What: Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot – a chance for bloggers to link up their posts that are related to fashion, DIY, food, and anything else that is family-friendly.
When: The link goes live Thursday nights at 9:30 PM EST/United States time.
Why: To connect with other bloggers and bring more traffic to your own blog.
I hope all of you who celebrate Valentine’s Day had a lovely day. For all of you who consider it just another day, I hope you are having a good week!
Our kids made dinner for us yesterday at home and then we watched a Fred Astaire movie, which I didn’t enjoy as much as his others because the ending was quite weird. He tricked a woman into marrying him like he could just treat her like something he owned and not a real person. It was so odd.
We watched an episode of Psych as a family after the movie.
Our weather dropped down into below-freezing or just above-freezing temperatures this week so today I am sitting in front of a fire that took a bit for me to make but that is keeping us nice and cozy in our living room while I snack on frozen blueberries as a treat and get ready to watch Lark Rise From Candleford. Have you ever seen the show? It is based on a classic book.
This week we had a three-way tie and they were all from Lynne at Thrifting Wonderland! Lynne always has such interesting posts! Did you see these three this week?
I hope you had a great week and have a great week ahead.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
Oh my goodness, everyone! The weather is so awful and cold right now where I live and if you are in the United States, probably where you live too.
Much of the country is in an arctic freeze right now with temperatures anywhere from negative 14 degrees Fahrenheit (-25C) to 25 degrees Fahrenheit (-3C). Where I live, we are used to cold winters but not this cold!
The horribly cold temps started on Sunday and are still going on. On Tuesday about five inches of snow fell and my daughter (who I call Little Miss on here) loves playing in the snow but with temps at 18 and windchill at like 7, she gave up pretty fast.
Even our animals, who will go outside in almost any weather, only stepped out at five minutes at a time and then returned inside to warm up by our woodstove, which has been going full bore since last week when we had snow. I have barely seen my parents in two weeks, even though they live eight minutes from my house because the extreme cold makes my muscles hurt and my chest tighten up.
On Sunday we tried to head to my parents but high winds were knocking the dead Ash trees down around us, the temps were dropping and freezing water run off from the day before, so we opted to stay home.
How has the weather been where you are?
If it is nice and sunny then please enjoy but don’t brag too much! *wink* Kidding! Brag all you want. I won’t blame you a bit!
I really enjoyed this reminder from Grace Filled Moments as well. I am going to be referring to this later when I need to be reminded to find those small moments to lift my sports and get through.
I loved all the winter tips provided in this blog post. Some of them I am going to try myself as we deal with this arctic cold snap.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or from years ago even.
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving last week. We are back in session this week for our Weekend Traffic Jam. We are still looking for an extra host so let Marsha know if you are interested.
This is a post where you can link up any post about any topic as long as it is family-friendly. You can even dig into your archives to share.
The most clicked post for the week before last was:
I enjoyed this post because I am a homeschooling mom myself and I know how hard it can be to get started. Parents need all the advice they can get.
This post from Is This Mutton was perfectly true. There really aren’t any good “belly laugh” shows out there anymore and while she didn’t think it had all to do with political correctness (maybe some), I think that is the biggest reason no one can laugh anymore. They’re always afraid of who they will offend. Of course, everyone is also offended anymore. Like everyone.
I remembered a lot of the shows she remembers (Father Ted, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Keeping Up Appearances – all shows I have watched over the years and enjoyed).
That is my intro post for today. I hope you’ll share a link with everyone at the link up below.
Today I want to open the floor, so to speak, to all my bloggy friends.
I want to know a few things:
Why do you blog?
How did you get started blogging?
What has been the benefit of blogging in your life?
What have been the best parts of your blogging experience?
Have there been any bad parts of blogging?
You can answer these questions here or write a separate post and then come back and let me know.
I started thinking about these questions as they pertain to my life in the last few weeks because I had become very wrapped up in social media while trying to promote my books and I started to hate it. I hated it because I missed blogging. I missed sharing with my “followers” here. I don’t like the term followers because many of you have become my friends – friends I don’t see or talk to in person most of the time (with a couple of exceptions) but friends, nonetheless.
