Argh!

I accidentally deleted my 101 in 1001 blog tonight. I was trying to delete a different blog that I had just created but can't take the time to update and still update this one as much as I want, but I accidentally clicked on the 101 in 1001 blog instead. My fault, I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have. So yeah, I have to start it over. I'm not sure I even remember all of the tasks I listed, so it may be very different. Well, that's a fun project to do someday soon, I guess! I think I should have integrated it into this blog to avoid having so many blogs floating around. I'm all about simplifying things these days. And speaking of blogging, I posted a review of Dearly Departed on The Casual Critic.

Blogging Against Abuse

Today, bloggers across the globe are blogging about abuse in a Bloggers Unite community effort. They were asked to choose a type of abuse to blog about in order to raise awareness of the different abuses that exist in our world. My question is, how can I choose just one? There are so many types of abuse in the world and I want to raise awareness for every single one. However, if I did that this blog post would be way too long, so I'm going to pick a few that have personal significance to me.

Child Abuse

I knew someone when I was a teenager who had been abused as a child. She was extremely quiet and guarded about her childhood, but sometimes she would accidentally let something slip that sounded wrong. Sometimes she would say something about how she was punished at home, and it seemed she thought some of the activities were perfectly normal, but they were not. I was spanked as a child, but there were never bruises. She had bruises. If you leave bruises, you are no longer disciplining your child, you are abusing her. As a result of the events in her childhood, and probably a few other contributing factors, she was never able to truly become an adult. I'm not sure how she's doing now, but I know she's not completely healthy, and a lot of her problems come from the abuse she suffered at the hands of someone who was supposed to treat her with love and compassion. When a parent abuses a child, it doesn't just hurt physically, there are emotional scars that the child carries through adulthood. Those scars never heal.

Verbal Abuse

I was verbally abused for two years. The relationship started out as a nice, equal, healthy relationship. We had a mutual respect for each other and our friendship grew to love. After awhile, however, he grew to hate himself and the person he had forced himself to become. Rather than confronting that self loathing and figuring out how he could fix it, he took it out on me. Two years of hearing "you're fat, you're ugly, and you're stupid" eventually made me believe that I was all those things. I wasn't any of them, not by a long shot. It took me about five years to get over the damage that was done when a man I thought the world of insulted me nonstop for two years. Don't ask me why I stayed that long. But I'm a million times happier now that I'm out of it. The only problem is, sometimes it still comes back to haunt me. The insecurities that were enhanced by the things he said still pop up sometimes, and I have to fight to keep my confidence when this happens. Every day, it gets a little easier.

Physical Abuse

Recently I heard about a couple I know and the fights they have. The story was that when they fight, he has a tendency to shove her against the wall or push her down. It happens more often when he has been drinking. It happens in front of their children. When I heard this story, I instantly wished something very bad could happen to this man so that he could never hurt his wife again. I know this makes me no better than he is, but I wanted to see him hurting as much as he hurts her. Why do people hurt each other? Why is it that people who are supposed to love each other end up hurting each other more than they can hurt anyone else?

Animal Abuse

While the above posts are about people abusing people, I also think the issue of people abusing animals is a big one. Animals are helpless and they have no voice. When people abuse animals, they are showing that they are cruel and heartless, and the scars left on the animal are permanent, just like they are on people. I had a dog once, a beautiful red dachshund that was found wandering in the neighborhood I was living in at the time. I took this wonderful dog in because I wanted to give him a good home. I have no confirmation that he was abused before I got him, but I am certain he was. I'm also certain it was a woman with a fairly shrill voice, because this little dog freaked out anytime I got upset and my voice got a little shrill. He would run away sometimes and other times he would get defensive. He even bit me once when I was talking to someone on the phone and they said something that caused me to get a little upset. I was sitting on the couch and he was sitting beside me, and when my voice got shrill (it doesn't happen often, but sometimes when I get upset it does) the usually sweet dog bit my hand. I call that lasting damage, don't you?

There are so many other types of abuse that deserve awareness and action. These are just a few that I have seen personally, a few that have touched my life and the lives of people I know. To read other posts about abuse, go to Bloggers Unite.

Post Secret is back

Yay! Later in the day yesterday, I checked back and Post Secret was up again. The reports I read said that Blogger had marked it as a spam blog and disabled it. I can't believe they would be that stupid. It's obviously not a spam blog! Instead of randomly targeting blogs to disable just because they seem to have a lot of traffic and a lot of incoming links, they should be looking at the blogs they think might be spam to verify that they are.

It actually worries me a little, making me wonder if my blog is safe. I hate to move it, though. We are talking about 500 posts here. That's a lot of history to just move. It's something to think about, though...

