Sep. 30: A favorite photo

Today’s Day #30 of the blog challenge.

Show us a favorite photo and tell us why you love it.

This photo is from Saturday evening, when a bunch of us gathered at the House of Manullang to celebrate Tina’s, April’s, and my birthdays. I love this picture because it’s full of people who make me smile and feel all warm and fuzzy just to be around them.

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Jenn K, Dina
Val, Fancy Lori
Tina, me
Cristina, April


Well, this is the last day of our September Blog Challenge. Tomorrow I’ll write about how it went for me and whether it’ll make any difference to my future blogging. Thanks for tuning in this month!

jen

Sep. 29: Fame

Day #29 of the September Blog Challenge. Today’s topic:

If you were ever to become famous, what would it be for?

fameI like to think I’d be famous for something like winning a trillion dollars and donating it all to charity (don’t worry; I’d hold a little back to take y’all on a vacation somewhere good). Or maybe I could be famous for curing cancer or hangnails—you never know. I think I might like to be famous for being the greatest person ever for no known reason, although that’d be an awful lot to live up to for just one person. I’d be willing to try it though.

Most likely, I’d be famous for being the woman who, due to her extreme clumsiness, inadvertently initiated a Rube Goldberg-like series of events that led to the demise of the human race.

Yep, I’d be famous but there’d be no one left to be famous to. Figures.


If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

jen

Sep. 28: Appreciating people

lovemylifeIt’s Day #30 of the September Blog Challenge, but I still haven’t written my Day #28 post, so that comes first. Then I need to do Days #29 and #30, and I’ll be caught up. I’m cheating a little by dating these correctly even though they’re being published late. Please don’t tell anyone.

Tell us the things you appreciate about your closest friends.

It’s hard for me to know how to limit this list, as I’m fortunate to have oodles of friends I think of as “close.” So, I went through emails, Facebook, and texts to see those I’ve communicated with most recently and made my list from there. Fair? Let’s just say it is. If you’re not on this list, it’s just because I haven’t communicated with you in the past three or four days, not because I don’t like you. Although… you never know now, do ya?

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April: As evidenced by our friendship that’s going on 30 years, April’s a keeper. In her birthday wishes on FB the other day, I wrote why she’s the best: she's a great embarrassing-secret-keeper/college-memory-forgetter (or never-mentioner?) and one of the kindest, silliest, funniest people I know. You'd almost never guess that she once punched a girl. I really love the punching part. She’s such a gentle, quiet, kind person but SHE WILL KICK YOUR ASS.

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Cassie: Smart, silly, fun… When you have friends with which you can play a game like Cards Against Humanity, well, you gotta hang on to those friends. Total rock star, this one.

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Cristina: Sweet and so funny! Her whole family rocks, really. Nearly every day you’ll find one or both of my kids at her house or one or two of hers at mine. I love having neighbors like Cristina; if she ever moves away I will cry and cry because WHO KNOWS who might move in after her? The possibilities are scary.

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Dina: She likes big books and she cannot lie… I like Dina because she shares a hatred of many of the same things I do, but a love of a few things too. Like sarcasm. And gossip. Here’s why I can’t believe I like her sometimes: she hates musicals and Disney. I KNOW, RIGHT??? You would think that someone with a tremendous fault like that would be off my list fast, but no… she makes up for it with all the other good stuff. And I don’t mean “good stuff” in a wink-wink kind of way. I don’t think we’ve been drunk enough together for that yet.

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Ed: Someone I know has been secretly doing this blog challenge with me and didn’t tell me until just the other day. In spite of his withholding of important information, I appreciate Ed’s good taste in books—he introduced me to the Tales of the City series and encouraged me to try reading Margaret Atwood. He acknowledges the important life events—he came to see both my kids right after they were born. But, like Dina, he hates Disney. I guess maybe it’s good that he has that HUGE FAULT, because the world probably isn’t ready for that much awesome coming from one person.

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Jenn K: She’s Jenn-with-two-enns (I’m Jen-with-one-en). Need a life of the party? Jenn K is your gal. When she’s around, shit gets laugh-ier, louder, and crazier. I would totally braid my hair into hers.

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Kim F’n-W: If I could customize my Facebook news feed any way I choose, Kim’s posts would always show up first so I wouldn’t miss a single one. She was my biggest cheerleader throughout chemo, and I love that she always finds the funny in even the worst situation—it helps me do the same.

