Reading troubles

I have a book blog, mostly to keep track of the various reading challenges that I engage in each year. I post the occasional review and sometimes progress reports and updates, but, in the main, it is my way of keeping track of what I am, or should be, reading.

I say "should be" because, for me, the challenges function as a curb. They, theoretically, keep me from reading too much fluff. They steer me toward some specific books, some higher quality literature, and more variety than I would likely consume if left completely unchecked.

Some years this works better than others. This year I am in a bit of trouble with my challenges, partially because I've been lazy, partially because I've had a couple of crazy busy times, partially because of my eye trouble, and partially because I have had lots of opportunity to peruse--and check out--the new books at the library.

Another problem is that I've had a couple of books that have really bogged me down. They've been slow going. I just decided that I've had enough of one of them. After half the book, I'm calling a halt. I won't count it for any of my totals, but I will check it off of the challenges that required this particular book, because I am DONE with it.

My sons don't understand it, but I really don't like Dostoyevsky. I didn't like Crime and Punishment. And I have now abandoned The Brothers Karamazov. In fact, I don't believe that I have as yet particularly enjoyed a book by a Russian. I can appreciate certain things about the book, but I don't enjoy it. I figure that I am old enough at this point to not spend any more time on a book that I am practically skimming to get through.

I am about 1/6 of the way through Middlemarch and am enjoying that, but for tonight I think I'm going to curl up with something completely different. Tam Lin and The Book of Three--both recommended and chosen for my "Friends" challenge--arrived last week from Amazon, so I think I'll choose one of those.

I may not do as well with some of my challenges this year as I thought I would. I hate not finishing them. But I also don't want to ruin one of the greatest pleasures in my life by turning it into too much of a chore.

Thinking about homeschooling

As is wont to happen in this crazy brain of mine, suddenly, as our homeschooling is winding down, I find myself thinking about it all of the time. And wanting to write about it.

So I've added a couple of posts to my homeschool blog.

I can almost guarantee that there is more to come.

Books and reading

I am having a lot of fun with my various reading challenges this year and have started doing a few book reviews again. I also have some mini-reviews in my monthly progress report posts. Now that I'm writing again, my genealogy blog may be next to rise from its moribund state.

The need to write

I've been scribbling on scraps of paper, doing scrapbook journaling--sans pictures--and working on a couple of posts for someone else's blog. Sometimes lately I feel that I am about to explode with pent up words. So I return to my neglected blog. I don't know if this will be for a day or a season, but for now I will write.

Sometimes stuff happens

Things get lost.

I didn't manage to blog Thursday night because I couldn't find the tote with most of my scrapbooking tools and I lost a couple of hours of my packing time looking for them. My 18-year-old son found them, but only after I had already searched frantically.

There's no internet access.

Friday and Saturday I was at the retreat. There was supposed to be internet access at the camp, but it was slower than dial-up and wouldn't even load my email, let alone allow me to do anything on the internet.

People die.

I spent last night not doing much more than feeling sad. One of my dad's sisters died on Friday, and although I'd been thinking about her all weekend, it didn't seem quite real. Talking to another of my aunts last night really got me thinking about the loss to her husband and young adult kids and how much all of us will miss her.

Can we call it even?

I didn't blog last night, but I did blog twice two days ago. And I promise I'll blog again today.

Last night was our sauerkraut supper at church. In spite of the fact that I thought we should do something different and I wasn't in charge of it--because I *did* say no, as I am so often encouraged to do--I still spent 12 hours at church yesterday working on it.  So when I got home at 9:00 last night I was complete mental and physical toast.

Today's agenda: getting ready for a sixteenth birthday party for my baby and his friend tomorrow night.

Groceries, baking, cooking, and some visiting with out of town guests. And--oh yeah--I have to work today.

Better keep moving.

Erasing posts

 I've blogged twice tonight.

And promptly erased each entry.

It wasn't the quality. The writing was good.

It was the subject matter and tone. They were cranky. And I refuse to be a cranky person.

And now I'm tired, and seemingly incapable of a complex sentence.

