long Lost Twin. Our brains tend to parallel each other in creepy and inexplicable ways. Except she is much more hilarious than I will ever be.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
TOUGH, because I have to share seven NEW things that I didn’t share before in this meme.
1. I hate my hair. Seriously, I have the worst hair in the history of hair. It is limp, and hangs in greasy strings. It is extremely fine and gets staticky easily. You can’t volumize it. Legions of hair dressers have tried. Conditioner makes it hang in greasy strings. Mousse sometimes works if you blow dry, but the volume only lasts for an hour or so. After that, it hangs in greasy strings. Layering helps a little, because then it hangs in layered greasy strings.
You can’t put it up. It is so fine that it provides absolutely no friction. Pony tails slide out. They managed to get it up for my wedding (hee hee, that’s what she said) but it took over FIFTY bobby pins. PH counted them when he took my hair down at the end of the night.
Also, it only parts down the middle. People have assured me that if I part it elsewhere for long enough, I can “train” my hair to part somewhere else. I have been parting it on the right hand side dutifully for A YEAR AND A HALF, and it still rearranges itself to a middle split within an hour.
2. I like my skin. It’s pretty good skin. It doesn’t get pimply. The Christmas that I didn’t know I was pregnant, I got a pimple. I should have known.
3. Since Babby was born, my toe nails have gone from normal-looking toenails to weird, crunchy, chalky white things. It looks like I painted them with white out. I am baffled, but I assume that my doctor would be of no help to me.
4. I leave empty drink glasses all over the house. I can’t help it. I’m thirsty, I get a drink, I tote it around with me until its finished. I continue moving through the house. I get thirsty again. I go to the kitchen. I get another glass. I tote it around with me… Every now and then Perfect Husband passes me in the hallway with five or six glasses stacked in his arms. He gives me this really long suffering look, says “I love you…” and takes all the glasses to the kitchen. Since I’m supposed to be the house wife right now, I’m really trying to keep this sort of thing down to a minimum, but it’s haaaaaard!
5. I don’t like ice cream. Bleeeeyech.
6. I love apocalyptic stuff and post-apocalyptic stuff. Movies and books about the end of the world… Good, bad, it doesn’t matter (with the exception of Armageddon, which is so awful that I can’t even begin to have fun). I love The Day of the Triffids, as well as Independence Day… Except Independence Day would be better if the aliens won. I like movies that feature famous landmarks getting trashed and people having to start over again. Looooove it. Feel free to psychoanalyze why.
7. I have an extensive Baby Sitter’s Club book collection. It’s sandwiched between Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and The World of Pooh. Hey, laugh all you want, but at least Ann M Martin could use punctuation appropriately and wrote admirable characters, which is better than some drivel I’ve read lately.
3. Award 5 recently discovered blogs.
Here goes…
1. The Salted Tomato. Looking for a bunch of delicious (mostly) vegetarian recipes, often with an East Indian twist? Look no further. The Salted Tomato mixes in recipes with musings on life in an East Indian family, and it’s fascinating and mouth watering.
2. Mommy By Day. Not actually new to me, but stylish for shizzle. It’s a great photography/mommy blog and Natalie’s daughter is totally adorable. If that little girl wasn’t older than Babby (which I find creepy because I’m conventional like that) and if we lived in another culture I would be arranging a marriage between them. I would give many camels.
3. Don’t Mind The Mess. Jess has a super cute little boy who has recently been diagnosed with a form of autism. She knows how I feel when I talk about babies that scream all the time and don’t sleep. She shares my suspicion of what she calls “sack of flour” babies.
4. The Problem With Young People Today Is… Mr. Mills (you don’t get to call him Don unless you are well into your senior years) is cranky and I love it. I agree with everything he says about young people these days, so he has accepted me as an honorary Old Person. My decoder ring is supposedly in the mail. Presumably it will hock Ovaltine.
5. Reasoning With Vampires. You all know how much I love Twilight. This lady notices the things that I noticed – bad grammar, sentences that make no sense, Bella’s insufferable personality, and her tendency to lose track of things (such as where she is, what is happening around her, whether she is breathing, and where her lips are). Every day multiple SCANNED bits from the Twilight Saga appear, along with brilliant and incisive commentary and highlighting of grammatical errors. It’s hilariously nitpicky. Right now Dana is working her way through New Moon. I can’t wait until she gets to the part where Bella is “literally” up to her elbows in Comet while cleaning the bathtub.
