The Brochure

I'd really like to do a post about the Maritime Blog'er weekend, but I'm finding it hard to wrap up in a way that seems remotely interesting to anyone who wasn't there. Like, I like fishcakes, who knew? Or: people are frightened of ketchup? Really? Or maybe: so the ocean is grey. Or, and thordora will like this one, how much for a can of coke?

No.

Though as it happens all four of them are true.

What's sticking with me is what an astonishingly good time I had. In a roomful of people I'd never met before, talking. Me, the slightly-antisocial introvert who is also (as the boyfriend is now very fond of reminding me) strange and bookish. I expected to have fun or I wouldn't have gone, but I didn't expect it to be so comfortable.

(Woops, losing interest for people who weren't there. Change course.)

When I first started writing the blog for friends (holy crap) over five years ago (how can it have been so long already?) I saw it purely as a way to keep them updated about the pregnancy and Frances's early days, and keep material for a possible book I might write one day. Taking it public three years ago March was a way to participate in a community I hadn't previously been aware of, but I still had no idea of what I was getting myself into. I've been tallying it up since I got home:

1. Presenting at the MotherLode with my first group of real-life bloggy friends, Marla, Ann, Jen and Dani; and meeting Miche at the same time. Since then I've visited Dani in Ottawa, gone out to dinner with Marla and Jen and Miche several times, set up playdates between Frances and Josephine a few times a year, and visited Ann's cottage. I hear we're going again this summer, and three of us went out to dinner again on Friday. Miche brought shorts for Frances, and we talked about Jen's new business and my school plans and wondered how fast a bassett hound can run.

2. Meeting dozens or even hundreds of other parents (virtually) who have all struggled with difference in different forms and different ways--an enormously helpful community in the first few years with Frances.

3. Fundraising for Annika. (Which has been on hold since the last update since Annika's been doing so well.)

4. The Winter Holiday of Your Choice Gift Exchange, two years running--which was great fun to organize and loaded me up with holiday stuff (and Sue, I use those bookmarks every day. They really are both pretty and functional).

5. Reading how for some people, being tickled by their parents or siblings wasn't fun, it was upsetting. I think of it every time I tickle Frances and always stop as soon as she says no.

6. Spontaneous gifts in the mail, from good blogfriends like LauraJ and from people I hardly know.

7. Being solicited for publishing opportunities (details still hush-hush because I don't know how it's going to play out).

8. Being found by old friends. Finding out that old friendsknow my blog-friends. Watching old friends make friends with my blogfriends.

9. So that Blog'er begins to seem like the chocolate-cream frosting on the perfect chocolate cake (that was for you, Bon). At this point I'd be hard-pressed to even recall exactly what was discussed, except for the evergreen topic of in-laws. And blogging. And cake.

This whole blogging thing has worked out pretty well for me, even including the hiccups and oopsies.

But 10. is just knowing that there are people out there who show up every day or at least on a regular basis just to read whatever happens to have caught my interest that morning. This makes no pretense to being a single-topic blog; there's no consistency, I change topics and ideas mid-stream, and yet for some strange reason you keep coming back. I don't understand it, but I like it.

Thanks.

Posted by Andrea at May 26, 2008 8:30 AM under Friends and Others

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