Tumbled Words

Shelly updated us that they can use knitted 6 inch squares as well as the crocheted granny squares, so all you knitters out there, here’s YOUR chance to use up your yarn so you can buy new. Make a kid smile - and while you are at it, remember, if you make the child smile, you know you are making his family smile, too! Come on knitters, let’s have a show of force there!

Note: I have notified Janet there appears to be confusion over the dates on Shelby’s blog dates.
Note: Everything fine, Shelby’s blog is now officially nominated - will show on list next week at official site. YES!

Emerging Influential Blogs, 2007 a writing project by Janet Toral has bloggers posting their nominations for:

The Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007

You, I, we, all have a bit more time to think about our choices, that is if you are not a procrastinator like me.

This, in Janet Toral’s words, “is a writing project of identifying new and emerging blogs that are making an impact to its readers in 2007. These are blogs that started anytime from August 1, 2006 to the present. They are gradually gaining a considerable amount of readership and influence.”

The easy part is following her directions to write a blog post naming ten (or less) emerging influential blogs anywhere in the world! You can update the same entry up to July 28th. Just remember to include a link to her post and also post a comment there to let them know you entered! Only one entry per blogger.

I have procrastinated as usual, so, in order not to completely mess this up, I am nominating a few NOW while it is on my mind.

But before I nominate the others on today’s installment, I have to mention a blogger that I am nominating, but not, because, well, you’ll understand - Chris at Out and About. Chris was in my writing class and strongly influenced my going for it, more than she knows (OK, she might now that this is written.) She gave me the confidence, well not gave me, pulled mine out of me. She also is encouraging to all of us, both that class and the writing group that followed. But she gives us something more, she is not shy about critiquing in a manner that does not feel like an attack, but just plain old good horse sense. She is also the person who blogged first; I had never even looked at a blog. Once I saw hers, I was sucked into the blogging world. She has written on her writing, on writer’s block, on life in general. She showed me the possibilities. So, I hold her responsible, but y’all can’t when I mess up, I am not letting her take that, too!

Being that she is a bit more (make that a LOT more) involved in “husband and young teen and work and teaching part time and writing her first novel and general life than I” (if for no other reason than I am retired and she is far from it) she has had little time to blog. It has gone by the wayside, but her novel first draft is done! For that reason, I cannot nominate her, but if she were blogging, I would and if she tells me before the deadline she will be blogging again, then I will add the link, officially nominate her, and send you her way. She has an easy style of writing.

Now, on to my first three other nominees, who have influenced me greatly, again, in order of meeting them.

Shelby at Time With Shelby, was the first blogger I bookmarked and continued to read. I look forward to her blog every day that she writes. She, unlike me, is a woman of fewer words, but they catch your attention, whether she is writing briefly about something she has seen or thought, just a line about a photo, or keeping us up to date on her goal to become a lawyer, after starting it later in life than one would advise. She writes honestly, and obviously thinks things out. If you are looking for an example to illustrate perseverance, just use her. You need nothing else, no add-ons, no defining moments other than her law school quest. I am so unlike her, by nature, and find myself occasionally, actually thinking why not be more goal oriented like Shelby.

She also has an eye for beauty. Before she had a camera of her own (or time to take pictures) she would post pictures taken by others to head her posts — giving them credit, of course, (wait, not “of course”, some don’t bother, she does). Every photo she found in some way was not just striking but fit the words she was writing, I couldn’t pull that off in a million years.

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Shelly at This Eclectic Life is a professional storyteller and it shows, as others have pointed out in her blog posts. Leon likes to joke that her life stories are quite embellished when I share them with them. (yes, they are worth repeating) “Now, Marcia,” he will say, “I don’t think it really happened that way. She is a story teller and story tellers make up things.” I know he says it to get me to defend her in my exuberant way so he can laugh, but we all know the truth don’t we, life is more interesting at times than fiction, we just can’t always tell it as interesting as it is, Shelly can! That, however is NOT why she is nominated, nor is the fact that when reading her blog you will think, like I did, that she has been blogging for years; she gives that illusion of knowing what she is doing, so I easily skipped over how long she had been blogging, I had to ask her. (and the others, too)

I am nominating Shelly because she spreads link love like a madwoman, offers to help us, sponsors contests, regales us with Shelly tales, turns serious on us, and feeds us more links than we can absorb at once. Add to that she has badgered us about a few favorite things, teased us with things to come, reminded us of what came before. . . and now, has even pushed us to start knitting and crocheting squares for afghans for Camp Sanguinity.