4. Contact them and tell them about their award.
Yeah, I’m far too lazy to get around to doing that. They’re smart cookies. They’ll figure it out.
23 Wednesday Mar 2011
This is my first month joining ICLW and I’m loving getting to meet all of these amazing bloggers. However, whenever I read a blog like A Little Pregnant or Stirrups Queen, or Built In Birth Control, I feel like an imposter. I feel guilty when people find my blog from comments left on those blogs – and are confronted with pictures of my smiling baby. What am I doing, reading and commenting on these infertility blogs, when I am not (as far as I know) infertile?
I read infertility blogs because I feel a kinship for these women, even though I have been spared their struggles.
I grew up knowing myself to be a child of infertility. My parents were married for eight years before I was born, and I was told that they “sought professional help” in order to have me. My mother would occasionally apologize for not giving me siblings (one of seven children, my mother has always felt that you need siblings to be normal).
As a child I assumed that the problem lay with my father, because they would never go into details. I thought that my mother may not have felt comfortable discussing sperm counts and testicles with her 10 year old. As I grew older, I began to get the sense that the problems laid on my mother’s side. But I didn’t know, because my mother got vague and changed the subject whenever I asked about it. Could this be something I might inherit?
In other words, unlike many women, I never took it for granted that I would be able to have children with ease. I grew up being aware that some people struggle to have their children.
I can only think of two children’s movies that portray infertile mothers, and those are Dumbo, and Pixar’s Up. If you haven’t watched Dumbo since childhood, it’s time you did. It’s heartbreaking to watch Mrs Jumbo reach hopefully for each bundle of joy, only to see it drop into some one else’s arms. Voiceless, wistful, hoping, waiting, she longs for her own baby and wonders why he is so long in coming.
When he does finally arrive, he isn’t perfect. Though he is beautiful in her eyes, her friends see him as a freak: worse than no baby at all.
How many mothers have adopted a child over seas only to find that their friends don’t throw them a shower, or that their parents don’t treat the child like a “real” grand child? How many mothers have held their precious Down Syndrome baby, only to recieve commiserations instead of congratulations?
Then, when she rises up to protect her son from the cruelty of the world, he is taken away from her entirely. She is declared insane, locked away, and her little baby that she longed for weeps alone with no one left who loves him.
Tell me, what mother in the world wouldn’t weep over Mrs. Jumbo’s experiences? Do you need to have been infertile to imagine the yearning? The love? The loss? I didn’t. Even as a child, I felt the pain of Mrs. Jumbo’s story.
I believe infertility and child loss are topics that belong to all women. It could strike any of us, any time, but we keep it shrouded in secrecy and shame. While Michael J. Fox speaks out for Parkinson’s Disease, and Michael Douglas goes on talk shows to discuss his throat cancer, 45 year old movie stars pop out sets of twins and insist that conception was totally natural. They surround infertility with shame when they could be spreading awareness.
The desire to become a mother, the physical need to have a baby, is something that cannot be described to someone who has not yet felt the urge. Anyone who has felt the urge can comprehend the pain of an infertile couple who are still waiting for their baby.
I have felt the urge since I was 17 years old and fell in love with my Baby Think It Over. He was supposed to teach me about the horrors of motherhood, so I would use birth control (hardly a worry since I had never even been kissed at that point, and wouldn’t be for two more years). Instead I named him Jan Sebastian, cuddled him as much as possible, dressed him in a very cute sweater, carried him instead of lugging him in his plastic car seat, and asked the teacher if I could keep him.
She rolled her eyes. “There’s one in every class…” she laughed. Everyone else hated the damn thing.
In university a friend gave me a Baby Chou Chou doll, and I would cuddle her in her terry cloth footie pyjamas when I felt especially sad. The curve of a baby’s body on my shoulder satisfied some inner yearning that I could not explain.
Then, after university, I went through a serious breakup with my boyfriend of many years, and started over again with Perfect Husband. Even after we got married, that bout with depression held off my reproductive aspirations for another year. I wanted my children. I physically missed them – people I had never met, but whose projections followed me everywhere, asking me why water boiled and marvelling at statues in the Louvre.