Many of the people I have met while blogging have prayed for me, checked on me, encouraged me, and sometimes even gently corrected me.
There have been recent seasons in my life that I don’t think I would have survived without my blog friends.
I truly am feeling choked up as I write this.
What a blessing it has been to connect with bloggers in my “real life” (not that blogging isn’t real life). I never imagined I would be able to call my readers my friends – such as Facebook friends but also real friends.
So to answer my own questions:
I started blogging because I enjoy writing and my brother was blogging so I started to keep one too. My first blog was called the same as this one, Boondock Ramblings, and it was what was called a “mommy blog” because I blogged mainly about my son.
I blogged back then to connect with other moms and share stories (both funny and stressful) and simply to have a creative outlet. Today I still blog for the creative outlet and to connect with others.
The benefit of blogging is that it has allowed me to connect with other people who have encouraged me and supported me and laughed and cried with me.
It has also been something I can do other than sit and worry about my problems or concerns.
Connection with the other bloggers has also encouraged me in my walk with Christ, or as a reader, or mom, or just a person.
Is there a downside to blogging? Sometimes. There have been times I’ve felt pressured to write something, even when I’m busy, but that’s more my problem than blogging’s problem and I luckily haven’t had that feeling in a while. There can sometimes be rude people who leave rude comments but that has very, very rarely happened to me.
There are times when bloggers can get into the comparison game and compare their lives to the lives of other bloggers. That’s a negative but something I have not done very often, luckily.
I’ve already mentioned the best part of blogging above but I will reiterate again that the best parts of blogging are meeting people, getting to know them, and forming friendships with people who have stumbled onto my blog for whatever reason.
For whatever reason you stopped on my blog – I thank you. I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad we have become friends. I’m thankful that God brought you here at just the right time in my – and your – life.
Can I interest you in a slice of cake? A cookie? A cup of tea?
Honestly, I don’t have the cake or cookies so you will just have to have the tea, but I do have some fresh raspberries if you’d like some of those.
Let’s kick our Saturday afternoon chat off with a weird question:
Did you hear of the man who stabbed his colleague at a science lab in Antarctica in 2018 because the colleague kept telling him the end of the books he was reading?
Do you think you’d ever go that far?
I hope I wouldn’t but I would guess that there was a lot more to that man’s stress than simply being told the end of books. The man who was stabbed lived, by the way.
Anyhow, I somehow made it through this week without stabbing anyone despite all the running around and mental gymnastics my brain kept doing.
This summer has been very busy for us in some ways, but usually we’ve only had one thing to do a day. That one thing has often been in the middle or end of the day so it has thrown some things off but that’s okay. We’ve adjusted.
I am looking forward to autumn and winter this year simply for the fact that I will have an excuse to say I can’t attend something.
“Oh, so sorry but we’re supposed to get bad weather and … yeah. I’d love to, but you know. The roads could be dangerous.”
I have that excuse practiced pretty well but, alas, I can’t use that one in the summer. Unless we get flash flooding, and I’d prefer that didn’t happen.
So, Monday I volunteered to pull weeds in my dad’s garden. I forgot how uncomfortable a person’s muscles can get after pulling weeds so the next morning I was hurting quite a bit.
I couldn’t mope around too long, though, because Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing came out on Tuesday and I worked on marketing for that most of the morning. In the afternoon Little Miss and I went swimming at my parents’. She talked me into a couple of swimming competitions which were easier for her because she was in an inflated inner tube and I was using my actual muscles to swim. Using muscles I don’t use enough other times of the year two days in a row left me in a lot of pain later that night and into Wednesday.
Working those muscles, in other words, was both good and bad for me. I had a hard time walking and sleeping this week but I was glad I got out and did things and I was proud of myself for whining less than I normally do when I am in pain.
On Wednesday I drove Little Miss about 15 minutes away to a park for the county library’s Summer Reading program. That’s one thing I don’t think I have ever mentioned on here – our county is so small population wise, we only have one library. It isn’t our town library – it’s the county library and it’s where everyone in the county goes for books and activities, etc. Since it is the county library, they try to hold events in places other than the most populated town in the county, which is my town.