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Matty at Running on Empty is, also, my nomination, a woman who tells it like it is whether she is happy, angry, sad, or bound and determined to make us laugh. I would say she shoots from the hip, aims carefully, then sometimes just lets the bullets fly as they may. Now that may not be accurate description, but I love her style and am having trouble putting it in Marcia words. I suppose one way to put it is Matty is a champion of people, the downtrodden, the misunderstood, the lonely. She is also wiling too help, and let us know that we can help, too - and a bit crazy. Why, she even volunteered to judge a writing contest at Shelly’s (The same one she won, did I tell you Matty is funny? No? Well, I should have.) Now, bloggers are a friendly bunch, but we are all just a tad bit competitive about something, if only behind the scenes — so I would say Matty is a brave woman - and don’t bother whining to her. . . she will tell you the truth as Matty sees it.

She may have titled her blog, Running on Empty, but she seems to have more energy on empty than many of us running full on high test.

That’s it for now. . . You all have some bloggers to visit, blogs to nominate, and crocheting or knitting to do I hope. Look on my side bar, you will see the link to Share A Square, if you don’t have one, why not grab one at Shelly’s for your blog, I know there are crocheters and knitters out there that don’t know yet, in spite of our efforts.

June 22nd was the day Dad was born and the day he and mom got married. They were married as long as I knew them (grin), a marvel as they dealt with lost jobs, went from well enough off with two cars, house in nice neighborhood, country club membership, to barely money to feed, nothing for anything else, no cars, hour each way in FL heat to get groceries on the bus (unairconditioned), no money to buy us school clothes, no thrift stores like we have now, etc. Mom suffering from major depressions at time, etc. You know, marriages with real people and real problems, like many other people have and allow to collapse around them.

I tried to consciously think of what they taught me about marriage without much success. I rely so heavily on instincts that facts become feelings and are hard to convert back to facts.

They had a much more traditional marriage than Leon and I, in the sense Mom was the homemaker, Dad was the provider. She excelled at putting him first (after the kids); when he worked the evening shift all those years, she cooked dinner twice, once for my brother and I, again for my Dad. She even had it timed so it was ready to eat as soon as he walked in the door, something I have never learned to pull off. Made it hard to sleep if I was late getting to bed, smelling all that food cooking. . . and I loved food, and many nights it was cabbage cooked in bacon grease. I am vegetarian now, but still love the smell of bacon cooking.

Mom sucked at housework until we were grown and out of the house. Yes, that is a strong word and I am sure it will offend someone, but it is most descriptive. Yes, I followed in her footsteps. Her priorities were her children, Dad, and golf. I can remember few days, even as a young adult that she was not home when we were; it just felt right. If that is old school, then I am eternally grateful they were.

Dad did the heavy stuff, man stuff. Mom paid the bills, kept the house, took care of the kids. (heehee, I said kept the house, well — she did sort of!) Those two, for the most part, seemed to see eye to eye on almost everything (that we observed as children) with one exception. Dad said what he was thinking when he was mad when he thought it; didn’t matter if we were at the dinner table.

Mom hated arguments of any kind, anywhere, and at her dinner table, forget it! They didn’t agree much on discipline either, that was a bone of contention to coin an old phrase, but, at the same time, I don’t remember them undermining each other, I mean, that she said no, and he said yes. On occasion, my brother or I could pull it off, but not as a rule. Wait, that was because Dad worked nights a lot, so only Mom was there to make decisions and back then you didn’t call people at work! (So, much for the undermining theory.)

It was not until they were older that we really saw the caring between each other. It may have always been there but we didn’t see them together that often when he was working nights. Mom waited on him; he was protective of her. There was obvious affection in their eyes. They were a couple who lived, for the most part, what most would consider boring lives. I know at times Mom, the more social of the two, longed for adventure and travel, Dad never shared thoughts like that. I honestly don’t know if he dreamed or not (pathetic, that I don’t, I know), but I know he and mom were both content they had each other and their two children and our families.

I realize these words are boring, somewhat like their lives must seem to others, but boring is not always bad. . . it was a boring contentment, and contentment is something few people are lucky enough to realize.

Feel free to read the other entries, some much less boring, including two poems, I made this week in reference to my dad (and father’s day) here.