Like I Have Time For This?

Ami over at amimental tagged me for a little bloggerish meme, and since I’ve fallen into the terrible habit of being tagged for a meme and telling myself that I’ll get back to that one just as soon as I can, and then I completely forget, I’ve decided to turn over a new leaf and start remembering to respond to memes. It is a new year, after all.

So, this meme asks me some questions about blogging. I’ll answer ‘em, and then I’ll tag some people who (if they’re anything at all like me) will then do any one of the following (or combinations thereof):

a) feel all warm and fuzzy because somebody tagged them.
b) wish they had time at the moment to actually respond to the meme.
c) wonder just exactly how to pronounce the word “meme”.
d) forget to respond to the meme and then feel just terrible about it later on in the middle of the night when they wake up and remember that they forgot.

So, are you ready, then? Here goes:

How long have you been blogging?
I’ve been blogging for almost a year. My first post was dated February 20, 2007.

What inspired you to start your blog, and who are your mentors?
I’m not sure that inspired is the right word to describe why I started blogging. Driven might work better, as in “what drove you to blogging, in your final, most desperate hour?” And the answer to that is: RegularDad and I had just moved our little family all the way back east after 12 years living in Colorado. While we’d been considering a move back “home” for over a year, we never really managed to make it happen because RegularDad’s job is somewhat specialized and it’s hard for him to find work just any old place. Anyway, we did finally manage to find him a job flying satellites out of Pennsylvania, and the day after we found out he was in the running for that position, we found out that his dad had cancer (in remission now), and maybe 30 days later, we were getting on a plane in a blinding snowstorm to move 2,000 miles east.

Was I glad to go? Yeah. Sure. I missed RegularSis and the RegularNieces and Regular Nephews. I missed the shore. And the pizza and the bagels. But I’d been out west for 12 years. I’d built a life for myself out there. My kids were born there. And suddenly, I found myself far, far away from everything and everyone I’d known for so long. And it was wintertime and it was freezing cold. And we were living in this little tiny rented farmhouse with old fashioned glass windows that froze over, making it impossible to even see the outdoors at all. And it was just me, my 6-year-old and my 3-year-old in that little frozen house all through the winter because RegularDad was working nonstop.

I went a little crazy there for a while, with a sudden lack of adult conversation. So, I started a blog. Mostly just to be able to talk to grownups about my day-to-day existence. Which is mostly about homeschooling. So I made my blog about homeschooling.

My mentors….Doc, for sure. Doc was one of the very first homeschool bloggers I ever read that wasn’t a fundamentalist. And I read her archives nonstop for quite a while. In fact, I read her archives so much that she actually wrote a post yelling at me to get the hell out of her archives, because I freaked her out really bad. She thought I was a cyber-stalker. I posted a comment to that post, saying “sorry, it’s just me” and then she checked my IP address (or whatever it is she has to do these days to protect herself because the FUNDY’s target her so much) and then she said she was sorry and liked my blog and now we’re friends. Sort of. In a non-stalking, completely innocent kind of way. Not that I’ve been back to read her archives since, mind you. Doc’s been homeschooling for years and years, and did most of it as a single parent, which I can hardly imagine. She’s a cancer survivor and one of the smartest women I’ve ever encountered online. She’s the real deal. And she’s NOT A FUNDY. It’s, like, such a bonus!

My other mentor is Katherine, not because she’s been blogging for years, but because we started blogging together. We actually posted at the same time over the the Denim Jumper that we were thinking about starting blogs, and in the end we decided to start blogging together. And every day, I go to her blog, and I feel glad that she’s there. There are millions of blogs in the world, but there are only a very few that go down like the warmest cup of tea on the coldest day in a little rented farmhouse with frozen windows. Our Report Card is one of those very few.

Gee, I really should move on to another question, don’t you think? We’ll be here all night at this rate.

Are you trying to make money online, or are you doing this just for fun?
Well, I’m not trying to make money online, but if you wanted to send me some cash, I wouldn’t turn it down. Email me, and I’ll take that extra 20 bucks off your hands for you.

Why am I doing this? Hell, I don’t know. I started this because I needed an outlet. I keep it going for the same reason, and also because of the people who tell me they like my blog. I take that very seriously. It pleases me to no end to hear that I’ve made someone laugh. Or think. Or pick up a book they might otherwise have skipped. Or feverishly start biting their nails…oh…wait…maybe not THAT.

What 3 things do you love about being online?
The people, the people, and the people.

——————

Well, that’s the end of the meme. I’m gonna tag Katherine, Fourmother, Robinella, Andie, and Sara. And if you’re not on the list and want to be, add yourself in via the comments, consider yourself tagged and go for it.  Except for you, Doc. I’m not gonna tag you. Because I read at your blog last week that you’re, like, SUPERBUSY right now with the farm, and I can respect that. Really I can. It’s not that I’m afraid of getting yelled at again. It’s respect.

And can I just say that I have TAG ANXIETY. I’m sitting here all like: gee, what if everyone else is mad because I didn’t tag them? I want to tag them, really I do, but it seems like such a copout to ALWAYS say: oh…I tag everyone in my blogroll. A copout, and also a less-than-personal tag. Like I don’t really want to know the answers to all these questions from everyone in my blogroll. But I do want to know. But if I list all of you, it’ll take forever to add in the links, and I’m getting hungry and there’s no food up here in the study. And my blogroll is so completely and totally out of date ANYWAY because I have no time to update it, so even just saying “okay…everyone in my blogroll” doesn’t even adequately cover everyone I want to tag.

Does anyone else ever go through this? Or is it just me?

It’s just me, isn’t it.

So, there you have it. I tag Everybody Except For Doc.

Enjoy.