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Fancy Lori™: She’s funny and smart and clever and made-up words are like nails on a chalkboard to her. In other words, she’s easy to tormentalize. It’s funner than anything! She knits bald caps/yarn wigs like a champ, and even whips out surprises for white elephant parties (yikes). I also felt honored that Lori wanted to write about my cancer story in this newspaper supplement last year. I like her. I do.

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Sherilee: She inspires me to be more positive. She surprises me with boxes of homemade kettle corn delivered to my front door. We love a lot of the same TV, and the amount of time we text-chat about characters and plotlines is slightly embarrassing. Sherilee knows the true value of friendship and family, and I love that about her.

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Sunshine: We haven’t been super-great about communicating since she moved away, which bums us both out, but we easily pick up where we left off. Sunshine makes me smile and laugh and is so very, very dear to me. She’s a good one.

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Theresa: You want this girl on your side, for sure. Theresa is one of the kindest and most generous people I know. She’s super pretty and sweet, too, which makes her potty-mouth all the more shocking and hilarious. If you want to see a true Wonder Woman, just watch Theresa—she can do it all, and with a smile.

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Tina: I feel fortunate to have such a sweet next-door neighbor, who always offers to help when she sees a need. One of the things I admire about her is her dedication to making memories for her kids—seems she’s always planning for fun.

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Val: Oh, goodness. I love the snark and sassy this girl brings to the table. You wouldn’t think the snark and sassy could go along with kind and thoughtful, but SHE MAKES IT WORK. Val is the very definition of “you can count on me,” in so many ways.


If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

jen

Sep. 28: Ya gotta have friends

Today's topic for the blog challenge has to do with friends and I don't want to half-ass it. I'm actually spending the evening with several of my besties, and in preparation for that, I've run out of time to blog. I'll do it tomorrow. But because I'm supposed to blog every day this month, I had to post today and tell you that. Because I'm a big fat cheater. And kinda lame.

Jen

Sep. 27: One silly phone call

phoneDay #27 of our blog challenge. We’re almost done! Today’s prompt:

Describe a distinct moment when your life took a turn.

It would be easy/quick to respond to this one with “the day I found out I had cancer,” but that’s obvious and not very fun. Instead, I’m going to grab a moment from a long, long time ago. I’ve probably told this story here already, but YOU dig around in 13 years of archives and figger it out. Here goes:


Freshman year at Walla Walla College, if you were in the student photo directory, you got a prank call from me and April. It was our thing; we were dorks who thought we were super fun to talk to. And pre-caller ID days, we could be anonymous. Wait, read that word again, but in a sing-song voice: AAAA-NOOOON-Y-MOOOOUS!! Much better. Prank phone calls were the best, Jerry; the best! Not a single WWC student was off-limits when it came to our favorite evening activity.

I knew a senior named Victor Manullang; I had met him four years earlier when he was a college freshman and on a date with my sister. I was a high school freshman (read: complete moron). I remember teasing him a lot, asking WHAT ON EARTH was he a history major for because THAT’S SO STUPID and THAT’S SO BORING and WHAT CAN YOU EVEN DO WITH THAT MAJOR and I wouldn’t stop because, in case you missed it, I was 14 and stupid. So, when I got to WWC as a freshman and saw that Victor was a fellow student, I wasn’t exactly excited about revealing my identity as that bratty girl—not that he’d remember anyway. (Right?) I avoided him. I was afraid he would try to talk to me, and that would mean he remembered me from four years earlier and that would not be a good thing. If you were 18 once, you get how completely humiliating that would have felt—now, though, it seems insanely silly.

One night I came to April’s dorm room and found she and her roommate passing the phone back and forth, laughing hysterically. April whispered that they had called our friend Kevin’s room and were talking to his roommate. I wanted in on that action, of course, and grabbed the phone. I started talking and flirting and doing all the stuff we usually did on our prank calls, and I don’t know how it hit me, but suddenly I realized who Kevin’s roommate was: I was talking to Victor Manullang. I stifled a scream and tossed the phone to April, and I don’t remember what happened next, but April said my name so I slammed the phone down.

(Kids, that was a thing back then, slamming a phone down. It’s sad you can’t do that anymore, it really is.)

