Yet More Dancing

An old pic of me dancing (in the rain)
The reason for oldmedancing is shared below

Thank you to everyone who made suggestions for my forthcoming book’s #I’mNotAllowedToSayTheNameYet dance song. I decided to go with – well, I had to, really, didn’t I? – the suggestion from ME Lewis at France Says:

Picture me boogying to this in my bedroom after hitting Send to my publisher.

You’ll have to picture it, because there are no pictures of it;  I haven’t boogied yet. Right after sending off my manuscript, I succumbed to a bacterial infection which saw me in bed for days, gulping down not one but two courses of those increasingly hard-to-get miracle pills, antibiotics. I’m on the mend now but it was touch and go for a while there whether I’d be able to eat all of my Maltesers. I’m happy to report that as of today I have none left.

When looking for a song, I came across this:

As much as I’d love to have used it, it’s not dancey enough. I found another which is quite dancey but, sadly, not entirely appropriate for a family-friendly blog. But go look it up; Google #MENOPAUSE MONDAYS®A Singing Uterus Explains Perimenopause and Menopause. Hilarious in an I-can’t-believe-what-I’m-seeing way.

The family and I – Hub, me, Spud, DisgustedwiththeTories Boy, and our newest member, Daddy’s Boy – were all dancing for joy this week, for an entirely different reason.

Debra at Breathe Lighter asked me a while back what Alex plans to do post-uni. I am now allowed to tell you that he got into not one, but two drama schools, and has accepted a funded place on a one year course at Oxford School of Drama.

When we heard the news, we all did this:

Just to be clear – we’re all Laura Linney, not Karl on the right, who is every new graduate who has just realised the fun’s over; real life starts and oh no! here come the bills.

Fortunately, that’s not Alex. He won’t start work at McDonald’s for at least another twelve months.

 

Season Break

prozac (Photo credit: Life Mental Health)

I’m what doctors technically refer to as ‘knackered’, so I’m taking a break from blogging and other stuff.  I won’t be posting, reading or commenting.

Please don’t be offended if I unsubscribe from your blogs – spending my break deleting emails is not what I have in mind to do over the next month.

Thanks for all the support.

I’ll see you in February!

 

I’m Not Giving Up Blogging…

…but I have to scale back

For a while, at least.

In the past few months my visits to your blogs have been intermittent at best; and in the past two weeks, almost non-existent.   I struggle to find the time but I don’t want to neglect you.  Not returning your visits is bad manners and I apologise.  Interaction is a huge part of what makes blogging fun; no interaction, and it’s just me talking at you.  I have battled guilt about it; guilt always wins. That has reduced my enjoyment of blogging.    

Peter Steiner’s cartoon (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have decided to take the advice I always give to other bloggers who make these sort of Help! I’m drowning in unanswered comments! posts – if you’re not enjoying blogging, then stop.  I’m feeling a little burned out by blogging and it’s not as much fun as it used to be.

If you see me as rutilant – as I hope you do – you will naturally be devastated by my announcement, so I should make one thing clear:

I am not giving up blogging

• I will continue to post my daily joke
• I will post at least twice a week
• More, if I feel like it
• I will answer comments if I can
• I will not visit you every day but I will try to visit more than I have been doing
• I will understand if you decide to leave me, but don’t be surprised if I cry

If you don’t want the hassle of checking in every day in the understandable but forlorn hope that I might have deigned to talk to you today, you can always subscribe – third widget on the right then straight on for mourning.

Subscribers up = visits down but taking a hit on my hits is the least I deserve for my despicable dereliction of blogging duty.

I hope this is just a temporary situation and you’ll hang around to find out.  But I’m selfish like that.

Happy blogging!

*

*

The two previous words:

Pleonastic – the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea. Guilty as charged.  Always.

Quoz – something queer or absurd.  Again, guilty as charged.

 

Seven Tips For New Bloggers

“blog” (Photo credit: inju)

A lot of my subscribers are fairly new bloggers  (which, I suspect, is why they subscribe here – they don’t know any better).

Thank you, new subscribers, for subscribing, however misguided you may be.

Formalities over and naming no names, I have noticed some common errors on my visits to your new blogs, and I thought I would give you some tips that I wish had been given to me early on in my own blogging career:

• Use no more than ten tags, including the category.  Any more than that and search engines think you are spam and put you to the bottom of the list.  Good tags encourage more hits.  Failing that, they garner amusing searches which you can shamelessly turn into their own posts.  Or is that just me?
• Break up paragraphs.  It is difficult to read one huge block of text; people don’t have time to persevere or just can’t be bothered, and you might get hits because of your perfect tagging, but no possibility of a relationship with your visitors.  Short paragraphs/bullet points/photographs/bold/italics all make your post more attractive and easier to read. Your mantra should be:  Illustration Illustration Illustration. It is easy to upload your own photographs but if you don’t have any that are suitable, use Zemanta, to the right of your new post.  Type in a key word for a royalty-free illustration. 
  