The children at Wednesday’s event painted rocks, played on the playground, and participated in a rock relay race where they had to race to place rocks in the shapes that they belonged to on a large piece of cardboard.
Little Miss had fun but was ready to go home fairly quickly because there were new episodes of Bluey on Disney Plus. These episodes have been withheld for some reason for the last year or so and they were much anticipated in our house. I was glad we didn’t have anywhere else to go the rest of that day.
On Thursday, The Husband took the day off so we could one, take his car 45 minutes north to be worked on and two, go out to dinner for our anniversary.
Our view while we drove. My lunch.
After we dropped the car off, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant we enjoy near us. The Husband took Little Miss to gymnastics that evening and I stayed home and watched an episode of Miss Scarlet and the Duke while turning the air conditioning up full blast to make the house feel like fall. I made myself a cup of peppermint tea with honey and sipped that while I watched the show and designed journals. I know I should live in the present and not wish for it to be another season, but I do have to say, yet again, how much I miss the cooler months where I can snuggle under a blanket with a good book.
Yesterday a friend came to visit for a couple of hours, and then it was back up to pick up The Husband’s car and then he went grocery shopping, something he does because he is very nice, but also because I think he just doesn’t want to deal with whatever weird calamity befalls me if I go.
If you are new here, you may not know that almost every time I go grocery shopping something weird happens to me and I have some kind of emotional breakdown because I am a bit of a mental case at times (that’s the understatement of the year).
One time I locked the keys in the car and we didn’t have a spare. The last time I lost the key fob to the van and thought we didn’t have another one so I burst into tears. It wouldn’t be so bad except we have to drive 20 minutes away from home to get our groceries and I hate when I have to inconvenience someone to dig me out of whatever trouble I have gotten myself into.
I’m a bit high maintenance, which makes it a surprise to me at times that The Husband hasn’t run away screaming and that we’ve actually made it to 21 years.
He’s really very sweet to do the grocery shopping. It helps so much, especially because, even though I hate admitting it, my chronic health issues often leave me feeling drained and achy for a day after I do something like grocery shopping or anything that leaves me on my feet for quite a while.
He does a lot for our family and we’d be lost without him.
Today I really want to stay home and do absolutely nothing other than catch up on blog posts by other bloggers, write some more in the second Gladwynn Grant Mysteries book, or read a book, but it is supposed to get up to 87 and it would be a good day for Little Miss and I to go swimming. We will see how well I get around. Tomorrow, however, I am drawing the line and staying home all day so I can do some housework and catch up on blog posts, etc., because next week promises to be another long week with a church program at a local church, Summer Reading, and probably visits to the pool again.
The pull off along the scenic bypass we travel down to go home.
How about you? How was your week last week? What have you been sipping while you work, travel, or read this week?
I started it as a fun endeavor to help take my mind off some lost friendships and my loneliness. I was lonely before those lost friendships because they really weren’t good friendships at all, but I didn’t realize how bad they were until they were gone.
A few times during this fiction writing journey, I got wrapped up and sad about not making money from my books. Silly, I know, since they are really stories I wrote for my blog readers more than they are books.
As the journey has continued, I have slipped in and out of those feelings, but have had more moments of simple gratitude – not for making money from selling my books because I’ve barely made any of that, but for the friendships and connections I’ve made through writing, either with the books or the blog.
The connections I’ve made through my blog and my books have meant so much more than money.
Those connections have literally been a lifesaver. I’m not exaggerating when I say that.
The encouraging messages, the offers of prayers, and even beautiful songs sent to me privately have sustained me through some very dark days, most recently, but also over the last three years.
Just a couple of weeks ago a follower/reader and now friend sent me this video that was such an important reminder to me. It literally left me in refreshing, needed tears.
The people I have met online came to me in a time when I had lost “real life” (as the saying goes) friendships and felt so lonely and alone.
I used to take the online connections for granted. These were only people I knew online, not really “knew-knew”. But behind that computer they are real people, like me, some of them also lonely or in dark places, and we are making connections, in many cases, on a heart level, not just a superficial virtual level.
I can’t imagine what I would do without all of your wonderful people who read my blog and my books and send me encouraging messages and are just there when I really need someone to be there.