I screamed at April WHY DID YOU SAY MY NAME, HE’S GONNA KNOW IT WAS US! and she screamed back WHY DID YOU THROW THE PHONE AT ME? and who knows what else but a lot of things I’m sure and then I remembered that Kevin’s (and Victor’s) room was directly across the courtyard from April’s and he could probably totally see us so I screamed again and ran for the light switch and we sat there in the silent dark and I don’t know what we were waiting for, but we were definitely hoping that that was the end of our prank phone call (to that number) for the night and then…

THE.

PHONE.

RANG.

He knew it was us. There was a lot of chaotic screaming and blaming and cursing and I turned the lights back on and I don’t remember what happened after that. Maybe we answered the phone and pretended we were asleep, that we’d been asleep for hours and knew nothing about any random anonymous callers. Maybe I forced April to answer and pretend she had acted shirtalone. I don’t remember the details, but I know that we were caught and it felt like it might just be the worst thing that had ever happened in the history of ever.

Oh, but then. THEN! At lunch in the cafeteria the next day, Kevin and Victor set their trays down and sat directly across from me and April. They were both grinning ear-to-ear. There was a lot of embarrassed chuckling and non-meeting of the eyes. They wouldn’t stop smiling; they *might* have been proud to get attention from freshman girls. We eventually felt less uncomfortable and actually had a conversation. And then the next time they saw us in the cafeteria they sat with us again. And the next time, and the next time…

And, slowly, Victor and I became friends. Yes, he remembered me being that teasing know-it-all from long ago, but it was okay. The two of us hung out when neither was dating someone else. He moved to Ohio for a few years, and we wrote letters and talked on the phone. He got a job in Portland around the same time I graduated and moved back home, and we were each other’s dates for stuff when everyone else said ‘no.’ We watched TV together over the phone. We went to movies and concerts and ball games and plays and new restaurants. We vacationed with friends in Las Vegas and L.A.

But we weren’t dating. That would come later, when both of us gave up on someone better coming along and he cut off that awful mullet. It took 14 years from when we first met, ten from when we first became friends, and just.like.that, we lived happily ever after.

I didn’t realize at the time that the ridiculous prank phone call had changed the direction of my life, but whenever I look back on that night, I feel genuinely glad for my freshman immaturity.

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If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

jen

Sep. 26: Don’t leave home without it

amex-green-cardDay #26 of the September Blog Challenge:

Tell us the items you never leave home without.

I still feel rotten and haven’t checked my Feedly yet today, so I don’t know if Sherilee has posted her response… but I’m guessing it’ll be pretty similar to mine. Because isn’t everyone’s answer to this question these three things?

  • Keys
  • Purse/wallet
  • Phone

I mean, those are the biggies for all of us, right? I suppose if I were to consider those givens and tell you the next few items I never leave home without, they’d probably be:

  • Lip balm/color
  • Sunglasses
  • A bottle of water
  • USB drive

And if I were to tell you the things I never take with me anywhere:

  • Dignity
  • Grace

Is your list different than mine? What, you think you’re better than me?


If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

jen

Sep. 25: This is not a recipe

Sherilee posted some really yummy fall soup recipes today. I suggest you go over there and look at them, because I got nothin' for you here. You can find a link to her blog on another post. I don't remember how to create links in this crappy iPad app.

I'm freezing cold, coughing, my throat hurts, and I ache all over. If I'm still alive tomorrow, I'll get back to the blog challenge. If not, oh well... I had a good run.

Jen

- I posted this from my iPad using BlogPress (if it looks weird, that's why)

Sep. 24: Scaredy-cat

afraidToday’s topic for the September Blog Challenge is:

A story about a time you were very afraid.

