A blogging sabbatical

Dear readers,

I am going to take a break from blogging and from reading blogs — a month or two. Meanwhile, the site will remain as it is, and if you comment anywhere, I’ll see it in an email. Thank you for reading here.

What shall I call thee?

In college chorus, we sang a setting of William Blake’s poem:

Infant Joy

“I have no name:
I am but two days old.”
What shall I call thee:’
“I happy am,
Joy is my name.”
Sweet joy befall thee!

Pretty joy!
Sweet joy, but two days old.
Sweet joy I call thee:
Thou dost smile,
I sing the while,
Sweet joy befall thee!

This blog started when we were pregnant with Amy, as a way to update friends and family about our family. It’s hardly “becoming” three anymore — we’ve BEEN three long enough that I keep wondering about changing the blog’s name. And while I do talk a LOT about Amy and about parenting, she’s no longer the sole topic of the blog.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I would love something that is short and winsome, that evokes the wide variety of my interests and writings without listing them all, and that isn’t too cute or clever or cliche…

Hiatus

Because of issues with my hands, I’m taking a short hiatus from the computer, except for checking email once a day. I hope to be back soon!

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Tendinitis in my thumbs (old, recurrence) and carpal tunnel (new) — posture has a lot to do with it — computer, knitting, sewing — and who knows what all else has affected it. Pinch grip is sometimes painful. Can’t put much weight on it (no push-ups, bike rides, careful using rotary fabric cutter).

Sometimes right pinky and ring finger get tingly / numb — my hand therapist says to watch that and if it’s persistent need to get it looked at as it could become permanent.

My hand therapist, Manoj Kumar, is great — my Rx is for left hand only (right started only after I started OT), so we’re doing ultrasound, deep massage, sometimes ice massage, and a variety of stretching, gliding, and strengthening exercises. I can do the massage and the exercises at home, on both hands.

I wear carpal tunnel braces at night to prevent either wrist from getting bent forward, which aggravates it.

Guest post at Heart to Heart

Two guest posts in one week — here’s the second over at Douglas Monk’s place. I think I found him through our mutual blogfriend Enola.

Thordora asked her guests to write about mental illness; Douglas just asked for an introduction, what we’re passionate about, something personal.

Guest post over at Thordora’s

My friend Thordora, taking a blogging break to sort through recent events, has invited her readers to submit guest posts. Mine is up today.

I laugh every time someone writes my name as March. So many Marches in elementary school I would make the opposite mistake in my headings — I’d start writing the month and it would automatically turn into my name.

My host service is gone back

My business website, http://mp-dulcimer.com, has disappeared. My email from that domain is likewise not working. And to top it all off, I can’t even get to the website of my host service, http://www.123ehost.com.

Interesting.

You can contact me through the comments here, or ask and I can give you my local email address. I’m not even getting an error message when I try to send an email to my business address, so you likewise might not know that I haven’t gotten or won’t get your email at that address.

Humph.

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Several hours later it’s all back. I didn’t receive the two emails I know were lost during the down time… but no other problems.

Moms posting pictures

Do you think the benefits of posting personal pictures (oneself, one’s family, including one’s children) on a public blog outweigh the risks?

Everyone has to draw their own lines as to how much risk is too much; I don’t know what I think about the risks of posting pictures of Amy.

What do you think?

A related issue is using real names. I use my real name because I already have a public web presence through my music business, and because when I blogged anonymously I felt like someone hiding from hunters. Because I’m self-employed, I don’t have any worries about job-related risks.

Bloglines problem

I am having a problem with my Bloglines account. I am still subscribed to all the blogs I subscribe to, but there’s no way I can get it to display the list of blogs. So now I have to visit each blog to see if there’s something new. Is anyone else having this problem?

Disappearing comments

PistolPete and ama, I haven’t been able to leave comments at your blogs for several days. I hit submit and it just disappears. You haven’t (accidentally, of course, I’m sure) blocked me or anything, have you?

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Hmmm — it just happened at Missy’s, too. I apparently can no longer comment anywhere in WordPress.com. This is annoying.

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PistolPete found my comment in his spam folder. I just checked my spam folder but didn’t see Jan’s missing comment.

Shutterfly frustrations

So far I like Shutterfly. I’ve transferred almost all of my current pictures (i.e. from Christmas and New Year’s).

But some things are not easy. I have my own Shutterfly page where I upload pictures and can edit (titles, rotate, etc). But I have to go through additional steps to get those pictures onto my publicly viewable page. And if I add a few new pictures to an existing album on my account, I can’t just add those few new ones to the same album on my public page — I have to add the entire album all over again. Humph.

I haven’t tried linking a photo from Shutterfly into the blog yet…