You are appreciated much more than you could ever imagine.
Let’s be honest, as “lifestyle” or “family” bloggers we often share our thoughts on our blogs as a way to escape from life, as well as a way to help others escape.
I know I’ve often looked at YouTubers who share videos about aspects of their lives, like gardening or books they read, or places they go and thought, “Why are they sharing this?! Who cares?!” But then I sit there watching anyhow. Why do I watch? Well, because I know that these videos don’t represent all of the person’s life and that they aren’t happy all of the time, but that the videos are a chance for them to escape. I also see these videos as a chance for me to escape too. Life is crazy. The world is crazy. The news is a nightmare. Sometimes I feel like my brain is trying to gnaw its way out of my head just to get away from it all.
That’s when something like a YouTube video about pretty much nothing comes in handy.
I was watching the vlogger from Roots and Refuge Homestead the other day, and while she normally showcases her planting process and updates on her garden and farm, she took a break to talk about some grief she was walking through after the loss of a friend. She gave advice about “grieving well” but also said she doesn’t usually share about the down times in her life because she said she wanted her channel to be a place of refuge for her viewers, which was why she didn’t normally dwell on the struggles in her life too much.
(I am going to leave a link to that post below because it was a very sincere outreach to her viewers. It is at the end of the rest of the video, if you want to fast forward.)
What Jess said in that post made sense to me. I’ve often sat down to write a blog post and have almost let my ugly spill out all over the page (in the past I did let it and I’ve since tried to delete some of those or curb the ugly in them a bit). I try my best to keep the ugly in the pages of my journal, though, not because I want people to think my life is perfect, but sometimes, well, to be quite frank — isn’t it nice to just be able to wander into a blog or onto a video or into a book and forget about the world for a few minutes?
Sure, there have been a couple of times I’ve spouted off a bit about politics, but I’ve later regretted it. I’d love to be like Jess from Roots and Refuge and just offer a place of refuge for readers sometimes. To accomplish that I write stupid and silly posts sometimes. They are posts that some might read and say, “Well, who cares what her random thoughts are?” Just like I did with the videos about someone visiting a bookstore and looking at books.
Videos and posts like that aren’t necessarily going to change the world but they can offer a break from the craziness of that world.
To clarify, no one has ever said my posts are stupid or pointless. Sometimes I imagine they are a little bit pointless and a little silly (not necessarily stupid. I was just teasing about that part.) but don’t we all need a bit of pointless and silly in our lives to remind us that there is some good in the world, that there are places of refuge if not for our physical bodies, for our hearts, minds, and soul?
I think my fellow bloggers know the answer to that question.
Below is a link to that Roots and Refuge video I was talking about and links to a couple other “light” vloggers I watch. I’ve also included a link to some jazz music to listen to while reading or writing or taking a snooze.
Feel free to escape life for a little while. I’m sure you could use a mental vacation like I can and if you have any cool lifestyle, reading, or artsy-type YouTube channels you watch, leave me a link or name in the comments.
Roots and Refuge:
Darling Desi with a warning — she’s just a bit young for me. That’s not a bad thing but I can’t always relate to her or her tastes.
I hit 500 subscribers to this blog at the end of last week.
On one hand that is pretty cool. On another hand I have a feeling some of those bloggers subscribe because they are looking for me to reciprocate. The issue is that many of those who subscribe never comment here so I have no idea who they are which means I’d probably never subscribe to their blog. I’m old school and think of blogging as a social activity of sorts. We exchange ideas or share a little bit of ourselves and others do the same in the comments.
I’d like to know who you all are, in other words so, please, feel free to introduce yourself in the comments. I love to get to know the bloggers who follow me. It was really nice to have some of you tell me about yourselves last week on the post where I shared about myself and the blog.
For those who are new to the blog, you may have noticed I blog a little bit a lot of things here. I share some posts about my faith (usually entitled Faithfully Thinking), I share fiction (usually on Fridays and sometimes on Thursdays), I share photographs, and I share what I’m reading/watching/doing on Sundays. In other words, I sort of share whatever comes to my mind at any given moment (scary, I know.).