Post Secret

My usual Sunday morning ritual is as follows:

Wake up around 9 a.m. (sleeping in is awesome!)
Make breakfast
Eat while checking email
Go to Post Secret web site and read the new Sunday secrets
Shower, do all the normal personal care stuff, get dressed
Go to church at 11 a.m.

Today, my ritual was interrupted because I went to Post Secret and it wasn't there! Does anyone know what's going on? I can't imagine Frank letting go of a site that has (let's be honest here) made him quite a lot of money from book sales. Not to mention the number of visitors he gets every day and the number of lives he's affected. I know I'm not the only person who checks Post Secret every Sunday. Hopefully it's just a glitch and will be fixed soon.

500th post!

I don't normally comment on my number of posts, but I thought this was a milestone to celebrate. I have now reached my 500th post! I think that's pretty amazing, considering that this blog is just a place for me to talk about my life and my writing.

I'll talk about last week and the weekend tomorrow, but for now I just want to step back and look at this blog and remember where I was when I started it and where I am now. It's been an interesting journey. Here's hoping the next 500 posts reflect an even more interesting time in my life.

Odds and Ends

Having Monday off for Labor Day should allow me to loaf for 24 extra hours this weekend. DC is like a ghost town this weekend because all the sheep have left town in order to go to the beach and hang out with the same people that were trying to get away from. This is one of the times when it's fun to be a contrarian. Driving around this city, there are parking spots everywhere. You would

welcome, new visitors!

I've noticed a jump in traffic to this blog in the last few days so I wanted to do a special welcome post to all my new visitors! I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures in writing, knitting, and community theatre, as well as the occasional rant about work and other parts of my life.

To my regular readers, thanks for continuing to come back and for commenting! You are great and I love all of you!

To my new visitors, I love discovering new blogs and Web sites, so leave me a comment and I'll come visit yours!

Blogger Beta label cloud

Did you see my label cloud? Scroll down a little and you'll find it. I never would have been able to do it without the help of this awesome person here. Seriously, step by step instructions on how to create a label cloud and how to customize it so that it works with your color scheme and everything! I'm going to do some more customizing of my blog when NaNoWriMo is finished, but I was just too anxious to get this one working. Isn't it cool?

New visitors!

I noticed that I've been getting some new visitors lately. Welcome to my blog! I love knowing that there are some people out there in Blogland who actually look at my humble contribution to the Blogosphere. If you're here and you've never said hello, please do! I love getting comments!

Too busy?

Okay, so Marcus looked at this blog and said he thought the 3 column design made it too busy. Is that everyone's opinion? I can certainly change it back to a 2 column design if having a sidebar on both sides makes it hard to read the actual content in the center. Feedback is appreciated!

New Template!

Okay, so I wanted to play with all the new Blogger Beta features, so I found a great 3 column template and played with it until I liked what I had. It's my first time trying to make anything like this, so hopefully it looks okay. Feedback is appreciated!

There are still a few things I need to put back on the blog, but most of it is there. I'll probably change some things with the background, but for now I think it's good. It wasn't too difficult either, so I'm happy about that.

A Blogging Anniversary

Or perhaps, Blogiversary? I just looked at my archives and realized I made my first post in October of 2004! So this month is an anniversary of sorts. Of course, I didn't write again until April of 2005, but still, the first post was in October. So Happy Blogiversary, Snapshots! Here's to a long, happy relationship, and many years to come!

Quick lunchtime post about blog templates

I'm going to make some changes on my blog tonight. One thing in particular that I want to do is add to my NaNoBlogs list, which currently only has the wonderful "ink in my coffee" blog that I read daily. I have found several great blogs on the NaNo site, and have already asked for permission to post them, I just need to spend some time putting them on my blog.

I think I'm getting a little tired of my layout, but I don't really want to change it because it's so appropriate! I guess I'll keep it this way. After all, it's been this way for a long time and I don't know if I really want to change it now. It's kind of a trademark now, and I really like that I've never seen anyone else with the same one. But maybe I can think of a way to make it a little different without changing everything. I'll have to play around with it a little and see what happens.

Still outlining for NaNo. November 1 keeps getting closer and closer, and I feel like I'm not getting very far with the story. I mean, I have all these ideas and some of them are really great, but I'm still not sure what is going to happen in the end. If there's one thing I've learned about NaNo, it's really important to know (or at least have a general idea) where your story is going to end. Hopefully that will come to me soon.

Stupid Blogger

So last night Blogger kept telling me I didn't have any space left on my blog. What??? I did some searching and found that you have to clear your cookies to make that problem go away. So I did that and tried again. It wouldn't let me log in at all after that! But this morning, from a different computer, I was able to publish last night's post with no problems. I swear, sometimes computers do not make any sense. Oh well... you can see last night's post now...

