Help Lizzie Out
Posting here has been a bit thin on the ground, hasn’t it? I do apologize for that. I just can’t seem to get my mojo going at the moment. I desperately need a blog fast in order to catch up on some housework. Thankfully that opportunity may very well present itself in the next couple of days.
Today I’m doing something a little different. The autism association in my state contacted me a couple of weeks ago and asked if I would be willing to have my name put down on a list for participants in a new ‘caregiver mum’ study done by a large city hospital. I said yes and was contacted last week by one of the researchers. The study involves filling out an extremely detailed diary of a 24 hour period, midnight to midnight, in 5 minute increments. The aim is to guage what amount of time, and at what intensity, my role as an ‘autism carer’ comes down to.
I have to be completely honest when I’m jotting down what I’m doing, so a big ol’ chunk of ‘computer time’ is going to look rather conspicuous smack in the middle of the day, LOL, but I’m happy to help. For my trouble and time, I’m being paid $30, which is a nice little bonus.
I think by the end of the day I’ll be a little surprised at how many different things I do get done and how long they take. The morning routine, for example, is second nature to me now - so much so that I hardly register I’m doing it. Yet writing it all down this morning really showed that I’m working harder than I would have thought :)
And now, a competition! There are no prizes. Just kudos, LOL.
I need to come up with a tagline for when the blog switches over to Wordpress. Okay, I don’t need one, but I want one. Obviously the title itself will be “Lizzie’s Home” but I need something in a subheader that exemplifies what this blog is all about - something that reflects ‘home’. I’ve tried scouring my entire iPod playlist for an ‘aha!’ string of lyrics, tried looking on quote sites, tried coming up with something myself. I have a working subheader in mind but am open to (many more) suggestions. The only requirement (apart from the above) is that it be on the shorter side. No three sentence quotes. Humour is okay. Poignancy too. Not sappiness. Quirkiness okay, saccharin-sweetness not so much. If someone comes up with a spectacular example there may be a little something coming in the post (*wink*)
So Bloggityville residents, how would you describe Lizzie’s Home?
P.S. I know I haven’t been participating in my scheduled posts and I seem to have moved away somewhat from the ‘homemaker’ side of things in recent times. I have a whole notebook full of ideas for posts but I’ve been purposely holding back on those because of the whole new blog/fresh start thing. Rest assured once the admin is worked out on the new site (I’ve got my fingers crossed for a workable blog by the time the Ultimate Blog Party starts on the 7th), there’ll be lots of homemaking stuff. So many ideas….
Cheers,
Lizzie
Blogging? Schmogging!
Okay, shoot me. Shoot me now.
Apparently moving on over to another blogging provider involves many decisions. Who’d have known? Today’s involved private vs public domain registration. I had always assumed when you signed up for a domain that there was at least some sort of privacy control. Um, no. Apparently (and this seems to be largely a US decision, but let me know if I’m wrong) they don’t allow truly anonymous domain registration. Legislation means the postal address you use to sign up for the domain is public knowledge - just visit Whois and type in any ol’ domain name, and you’ll see what I mean. Unless, that is, you opt for private registration, which is an additional fee on top of registering the domain itself. For me, adding on the private option was going to almost double my yearly cost.
Does anyone else find this mildly annoying? Maybe I’ve been living in a cave or some such thing but I had no idea we’d be up for the additional cost - our chosen registrar wasn’t very clear on their ‘products’ page that there’d be extra money involved for private registration. We got halfway through the sign up phase before we worked it out and had to backtrack. And DH’s career definitely requires a very vigilant attitude to internet security so that effectively put a kybosh on the idea for the time being. Very frustrating, especially as I’ve been living and breathing design ideas for two weeks now!
Cheers,
Lizzie
A Blogging Examination
Why do you blog?
Did you begin your blog as a public journal? To keep in touch with family and friends? Because there was a writer inside you screaming to get out?
And then, six to twelve months down the track, why did you keep going? Did you become addicted to every-man-and-his-dog’s social networking system of choice? Burned a feed? Started subscribing to other feeds? Categorized your Google Reader page to reflect your sixteen neatly segmented ‘blogging genres’? (Ahem).
Did you join forums to learn more about blogging? Have you ever moderated a forum specifically geared toward blogging?
Do you sign every email - even those to co-workers - with your blog’s URL? Make up funny names for your kids to protect their safety online?
Were you hesitant to tell any ‘real life’ people about your deep, dark, blogging secret? Ever keep a folder in your Favourites entitled Stuff To Blog About? Ever have other folders called Interesting Stuff To Read Later, Link Love and Pending Comments/Tags/Memes?
Ever dream in HTML code?
Ever accidentally type in <br/> instead of hitting the return key when you’re typing a letter in Word?
Have you ever tried to explain the appeal of blogging to a non-blogging spouse? Had them roll their eyes or make funny gagging sounds?
Have you ever spent more than twelve seconds looking for a blog template?
Have you stopped being surprised when you learn the other classroom mums have blogs as well? Have you ever asked for their URLs? Ever given yours out?
