this space intentionally left blank

Have you ever seen that — on a form? I always love the irony since, hello? It’s no longer blank!

So, here we are. I know, I’ve been gone for a while? Did you miss me? Leanne did. Thank you, Leanne! Hiiiiii!

BlogHer missed me. You’ll notice their ad space is missing on the right side (stage left). That space also intentionally left blank. Unless things pick up around here again. And I’m not sure they will.

I’d been faltering in my posting frequency, as the few of you left reading this who are not spammers have seen.

Oh, the spam. The spam that a non-functioning blog attracts. It’s awesome.

But I digress. My blog. I can. Digress away. Wheeeee. Did you hear about that airline that wants to charge for using the “loo”?

So all these things have been happening in my life and I’m not sure I’m going to share them online anymore. I think I might be done. Or not.

I am, and have been overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with trying to figure out for the millionth time what to do about Jonah’s non-naps, when he should be in preschool or not given that he is only napping on a 70% success rate if lulled into submission by riding in a moving vehicle after running around for six hours. Overwhelmed with new-chicken-ownership status that includes buying a used coop that, as the kids would say, sux. Because it leaks in the rain. And it’s hard to clean. And and and we’ve already spent too much on this “hobby” and you can buy farm-fresh eggs at the farmer’s market, you know? And we need fencing for the chickens but our actual yard fences are falling down, except for the one the neighbor took down and ran out of money on her yard project before she could replace it. Fun times.

And I’m trying to kick start my career and that’s great except I’m still walking this tightrope of wanting to spend lots of time with my 2-year-old and wanting to work and how to find the balance if one exists ever oh my head ow ow ow ow. And then, sometimes? All I really want to do is wash the dishes or fold laundry while he plays with his trains NEXT to me. No, I do not want to get on the floor and push Thomas or Salty or Hiro around; no, thank you. I’d rather match up these socks, please?

So let’s see, preschool/naps, work, chickens, and and and I’m starting this photography class next week and I don’t freaking have the brain space for it but it’s too late to bail out. The stack of how to books (parenting, chickens, parenting, chickens, photography, healthy eating, how the brain decides, some fiction-y thing I’ll never get to) is taller than anyone’s stack should be.

And I started to redesign my business website, and then stopped. And maybe I’m going to study web design. Or not… while I work on getting more writing and editing work — which takes up the little brain space I have for writing, and hence blogging suffers.

For a while, I was posting photos of Jonah’s lunches on another site, cheating on this blog, if you will. So, my experience is that posting on two blogs at once? Not really happening. The photos were fun but I started to get fancy with trying to use RAW format and stuff and they weren’t really that much better but it was getting way too time consuming while I was trying to figure the software out and now I have all these pictures of Jonah’s lunch on my hard drive, which is cluttery. Very cluttery.

So here’s that blog. Great name, if you ask me: Lunchbox Life

And I wasn’t able to keep up posts there either. So don’t feel too cheated on.

But as I sit here typing into this satisfying little box, first thought, best thought, I feel… like I might want to write more. But as soon as I say that I think, mmmmm pie crust promise; easily made, easily broken.

Maybe I’ll come back again. Maybe I’ll pull up stakes and move the whole operation over to Lunchbox Life since that’s a title truer to my current status (the stork having long made his delivery and taken off for less neurotic climes).

For now, I leave you this intentionally blank space. Or rather, I thank you for listening to me fill this blank space, for a minute or three.

Until next time…