Seriously? You might as well ask me to describe in graphic detail the worst nightmare I’ve ever had. When I’ve been afraid in my life, I try to get past it with my eyes squeezed shut and never look back. I can’t even begin to pick one moment, so I’ll give a few in which I was really, truly frightened. In no particular order:

  • I was in a car accident while pregnant with Jack. It wasn’t a terrible one, but a friend practically forced me to go to the ER to get checked out. I was embarrassed to make a big deal about a small accident, but the ultrasound showed a big weird thing on the placenta that kinda made the tech freak out. She left to get a radiologist and THAT’S when I got scared. They scanned some more and apparently it was just a dirty screen or something—there was nothing wrong.
  • I went to pick up Katie from first grade one day and she wasn’t there. No one at the school remembered seeing her leave. I drove all over the neighborhood, hoping maybe she had decided to walk home—a decision for which I would definitely kill her. I finally went to her friend’s house and found her. The girl’s mom said Katie had come up to her after school and said “I’m going home with you,” so she assumed I had given permission. Katie got a veeeery long lecture. I think it was the first time she’d seen (noticed) me cry and she was totally freaked out. I sprouted eleventy trillion new grey hairs that day.
  • A few years ago I was driving down I-205 and a car flew up from the other side, over the median and my car, and crashed onto my side of the freeway. It happened in a split second and, as I was moving at highway speed, I was beyond it before it even occurred to me that I was supposed to stop. I was so glad to have been in the far left lane instead of the far right, where I would have definitely been landed upon. I couldn’t stop shaking for hours.
  • Vic and I were in a plane landing at SFO and just as we were about to touch down, the pilot pulled us up at the last second. On the second attempt, the entire plane was absolutely silent. I hate landings anyway—though I do realize they’re occasionally necessary—but that one was terrifying.
  • I’m not a fan of the close calls, and don’t recover from them quickly.
  • cruellaA recurring nightmare I had as a kid was Cruella DeVil trying to grab me while I played in our driveway. Pretty much all the Disney villains scared me back then. They seem so much less frightening now, or maybe it’s just that I’m an adult.
  • Every time I’ve seen a spider.
  • In high school, a bunch of us were staying over at April’s house, and we rented Terminator. It was horrible! I hated that movie so much; I mean, he just would. not. die. I finally went to the other room, which was really not any better because I was by myself and still scared to death. Although Terminator’s nothing compared to pretty much any horror or suspense film (which I still avoid), it was probably the scariest one I’d seen up to then.
  • I think I can speak for a lot of people in the world when I say watching the events of September 11, 2001 unfold was one of the most frightening days in history.

I’m done. That was not fun. I’m not even going to ask you to share a story about when you were very scared. I don’t want to know. Do not tell me. Thank you.


If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

jen

Sep. 23: Why I blog

blogimageDay #23, blah-dee, blah-dee, blah… Today’s topic:

Why did you start blogging?

I said in this post that I started my blog to easily share news and photos when we were expecting our first bebbeh. A lot of the things I posted back then have since been deleted, not because they were ultra-private but because the way I used to blog was really, really dumb. Back then, apps like Blogger were not readily-available; I had to edit HTML pages. Instead of updating a page with new news and photos, I would simply replace old content with new. See? Dumb.

My blog really hasn’t changed that much since it started, except for a few years in which I blogged almost every day. I still share family news and photos, still post silly images I find around the ‘net, still try to make y’all believe I’m a better wife than I am. I’ve occasionally tried new types of post, but nothing really *sticks* for the long term. Sherilee has posted a “Friday Night Grateful Moment” every week—such dedication! Some people do “Wordless Wednesdays” (photos only), “Throwback Thursdays” (an old photo, sometimes accompanied by fun memories), and other regular post types. I do my monthly summaries, but I don’t think there’s much else you can count on seeing on a regular basis at Stuff Jen Says.

Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of posting something because someone says to. It’s one thing if you’ve set up the tradition for yourself (like Sherilee’s), but if you’re blogging only because some all-powerful site says “post a picture today but don’t use words,” well, shouldn’t you just do that any time you feel like it? I realize that this month I’ve been blogging exactly like someone’s telling me what to do, and as I’ve hinted over the last few days, I’m getting tired of it. However, Sherilee and I came up with the list of topics on our own (yes, some topics were inspired by other blog challenges, but we still put the month together ourselves) for the purpose of getting back into the habit of posting regularly. And I’m pretty sure neither of us will continue posting every day, answering questions that we answered two days earlier.

Winking smile

I’ve been trying to get my mom to start a blog for years. She enjoys writing, and there’s nothing like the good practice you get from writing for publication. Well, she finally obeyed my command (ha!), and I’d like to recommend her blog to you: Flying Free. It’s been up for a couple weeks now. Take a minute to leave her a comment—it’ll totally make her day.


And now I’ll share a story with you that makes me glad I have a blog on which I’m allowed to vent.