On my 27th birthday, a coworker who was only two years older than me gave birth to her second child. Instead of a birthday lunch, we went to see my coworker and her new baby in the hospital. That night I wrote the following in my journal:
There’s just something about holding a newborn that feels… right. Like having PH at my side or a dog at my feet, it makes me feel somehow more whole. I marvel at the tinyness, at how someone born just yesterday, with barely one Earth rotation under his belt, can have such perfectly formed finger nails. Holding a newborn baby should have been a special birthday treat for me, but it really felt more like a cruel tease. I nearly wept with jealousy.
… it makes me ache that even though PH and I want desperately to start our family today… all “logic” says that we should wait, enjoy our freedom, pay off student loans and improve our careers until we can afford more happiness to sacrifice.
In my heart, I feared that infertility would prolong my wait for babies. I was afraid that I would become a Mrs. Jumbo, always reaching out to hold someone else’s baby, and always wishing I could be holding my own. I was so sure that I would have fertility problems that it took me a while to really believe that I was pregnant when it finally happened.
I am grateful for my son every moment of every day. Even when he’s screaming. Even when he has a poosplosion. I hold him close and kiss his tiny mouth and feel so grateful that I finally got my baby… and every day my heart aches for the women who are still waiting for theirs.
When I sing to him, I sing him “Baby Mine”.
and I read infertility blogs so that I can tell them that I understand… as much as is possible for someone who is not, herself, infertile.
01 Tuesday Feb 2011
Posted in Me vs The Sad, My Blag is on the Interwebs, Pointless Posts
Tags
Hi everyone, my post went up on BlogHer today!
Here’s the link.
I like to think that I’m helping to spread awareness for this awful disease.
22 Sunday Aug 2010
Posted in Memes, My Blag is on the Interwebs, Pointless Posts
1. Did you attend Blogher10?
No. Because I’m lacking this thing. It’s called money. I’d love to go to a Blogher some day. It should really come to Vancouver.
2. Are you attending BlissdomCanada this fall?
Never heard of it. Is it in Vancouver?
3. When are you at your blogging best – a.m. or p.m.?
I’m a pm person. I don’t do mornings. My metabolism doesn’t even kick in until noon. Before then I’m a groggy, shivering mass. Babby is the same way, right now. I almost never feel him move before lunchtime, unless I get in the car with music playing.
4. How many blogs do you have? (Include the links)
I have my old LJ, which I still post in occasionally but there aren’t very many people checking LJ these days, so I don’t bother much. Not linking to it because it includes the personal details I tend to avoid giving out here. I’m also thinking about starting another blog – based on an old website I had which was an obscene, verbally abusive guide to dog training. Is anyone interested in seeing that?
5. What technical skill would you like to learn to improve your blog?
It would be cool to know how to do my own CSS, so I could make my own blog design instead of relying on templates. But I’m also unwilling to spend any money to get the rights to do so, because I have none (see above).
6. Do you prefer the sound of silence or does action abound while you blog?
Mostly silence. I’m a silence kind of person. But I do like peaceful background music. I was reading downstairs last night and PH was upstairs on the compy and the sounds of the Bandenburg Concertos started wafting down the stairs, I guess because he felt that playing those while reading GraphJam would enhance his compy experience. It was great. So peaceful. My speakers also pick up CBC 2 involuntarily so often while I blog I have peaceful background classical music playing anyhow.
7. Do you include the names of your family in your blog?
Yes, some. Like, my first name. And my pets’ names aren’t secrets, I just avoid using them much because they’re unusual enough to get paired with my name if stalkers were searching for me, and I really don’t want ex-coworkers and in-laws finding this blog. My husband is namelesss because his name is unusually spelled, and again, don’t want ex-coworkers and in-laws putting two and two together. The name we’ve picked for our son is not unusual, so I’ll probably use it, but won’t be giving his full name for obvious reasons.
8. Do you post pictures or videos of your children?
Fur babies yes, children, yes in the future. Although apparently not my son’s genitals. Those won’t be posted.
9. What’s the grossest thing you’ve spilled on your keyboard?
I don’t spill things on my keyboard.
Enter Babby…
10. Ever posted something you wrote while intoxicated?
No, but then the last time I tried to drink in any kind of sizable amount, this happened. So I don’t think it can happen at all, any more.
11. Do you go back and edit old posts just because you can?
Yes, if I see something I could make better. Like grammar.