Kind Blogroll

3 for 365
:::::::::::: wife mom maniac ::::::::::::
[Gluten Free] Goddess
A Camera is My Weapon of Choice
A CHELSEA MORNING
A Child of God
A Gaggle of Girls
A Hole in the Fence
A Mom's Love
a painter's kitchen
A Question of Degree
A Spiritual Journey Through Life
A Stitch in Time...
Adventures in Japan
Almost Somewhat Positive
Anali's First Amendment
Ardent Peace
Art Journey with a Quilty Voice
artbynaomi
Artist by Nature Blog
Be Alive Believe Be You
Birchsprite
Blog con Queso
Bloggy Gossip
boom's blog
Boutique Café
Boutique Mom
Bunny Goes Zen
Butterfly Mama
Callaloo Soup
carbon press
Case-Notes from the Artsy Asylum
Celebrity Baby Blog
Chock Late
Chollyson
Chookooloonks
Christina’s Shoebox
Chronicles of Me
ClockWorkChris Returns 2007
Coasting Richly
Coffee Mom
Colloquium
CorgiFeathers
Coriolis (French)
Courage my love
Crazy Dust In My Coffee
created
Crooked Pigtails
Curves with Attitude
Daily Stitches
Daisy the Curly Cat
Dallas Miao'd
Dirka Dirka
Don't Take the Repeats
Dreamer Girl
East of Oregon
Echo from the Green Hills
El Gigante Verdoso
Empty Nest
Faith, Hope and Love
Family Living; Hatfield Style
Fancy and Fun
Fina'Drea
Finding My UU Soul
Foodie's Hope
for better, for worse, for life
From My View
Fruit Inspection
FUNCHILDE
Glorious Uniqueness
Gratitude Practices
gurushabad
Gypsy Girl's Guide
Happy SAHM
happyluau
HB Live
hello, self
Homekeeper at Heart
House of Tanilan
How to Be a Bongga Mom
i get you.
I Still See A Spark In You
Ignore the Crazy
imagined-community
It's Always a Production
Jabbering in my Jammies
Jayne says...
jen lemen
Join me for a coffee
jouissance
Journey Mama
JustTug
Kaffee Klatsch
kerrianne.org
kOoKy kAy
Lady M
life as beck's mommy
LilBitchmore
Lisa's Chaos
Living In My Mind
many halves of eternity
maremagnum
Margaret's Wanderings...
Marriage in Process
MeeAugraphie
Miss Woolly Knits
misszoot.com
MOM - Not Otherwise Specified
Mom's Crazy - Xeeks
mommamandysmilieu.com
Moogies World
Moving J-wards
Much More Than A Mom
Mummified Times Five
musings:mamahood&more
My Life Is Calling
My Oh-So COLORfull Life
Nitoy's Calvert School Journal
Old Runner, New Goals
Ole-Talk
On Bright Street
On My Way Over the Rainbow
Orchids and Violets
Organized Chaos
Orlando Muslim Mama
Our Deer Baby
Our Life Together...
Owlhaven
Ozarks sew n' sews
P o n d P e r s p e c t i v e
PatchScrap
Pearls of Wisdom
Pluck the Petal
Polliwog's Pond
Prairie Flower Musings
Preservation of the Blogging Arts Society
Quasi Fictional
Quasi Italiana!
Queenheroical
Red Nose
Rocks In My Dryer
Ruler of the Elves
Running On Empty
SAHMbles ...
Sarah's Scribbles
Schnozzfest
Shh-Speak up
Simple Gifts
Simply Sassy
Skittles' Place
Soliloquy
Sound Bites
Spin a Song of Sixpence and Other Crafty Nonsense
Square
STILL wednesday's child
Sunday
Sunday School Rebel
Sundries Sublime
Sword Girl
Tears-n-Tantrums
technicolor fairytale
The Anonymous Family: Misadventures in Alaska
The Art of Meditation.
The Bluebird of Happiness Comes to Tea
The Challenge of Life
The Clock is Ticking
The Flexible Organizer
The House of Kent
The Incredible Edible Megs
The Journey
The Modern Woman's Divorce Guide
The Northern Southerner
The Quirky World of Jessi
The Silent "I"
The Silent K
The Sun-Flower Family
The Wooden Porch
This Eclectic Life
thru my lens lightly
Toddler Planet
Tumbled Words
Unplug Your Kids
Upside Up
v. it's all about the dave
Violet Metamorphosis
Water Owl's Movements
WATERMARK
Wherever Ewe Go, There Ewe Are
white paint and ribbons
Women at Rest
Woulda Coulda Shoulda
Write From Karen
Writer's Edge Blog
wunder strays
www.GenreCookShop.com
zena musings