Sometimes Fighting Cancer is really super-duper annoying

The other night I went to a poker fundraiser for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I knew there’d only be one other person there that I’d ever met (Theresa, one of my BFFs), but because L&LS is an organization I care about, I didn’t mind spending the evening with strangers. Of course, Theresa and I ended up at different tables and I was stuck playing poker with six people I didn’t know. They all knew each other. It wasn’t the most comfortable setting, but, y’know, it was still POKER. I loves me my poker.

Our table was very long; I was seated at the end and struggled to deal cards to the players at the opposite end without flipping them. EVERY time I dealt, this lloudmouthoud guy at the other end would say NO, NO, START OVER. YOU MESSED UP. I’d stop and count, along with everyone else at the table, and the rest of them would say KEEP GOING, YOU’RE FINE because I hadn’t messed anything up. Every time, he’d yell. I really wanted to tell him to shut the hell up, but I kept quiet.

At one point he yelled at me that I needed to get the cards “somewhat close” to the person they were for because the wrong person would touch them. Did he want me to place his cards directly in his booger-stained hands? Why was this jackass telling me how to deal? I kinda channeled Val for a sec and yelled right back: NO ONE ELSE IS COMPLAINING. IF YOU WOULD JUST PAY ATTENTION IT’D BE PRETTY EASY FOR YOU TO FIGURE OUT WHICH CARDS ARE YOURS. I even threw him a dirty look. (Val, aren’t you proud of me???)

He made a big deal about the rules of the game, betting amounts, and playing only when it’s your turn, blah blah blah… I didn’t have a problem with his know-it-all-ness, because there were newbies at our table; it was good for everyone to be reminded of the rules. Funny thing was, sometimes after the cards were dealt he would just get up and leave. He might have planned to fold when it was his turn, but he didn’t tell anyone that, so we’d sit there and wait for him to come back. People would call for him, but there were three other full tables in the place, and he was doing lots of socializing. BUT if someone else at our table got up during a hand, this a-hole would start a very loud countdown and then declare their turn “lost.” He also changed the rules of betting increments halfway through the game. There was no use arguing with this guy, so I didn’t say a thing.

One time after I dealt the cards he accused me of dealing too many to him. He actually hadn’t turned in his cards from the previous hand, but when someone suggested that, he insisted that that wasn’t it. Yes, he was probably right—I dealt two cards to everyone else, but four to him. That makes perfect sense.

As the evening went on, the beer was flowing and a lot of it went straight into his giant, noisy, asshole-y face. He started arguing with two other players about who was dealer and how he’d been the big blind for at least three turns in a row. I wasn’t drinking at all (I know, I can’t believe it either), and was obviously the only player who could focus enough to see what was going on, but even when I spoke up he wouldn’t stop insisting on whatever he was so “completely, 100 percent, totally, definitely, bet all my chips sure” about. Blerg.

After two hours, the hosts started moving players around so we were down to two tables. I was getting my things together and looked up to see Mr. Loud Guy pick up my chips, knock a bunch to the floor, and take off to the other room. I went up and said WHAT ARE YOU DOING?, grabbed my chips back, and he bellowed (yes, bellowed!) I’M TRYING TO HELP YOU. I should’ve have blamed it on how drunk he was, but I had reached my limit with him and was D-O-N-E DONE. I got down on the floor to pick up all the chips he’d dropped and he came back to me, yelling down at the back of my head that he was just trying to help. I yelled back I CAN TAKE CARE OF MY OWN CHIPS. I had been doing really well in the game, had four full trays of chips, and would have loved to keep on playing, but I soooo needed to  punch that guy in the throat. It was time to go. Theresa had left. I had contributed to the L&LS fundraising, and that was the important thing.

I handed my chips over to someone else and asked her to finish for me. I thanked the hosts and headed home. Theresa texted me yesterday to say the host contacted her and wanted to apologize to me for Mr. Loud Guy’s behavior, which was very kind of him. Too bad he has such a d-bag for a friend.

As if cancer isn’t bad enough, trying to prevent it means having to deal with jackholes like this? Yikes. Not that I want to stop fundraising for cancer, EVER, but maybe next time I’ll bring Val to be my bodyguard.

Open-mouthed smile


If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

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Sep. 22: Where do you shop?