12. Have you ever suspected somebody took something you wrote and pawned it off as their own?
No. Why would anyone do that? It’s not like I have talent.
13. Does your spouse read your blog? What do they say about it?
Yep, he checks it at work. Which means that he comes home and I say “Guess what happened?” and he says “the diaper service couldn’t find our house and had to call?” and I say “Uh… yeah.”
14. What’s something cool/positive/unexpected for you, that has resulted directly from blogging?
The fact that I’m actually starting to develop friendships with other bloggers – people I would love to have coffee with if I could just get into the same time zone as them.
15. Link to a post (or two) which demonstrate your writing style:
Hmm. It depends on how silly I feel that day. I can write very lightheartedly or very seriously, depending on my mood. Actually, if you scroll down a bit, there’s a Top Posts section on the little menu on the left, with links to some of my more popular posts. They display a pretty good variety of my writing styles – serious, silly, dialogue, etc.
This one is probably a good medium example of a mixture of serious and silly: Fear The Paint
This one is more serious and descriptive: Lift Me Up
Then there are posts like this.
16. Name a blog(s) that makes you exclaim, “Damn! I wish I’d written that!”
Pfft. MOST blogs? I really admire the bloggers who can talk about the most painful subjects in the most hilarious ways – A Little Pregnant and Dooce, for example. Probably why they’re so popular. People like a bit of humour in even those most miserable of situations. But pretty much every blog I read, I read for a reason. Usually a combination of humour and heart is what catches me – that balance that I am always trying to achieve.
24 Saturday Jul 2010
Posted in Memes, My Blag is on the Interwebs
Thanks to Blahggy for tagging me in this meme blog award!
The Rules:
•Thank the blogger who awarded it to you (isn’t it sad that they have to put basic human politeness in the RULES?)
•Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience using five words (what does that even mean?)
•Pass it on to 10 other blogs which you feel have real substance (10? Hmm…)
The Philosophy and Motivations behind If By Yes:
Life
Love
Humour
Psychology
Writing
That’s as close as I can come.
It’s tough because I’m not even sure what all that means. Is my philosophy/motivation about what makes me write (love of writing, love of sharing good stories, love of feedback), or what I write about (dogs, babies, biology, boobas)? Is it about the things that are important to me (my husband, my pets, my fetus, my family, books) or the things that are important to write about (things I’ve learned, information to be passed on, truth)?
So now I want to turn it around on you – why do you read If By Yes? What brought you here, to read the confused ramblings of a nerdy lefthander with self esteem problems? Is this your first time, and will you come back? If this is a return visit, why? What makes you comment, when you comment? What posts do you like to re-read? Do you have a favourite post?
And now I will list blogs with substance, in no particular order.If any of you actually read my blog and want to post your award, go ahead and do so. But mostly I’m just posting recommendations, because I believe in promoting good reading materials of all kinds.This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a start.
1. Daycare Daze. This blog is about the life and experiences of a child care expert who runs a daycare out of her home. It’s funny, it’s true, and it’s refreshingly full of information which meshes well with everything I’ve learned about dogs. Babies don’t seem so different.
2. Blahggy. Yes, she gave me the award and someone has already passed it on to her, but I’m still mentioning it because it’s a good read. She is very honest about her personal experiences, and her posts give you something to think about.
3. Emotional Umbrella. Frequently funny, always very open, Emotional Umbrella chronicles the struggles of someone trying to find the right balance of anti-depressant medications while navigating real life.
4. Built-in Birth Control. A heartbreakingly honest blog about living with endometriosis and the struggles of trying to bear children.
5. Sweet Salty Kate. A lovely blog by a talented writer and photographer who lives in the best place on Earth – my home turf of Nova Scotia. While she sadly is best known for losing one of her twin boys several years ago, Kate’s writing is a celebration of life.
6. A Little Pregnant. Frequently hilarious, always thought provoking, this blog covers the years of struggle of IVF, premature birth, egg donation, and the raising of two active little boys after the struggle of infertility, all with a fiendishly irreverent wit.
7. Bub and Pie. Bea hasn’t updated in a while, which makes me sad, because her posts were always awesome. I still encourage you to go and read through the archives if you like thinking about books, parenting, and autism.