If you are interested in reading some of my fiction you can find link to excerpts from my book A Story to TellHERE and A New Beginning HERE. You can also follow my novels in progress, The Farmer’s Daughter (I’ve been publishing new chapters on Fridays) at the link of the top of the page (or HERE) and Fully AliveHERE.
Welcome to the new subscribers and hello to the old. Glad to have you visiting my corner of the world.
I’m not sure when the last time I introduced myself on here was so I thought I’d do that today.
Obviously, I am a writer, since I have a blog, but I am also a wife and a mom, a photographer and a follower of Christ. I attended college for journalism, earned a Bachelor of Science in it, and worked in small town newspapers for about 14 years, covering a wide variety of events and topics — from visits by former presidents and First Ladies to murder trials to stories about veterans of World War II to the reactions of 9/11. By the end of my time in newspapers I was on a desk job, typing up obituaries of all ages and by my fourth or fifth infant or child obit in less than a month, I knew it was time to move on.
I never got to the jaded status some newspaper reporters get to. Sometimes I wish I had. Going home, hugging your child to your chest, and getting fat on ice cream and fattening foods to try to drown out what you had heard that day or wrote about is no way to live.
I couldn’t compartmentalize wives crying over their sheriff deputy husbands’ murders, a mom losing her 6-year old to the brain tumor he’d fought his whole life (and her losing her life to that same type of rare tumor a few years later), five children dying in a house fire, car accidents, drug over doses, and children being abused.
After years of all that with family drama piled on I think my brain broke a little bit. I feel bad now for the people who got caught in the friendly fire, mowed down by depression that had gripped my heart with ice fingers. Eventually, I ended up staying home with our son while my husband continued to work as a newspaper editor. Somehow, we were able to juggle life on one salary, but it was not and has not been easy. It has been, however, worth it.
I’m still home with the kid, but now it is kids. Just two and I’m fine with that. In the same way I never wanted to be famous, I never wanted a ton of children. Not that I don’t like children. I just liked the idea of one or two, though when I was younger I never thought I’d have children at all. Now one of my main jobs is raising these two awesome children and homeschooling them (for now anyhow).
Because I don’t have a “real job”, I spend my days cooking (and rarely cleaning..I’m so bad at that) for the family, taking photographs of the family (I once tried it professionally but grew to hate it), writing on my blog, and most recently writing fiction in the form of novels.
I don’t have money for an editor, patience to try to query, so I simply write and publish on Kindle Unlimited, knowing there are probably some errors, typos, plot holes, but knowing I enjoy the storytelling side of things and I’m not too worried about having a huge following or readership.
I share stories on my blog as well and enjoy the interaction I receive here.
My fiction is what some might call “hokey” or what others might refer to as “cheesy” but I think sometimes life needs that. I experienced and wrote a lot about the cruddy stuff of life – the murders and death, rapes and fatal crashes or fires when I worked at newspapers. Even though my husband is still in the news business and that’s where I lived for so long, you won’t find me pouring over the news for hours on end or scrolling news sites for the latest tidbit of information.
These days I can barely stomach three minutes before I’m clamoring for the hokey, for the cheesy, for the light story that won’t remind me of all I learned in those years of journalism. I pull away from gritty crime shows, or at least from binge watching them. I crave what highlights the good moments of life, the lovely moments, the romantic moments.
I know all moments in life aren’t like that; I know too well, but I think it’s okay to focus on them as much as we are able.
You might wonder if I am full of myself, since my domain name is my own name, but the truth is that my blog is Boondock Ramblings. I started it 13 years ago but took a break and abandoned the domain name and couldn’t get it back later when I wanted it. Back then I blogged about my son and life in general and was somewhat of a “mommy blogger.”
I made my name the domain name a few years ago when I thought I’d make money at either being a photographer or a writer. Lately, I haven’t cared much about either of those things but it would be a real pain to change my domain address again, so I have kept it as my name. Who knows, maybe it will come in handy if I really do become a famous author one day, even though that is not something I want at all. I like meeting new people on my blog and sharing my writing, but if I had too many followers I’d probably shrink back into my shell where I am much more comfortable.
So, how about you? What’s your story? I’d love to hear it. Let me know in the comments.