I could sit in this chair and waste the rest of the night on Facebook or Pinterest, but I think I'll go organize scrapbooking stuff.

Stumped already

I am starting my month stumped about what to write. If I had written earlier in the day, it probably would have gone smoothly, but I was busy with work and errands, so I put it off.

When I sat down to blog I had a couple of ideas rolling around in my head, but I decided to check Facebook first, just to see what my friends are up to. Well, that was a bad idea, because--as is too often the case lately--someone is behaving badly. I want desperately to ignore it. (Actually, I want desperately to tell someone off.  But it wouldn't be nice and they wouldn't accept what I was saying anyway.) So I want to ignore it.

But I can't. Because it's bothering me. And I can't write when I'm bothered unless I'm addressing the source of the irritation.


So tonight's post is pretty much of a waste. Maybe I'll come up with something else later.

Blogging for blogging's sake

Something about the theme-less theme for NaBloPoMo this month really appealed to me.

I need to write more. I think that I'm at a point in my life for the first time in many months that will allow for some daily blog time. It doesn't really matter if anyone reads what I'm writing, although it's more fun that way.

My brain has felt really sluggish lately. Reading has been slow. I haven't been researching anything. I've just been trudging through, living in my too-full, too-demanding house, trying to keep up with everything everyone wants me to do. It's time to get the sludge out and start thinking again.

31 What?

There's a 31-day blog thing going on. And I am not joining in, unless it's for 31 days of blog reading, because some of these topics sound pretty interesting.

Maybe I'll do 31 Days of telling you about the interesting things I find on these other blogs.

The disappearning blogger

I really had planned to blog every day in January. I even had a couple of people who said they were glad I was blogging again. But, as has happened so often over the past few years, life got in the way.

This time it was life in the form of an envelope from my husband's company outlining the details of a relocation offer. His job is moving to the Chicago suburbs, and he will be going with it. The envelope contained all of the terms under which that will happen, including provision for selling our house.

Under these terms, we really need to get the house on the market soon to get the best benefit. The house needs a LOT of work, so suddenly we are in a frenzy of packing and preparing.

This would be enough to have kept me from blogging, but throw in symposium at the seminary and the attendant socializing, and big anniversary celebration for Pastor Petersen, and a few other, smaller events  and, there you go. Disappearing blogger.

Exhaustion

I keep having ideas for blog posts, but they come at the most inconvenient times and fly away before I can write them down.

Maybe it's because I am spending so much time in the car. Hours, every day, spent in driving or sitting and waiting for Jonathan while he rehearses for one of his two upcoming musicals.

Maybe I can't hold onto a thought because I am too tired. Brain-fuzzed. I've been getting too little sleep and too little good, nutritious food. Being home only to sleep will do that.

And then when I do have a bit of time at home, I'm not likely to use it to blog, or even check Facebook. I use it to cook something that everyone can eat while I'm gone, or to clean just a bit to hold the ever-encroaching chaos at bay.

Is it worth it? Probably so. Jonathan is having a huge amount of fun, especially rehearsing for Joseph at the Civic Theatre. He's also getting a lot of experience and making more connections. When we are working on college applications, he is going to have a lot of varied singing experience. And it's just this intense for a couple of months.

I am signing him up for Driver's Ed as soon as this is over.

The dangers of blog redos

There are some nasty people in internet land.

I decided that rather than downloading a pre-made template I would change my layout html and then try to find a cute background. In my search, I clicked on a google search result, and ended up with a trojan horse and a virus. I had a number of things going on on my computer at that time, so it took me a while to figure out what was happening.

I cannot fathom what makes someone want to embed a virus in what appears to be an innocuous, even helpful site. I tend to be a very un-trusting internet used, so the fact that this happened to me makes me realize how easy it is for someone to get a virus.

Anyway, be careful out there.

Pointless post

I could post about the president's speech in Cairo, but plenty of other folks have done that today. And I have no desire right now to think deeply enough about anything going on in the political arena or on the world stage to write about it. It's just too depressing.

I could write about my day that just disappeared due to unexpected complications. Or maybe I could write about my leaking dishwasher, but I'll save the whining for Facebook.