8. Are You Sure This Is A Good Idea? This blog is just starting out, but I can tell already that it’s going to be a good one, not the least because the author shares my adoration of good grammar.
9. Mommy By Day. A good Canadian mommy blog that discusses real parenting issues, and shares my philosophy of parenting (which I find comforting, since I’m not actually a parent yet, and Mommy By Day is proof that it isn’t *all* impossible fantasy.)
14 Monday Jun 2010
Posted in My Blag is on the Interwebs
I’ve been given my first blog award! Okay, so, it’s not a real award, not like those other virtual awards that come with buttons and stuff. But I’T’S STILL AN AWARD, OKAY?
Not Mary Poppins has passed on the Versatility Award to me! I’m not really sure what the criteria are, or if I fit them, but I’m not looking this gift horse in the mouth. I am gleefully accepting, and will now follow the “rules” of the award, which apparently are as follows:
1) thank the person who gave you the award
2) tell seven thing about yourself and
3) pass the award on to other bloggers whom you love, and, I suppose, find to be versatile.
Thank you, Mary! For those who haven’t checked out Daycare Daze on my blog roll, you really really should because every post Mary makes just confirms for me more than dogs and babies aren’t that different, and I find this both satisfying and comforting.
Seven things about me:
1. I am left handed, and so is Perfect Husband. If we have a right handed child, we’ll be slightly disappointed. Misery loves company, you know.
2. I was born in Ontario and spent my formative childhood years in the Caribbean, on a tiny island called Curaçao (notice the cedille! It is NOT pronounced “cure-a-cow”). The next time you drink a cocktail with blue curaçao in it, think of me and my beautiful childhood home.
3. Even though I moved to Nova Scotia as a teenager, I still consider myself a bred-in-the-bone Bluenose. My father’s family came over during one of the potato famines, and my mother’s family moved up from the states to be planters back in the days of Acadie (expelling the poor Acadians in the process – such a proud family history) and they actually named a town after my maternal great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather.
4. I am also descended from Rob Roy. My mother is into genealogy, and has confirmed this (which went in the family by word of mouth) by tracing us back to the MacGregors.
5. My university education was partially paid through childhood acting gigs, because I used to be adorable (I grew out of the cuteness around age 8). My illustrious acting credits include a truly atrocious episode of The Judge, a made for TV movie called Hoover vs The Kennedys (I was Caroline Kennedy), another TV movie starring Loretta Young called Lady in the Corner (I was an unnamed child running around in circles with a Shar-Pei named Su-Su and I remember Loretta very fondly), a radio McDonald’s commercial about milkshakes (I’m allergic to milk and had never had a milkshake, so the director got very frustrated with me) and a number of other TV commercials. I also have an unexplained memory of sitting on red-carpeted steps while a line of men did the can-can behind me. I assume that this was another commercial.
6. I do video editing as a hobby – I’ve dabbled in a variety of things – dubbing, subtitling, and even green-screening my friends into famous movies scenes, but mostly I love putting videos to music. My computer has a quad core processor just so I can play with my videos. I’m inordinately proud of them, too, and like to force people to watch them after I’ve made them. I’m like the old lady down the road who makes you look at photo album after photo album of her mentally deficient-looking grandchildren. For example, this is my music-video for my friend’s beautiful wedding, which was a Hindu ceremony.
My abilities are not where I want them to be. My ultimate goal is to make a video nearly as good as this.
7. I never really grew out of childhood. I read children’s fiction almost exclusively (I admit there are a couple of good grownup books out there, though most of them were written over a hundred years ago, and non-fiction is a nice change on occasion); I still sometimes talk to my childhood imaginary friend (a dog named Blizzard), and I bring my teddy bear Timothy with me whenever we travel, so I can take pictures of him places. In my mind, Timothy is a real person because I still anthropomorphize inanimate objects. Perfect Husband, who was probably already thirty when he was three, tolerates all this with surprising equanimity.
Now, to pass it on!
I would like to extend this award to some fellow bloggers who write about everything under the sun. I feel like I could give this award to about a million of you, because MOST of the blogs I like to read are very versatile in nature but I’ve forced myself to keep it down to three – to Hannah of Me and My Shadows (sadly, for personal reasons her blog is semi-private at this time, I can’t link you to her, but trust me, it’s a good read), Mama Tulip, and Ken and Dot’s Allsorts.
If By Yes 