Have you ever agonized over the issue of blog advertising? Set up a review blog so it wouldn’t clash with advertising you have on your main blog?
Ever come across a purist who is dead-against advertising?
Ever gone through a massive feed reader clean out? And felt guilty doing it?
Ever come across a situation online where you’ve felt bullied? ‘Outed’ from the clique?
Ever secretly wished you could nail a spot on a Top 100 list? Ever wondered how on earth the current top bloggers managed to get their spots?
Ever had unrealistic BFF daydreams about a Big Name Blogger? Ever idolized her/him?
Ever had to ask what an Alexa rank is?
Have you ever not done a ‘100 Things About Me’ post?
Ever hosted a meme? Posted a Mr Linky?
Ever hosted a giveaway? Ever given yourself RSI? Ever cleaned out your bank account posting four pound books airmail clear across the globe?
Do you harbour covetous thoughts about a blogging neighbour’s fantastically-groovy custom made template?
Do you turn on the computer even before the coffee is made in the mornings?
Does your heart sink when you notice your Feedburner widget thingamy indicates your subcribers dropped by more than a quarter overnight?
Do you check your page stats every single day, including chasing up unknown ‘came froms’ and keeping an eye on your ‘popular posts’?
Ever decided the whole shebang has gotten out of hand? Ever contemplated removing your stat counter?
Ever contemplated a blog move? Ever registered your domain name? Ever decided that blogging is leisure and therefore the cost of web hosting should technically come out of the Leisure section of the household budget?
Do you get anxious when you can’t be near a computer?
Ever worked out that there are better things in life to be worried about than how many comments your post did, or didn’t get?
Ever felt that freedom?
Blogging is a nifty little activity. You make friends. You might even meet some fellow bloggers. You’ve probably got at least twenty fellow bloggers on your blog roll, right?
But blogging isn’t the be-all and end-all. Take me, for example. I haven’t got a clue what an Alexa rank is. I’m only very vaguely aware of how Technorati works. And while I’d like to be in a Top 100 list, I’m not holding my breath. I’d like to think folks come on over to Lizzie’s Home to visit without pressure. Lots of flashy widgets in the sidebars distract me (okay, so I have a small flash thing linking to DH’s photography, but hey - if we can’t plug our own husbands, what’s the point in blogging at all, LOL). And to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of blog advertising. Most of the time, I have no idea what I’m doing.
And that’s plenty okay with me.
Cheers,
Lizzie
Seven Years? Really?
Seven years ago today, I walked down the aisle to meet my soon-to-be husband, with this song playing in the background:
Of course, what sticks most in my mind is the fact that the CD stopped playing right in the middle of what was meant to be a graceful hovering along the red carpet. It had to be restarted, meaning the rest of the walk was all out of sync and they had to cut the song halfway through when I finally made it to the altar!
And also, after many attempts and burnt fingers, we managed to light our ‘hope candle’, only to have it blow out mid-ceremony. A rather auspicious start!
Seven years is a decent stretch, huh? We’ve been through a complete shift in career, raising three children, several years worth of autism diagnosis, advocacy and day-to-day struggles, buying our first home, and losing two remaining grandparents and one parent. We almost didn’t have a wedding - we’d originally tried to elope to Bali but hit there during the wet season and spent most of what was meant to be our ‘honeymoon’ up to our kneecaps in mud! And one year later, after we’d rescheduled, my father had a heart attack two weeks before the big day but amazingly was in adequate health to attend. So we’ve been pretty lucky :)
To the man who gave me my dream - happy anniversary hon :) ?
Cheers,
Lizzie
Buzz
The big news of the day? Master J just got himself stung by a bee for the first time in his whole 9 years.
I’m tap, tap, tapping away at the keyboard and hear a screech so loud I thought the neighbour’s cat had mauled another of our friendly visiting pigeons and left it where the kids could stand on it. Instead I see J clutching his neck like he’d been stabbed. I’m freaking out - at this point I didn’t know what had happened and if you know anything about J, you’d know his reactions are understated rather than overstated. To hear any kind of pain response out of him means something pretty major. He vaguely mentioned being stung by something and a quick look in the vicinity turned up a bee dying a slow (and, I hope, painful) death in the grass.
None of the kids have ever been stung before and the last time I was stung was - um - something like 24 years ago so I was a bit rusty on my bee sting info. Google filled in the missing links. The stinger wasn’t in the skin so that was cool and the swelling was pretty minor, around the level of a mosquito bite, but the sting was right on the side of his neck near all those scary major arteries, so we’ll monitor him for the rest of the night and see how we go. Google Image also provided us answers to the question ‘What if he’s allergic?’ as well - not pretty.
The funniest part of all of this (if I can say that without sounding like a horrid, horrid mother) was when J, upon seeing the bee dying on the ground, became convinced that he too would die. What would have taken two minutes to explain to a neuro-typical kid took the better part of half an hour, LOL.
No son, you won’t die. But that nasty bee did, and it serves him right!
Cheers,
Lizzie
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