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Saturday, August 9, 2008

Blog-Neglect

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

How Can I Make It Up to My Blog?

Hope it's not like that "Cat's in the Cradle..." song, where the kid, once grown up, doesn't care about his father, since the father wasn't around for him when he was a kid. Well, maybe my blog's still a kid and I can redeem myself. When would a blog be deemed to have made it past adolescence into adulthood anyway?

What would a blog's rites of passage be? A number of weeks ago, I discovered happily that my blog has been visited more than 10,000 times, and that I'm edging toward 300 posts. Even if several thousand of the visits were from me, that's at least 5,000 others -- most of whom, according to the search phrases on my site meter seemed to be trying to determine "Sex and the City," Kristin Davis', religion.

All of those searches were due to an entry I posted months and months ago, about seeing an "Ahavah" skincare products ad, which featured Kristin Davis in a "Haddassah" magazine. I've never again seen the ad. My guess is that she was the model for the brand because she has creamy, gorgeous skin and plays a convert on TV...I think, anyhow. Pat and I watched only two episodes in its history. We couldn't relate to it.

If I Had Forgone Some More Sleep Last Monday...

...here are the topics I wanted to write about, which I scribbled on a notepad prior to dinner and never got back to:

Mediation fairness vs. sunny side....teaching vs. doing....What *is* leadership?...Kitties for creativity....Didn't want the cathair or the smell of their food, but I apply strong, peppermint chapstick to my lips...

...when I'm opening cans of their food and then I mind less because I try to smell the peppermint, rather than the cooped up, and then released, "fish" or "turkey."

I'm not likely to flesh out these thoughts because I've moved on, but wanted to include even the telegraph version of them for some reason...I guess, as evidence to my blog that I've been wishing to spend time with it, whether or not I fulfilled my wish this week....This is the longest I've ever gone between blog-posts. I didn't want to write that previous sentence because acknowledging it might start a trend, God forbid.

Stream of Consciousness

Blogging is so safe. I don't know who's reading my postings -- just their location typically, and any search words they used to get to it. It really babies the shy side of me. I can be bold and honest and personal in the blog (I try to be when I'm face-to-face as well, but it's certainly a more vulnerable feeling than blogging typically). This week, an Indian colleague referred to me in an instant message as "...a sassy gumptious lady." I don't even know to what she was referring specifically, but I believe she meant it positively....

It hit me that IBM gives time off for new parents, and yet, I didn't take any time off when we got the cats on the last day of July. And it is as close to parenting as I'm likely to come, God willing....We are the godparents of our twin nephews, but God forbid anything would happen to their parents that would turn us into the twins' parents....My brother-in-law's reaction to our getting cats -- I heard via my mother: "Great, now the boys are going to want cats."

"Tell them that they can choose to have them when they're adults, like I did," I told my mom he should say. They'll be 10 later this month -- the twins, not the cats. The cats are five years old.

Pat gave them -- the cats -- each a cottton catnip pouch last night and it was like I've seen in the movies, when someone snorts cocaine. I had heard about catnip, but never had seen its effect in real life, and never knew that it comes from the mint family.

I was happy to learn that it's a sort of mint; it made me feel somehow more kindred with the cats. I like the Burt's Bees peppermint lifeguard chapstick, which makes my lips white, so I can't wear it much in public, and they like catnip.

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