It’s Day #22 of the blog challenge, and I think I’m getting a little tired of being told what to write. Today’s topic:

Where are your top five places to shop for you or your kids?

Easy answer:

  1. amlogoAmazon
  2. Amazon
  3. Amazon
  4. Amazon
  5. Amazon

For realsies, whenever I Google an item I’m interest in purchasing, 90 percent of the time I find it for sale on Amazon.  Shoes, makeup, housewares, food, electronics, gift items… it’s all there. The free two-day shipping with Prime makes it’s almost as fast as shopping at the mall, but with way less hatred of humanity. (I really really REALLY am not a fan of the mall.)

But since I’m on the subject of shopping, I’d like to share a few more stores from which I’ve recently made purchases. I don’t shop at any of them regularly, but I check out their inventory often enough that sometimes I’m able to find exactly the thing I didn’t even know I was looking for.

  • craftcuts.com. I wanted an “M” for the picture wall in the living room, but not just a plain ol’ “M,” a pretty one. Craft Cuts offers letters in a gazillion sizes and thicknesses and fonts, unfinished or painted in your choice of a color. Here’s what I ended up with (‘scuse the blurry and slightly crooked pic):

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  • Fonts for Peas. Cutest fonts EVER, and they’re free! You can even get your handwriting made into a font. I love this little “store.”
  • Audiko.net. Ringtones and alert tones for your phones. So much to choose from, and you can even make your own.
  • Anne TaintorA new (to me) site I’ve been checking out lately is Zulily, which has some adorable stuff and a little bit of everything. They recently featured an Anne Taintor collection of items I hadn’t seen before—so fun! Other similar shopping sites are Fab, Brickyard Buffalo, Jane.com, and Rue La La.
  • BookBub. Choose your favorite genres of books and get an email every day with a short list of free and discounted e-books.
  • Since Mother Mary and I started getting creative with beekeeping supplies last year, I’ve been looking for just the right containers for the different potions we’ve created. The Jar Store is an excellent resource, whether you’re a crafty type or not.
  • If you like containers, there’s The Container Store, of course. But have you checked out Poppin and See Jane Work? Get ready to drool.

What are your favorite shops? Assuming you occasionally shop outside of Amazon…

Winking smile


If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

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Sep. 21: Using social media

It’s Day #21 of the September Blog Challenge. Today’s topic:

Discuss ways that blogging or social media has changed you.

I started blogging when I was pregnant with our first child back in 1999 so I could easily share information with friends and family. The habit (however frequent) has become such a part of me that it’s hard to remember how I communicated with people before that. I suppose group emails (ugh) and handwritten/typed letters, right? Nowadays I have a tough time finding a postage stamp in my house. My blog has also become my preferred method of journaling, although I am far less personal on my blog than I would be when writing only for myself.

Believe it or not, I think about what I’m writing and, in most cases, what other people will think of it. I try to be careful with the amount of detail I share on my blog. One way my blog has changed my life is that not a week goes by without someone pausing in their conversation to tell me DO NOT PUT THIS ON YOUR BLOG.

shh

Whatevs. Winking smile

Besides my blog, “social media,” to me, is Facebook, Pinterest, texting, and email. I don’t do much on Twitter these days, and while I have Instagram and Tumblr accounts, I rarely post on them.

Facebook has changed my relationships TONS. On the positive side, I’m able to keep in touch with people I care about and reconnect with old friends. I love that Facebook has made me better friends with some people than ever. Having just celebrated a birthday, I have to say that Facebook birthdays are the BEST. What sucks? I now know about friends’ political and religious views that make me super-sad… I am surprised at how many people I know don’t know how to spell… and how many are totes cray-cray.

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Pinterest, on the other hand, makes me LOVE people! I get on there and think MAN, MY FRIENDS HAVE GREAT TASTE!

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Texting has nearly eliminated my need to call people on the phone. I love it. It’s mostly a good communication tool.

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Email has been around a lot longer than the rest, and I have always found it one of my favorite ways to communicate. But spam sucks. So do people whose email addresses change every other day.

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But to answer the question of today’s blog challenge topic, how has social media changed me? … It got me through the scariest fight of my life. I truly believe that my outlook during cancer treatment would have not been nearly so positive and hopeful without the support of friends and acquaintances via social media. That’s the kind of thing that make it worth putting up with all the sucky stuff in social media.


If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

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