If I had some pictures I could post about my garden. This is the first year that I haven't taken pictures before I started to harvest, but I planted some things much earlier this year, and we are enjoying the garden already.

Or maybe I'll just go to bed.

A bloggy discipline

I have been a bad blogger.

I haven't been in the mood to write about anything. At all.

That's really unusual for me and I need to write. So following the example of one of my friends, I am going to blog every day in June, thus the badge at the top of my sidebar.

This is a pretty lazy start to the month, but it's all I've got for tonight.

Blocked

Been having a bit of trouble feeling like writing anything. I think it's partly too much exposure to the nastiness that has been bubbling up from certain parts of the blogosphere.

But if you want to read an excellent blog post, my friend RPW has written a doozy.

Or you can go to my book blog and read my lazy meme post.

Words

Been thinking a lot lately about words and language and the internet. I've always been a word buff and love learning new words. I like to use precisely the right word when possible. (Sometimes, as I get older, they seem to go missing.) Nuances, subtle shades of meaning are important.

It has always irritated me when people say,"Communicating on the internet is hard," or "It's too easy for things to be taken the wrong way." I've had people misbehave on my email lists for years and then blame those who took offense for not understanding them properly.

But think about it: Is communicating in writing on the internet any different than communicating in writing on paper? I don't think so. What is different is the amount of thought that is put into it. People will say that spelling and grammar don't matter in email, but those conventions exist for a reason. They make communication clearer and easier. People will write things in an email that they would never commit to paper. They will send an email un-proofread because it's just email.

Sometimes, too, I think that people do not communicate well on the internet because they don't read well. They skim. And all too often, between the sloppiness of the writers and the lack of skill of the readers, the meaning gets muddled.

Then, too, I have seen people write things on the internet or in email and then express surprise when they draw an unfavorable reaction. They almost always say the same thing, that the offense is in the mind of the reader. But in reality, the offense is in their words. People seem, for whatever reason, to more readily deny the clear meaning of their words online than in print.
Maybe it is because much of online writing is done in haste. I, personally, have a read-three-times-rule for any writing that is prompted by emotion. After I write it I make myself go back at least three times and read it, with at least thirty minutes of thinking about something else in between. This has saved me from many emails and blog posts that were better not shared!

For this communication thing to work, online or off, people need to understand what words mean, use them properly and carefully, and then own them. If we want to communicate more effectively online, reading effectively written items--good books, old letters, even well-written blogs--can be a tremendous help. And we should always, always give things a second read--I usually do this aloud--just to make sure that we are clear in what we are saying.

Blog fog

As anyone who reads my blog often can see, I've been a bit blocked.

I've had a hard time writing about much of anything. I've been in a funk because of what is going on politically. I'm feeling overwhelmed by all of the work I have to do on my house if I want to sell it. I'm feeling like I should be doing better at contributing to our household income. I haven't been cooking enough. My brain has felt cloudy. I just haven't felt like writing.

But things are turning around. I'm planning my garden. I've sold several things on eBay, which is two plusses: a plus in the decluttering column and a plus in the income column. I cooked dinner tonight and have dinners planned for the rest of this week. I have a week without a lot of outside commitments, so I should be able to make some progress.

I made myself a promise that I am going to blog every day, to keep the fog at bay.

Some blog stuff

I'm trying to decide what to do with my blog.

It has never been very focused, but it is becoming less and less focused over time. It's certainly a fair reflection of it's owner! What I'm thinking that I may do is go back to blogging on my homeschooling blog, with a set posting schedule there, because I like to post about homeschooling, but not every day.

I may start a new blog for my book reviews and tracking my reading challenges.

That would leave this blog for everyday stuff and politics, with reference to books and homeschooling thrown in. I already do this with my genealogy blog.

So I'm thinking about it.

One more thing tonight

Once I start looking at Sitemeter, I tend to look at it off and on for a couple of days. Then I forget that it exists for weeks at a time. So I checked it out tonight. One of the visits to my blog came from a google search for "random things."

That is just so appropriate.