  Punctuation ahead (Photo credit: mag3737)

   

• Interact with your readers. Respond quickly to comments and always return visits, leaving a friendly comment when you do.  To begin with, it is worth having the Like and Comment Notifications sent to your email inbox; as you get busier you can turn it off again.  As your blog grows and becomes more time-consuming, your regulars will know that you are busy like them, but you won’t ignore them.
• Use 140 character titles.  Search engines like them.  Get key words into the title.  If you can’t make it relevant, make it interesting or amusing, to catch readers’ attention.
• Write right.  Bad punctuation, spelling and grammar can be off-putting. If it’s not a skill of yours, sign up to blogs that offer tips; turn on the spell checker (but bee warned: it is not infallible); and read read read!  Reading is the best way to improve your skills, find interesting topics to blog about, and to cultivate good blogging relationships.
• Link to other blogs.  Links not only publicise those blogs you like (the only reason I do it, I swear), they encourage search engines to find you (a fortunate side-effect, that’s all).
• Learn to count.  Readers get seriously annoyed if you promise them seven tips and only give six.

There are lots of other great tips, but these are the ones I think most important to new bloggers.

Blogs and Coffee (Photo credit: BrotherMagneto)

Here is a good link, which is in no way a shameful flatter of my WordPress masters in an attempt to get myself Freshly Pressed: sign up to The Daily Post; they send out all kinds of useful information.

Happy blogging!  Remember who set you on the right path when you are a superblogger, and throw a link my way (no slighting the hand that reads you).

Almost Done!

Dear Readers, thanks for your patience.

My little project is almost finished.  I calculate I need another three days, but I’m taking the weekend off to answer your comments – it’s going to take me a whole weekend.  What nice readers you are, talking to me as if I’m here.

As a thank you, here are some blogging jokes that will only be appreciated by bloggers.  They are from cartoons I found on the internet (bloggers don’t seem to write their own jokes about blogging; why is that?).  The links can be found at the bottom of the post.

mappa_blog (Photo credit: francescopozzi)

*

Blogger one: I have nothing to say.

Blogger Two: You should blog about it.

*

Employee One to Employee Two: It’s time for my monthly report.  What’s a productive way of saying, ‘Surfed the web and hung out in chat rooms?’

*

How many Bloggers does it take to change a light bulb?

Just one, but at least six others have to write lengthy postings about the political ramifications of why we should even have the light bulb in the first place.

*

Husband to Angry Wife: Of course I remembered our anniversary.  Didn’t you see my pingback this morning?

*

What’s the difference between a blog and roadkill?

Fewer hits before it starts stinking.

*

What’s the difference between starting a blog and going crazy?

One is a disorder caused by a severe personality imbalance and the other is a disorder caused by a severe personality imbalance.

*

For the sources of these jokes (and the place to leave your outraged comments) go here:

• http://www.thebadblogger.com/personal-secrets/10-awesome-blogging-jokes-laugh-out-loud 
• http://hcaldwell.blogspot.co.uk/2005/11/on-take-my-postplease.html
• http://www.dumblittleblogger.com/2009/09/21/30-hilarious-blogging-jokes/

For more Six Word Saturdays go here

.

Please, WordPress, Save Me!

 

Image by Adriano Gasparri via Flickr

If you are reading this, you are probably a subscriber (thanks for that, by the way; you are keeping me alive in the blogosphere).  I don’t know how anyone else is managing to read me – each time I write a new post, the white space on my home page gets bigger.  You have to scroll down to the backside of your monitor to read the last visible post, dated 15 December.

I could suppose that it is a glitch in the WordPress system, but they haven’t responded to my two emails and I do have a history of poking fun at the WordPress prompters…but the prompters are not the techies and the techies have always been quick to respond. 

Hmm.

Could it be that the prompters have kidnapped the techies to punish the techies for being more popular than the prompters; or is it a fiendish plot to stop the techies from helping their relentless tormentor?  Could it really be that I have an ego the size of Mohammed Ali and there is no correlation between my faulty blog and the absence of any help?  That they don’t even know I exist and it is all coincidence?

Hmm.

It doesn’t help that I have been rendered offblogging for several days.  I still have an appetite so I’m not yet a hospital case, but when I’d rather watch a bad movie than sit at the computer, I know I’ve been seriously unwell.  However, I’m on the mend now, and intend to hound the techies, bombarding them with polite requests to get a move on, please, if it’s not too much trouble, thank you.  I haven’t yet reached the begging stage and I can’t unwrite what I’ve written and wouldn’t anyway because you readers would lynch me (as soon as you found me hiding over in blogspot), but I’m getting there.  I blog; therefore I am.  I blog not; and a thousand bad movies are lined up to muddle my mind.  Not pretty.  Did you ever see Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes?  Not blogging would be like living in that dreadful film for eternity; or until I found a new writing outlet, like anonymous, harassing letters to blogging techies who let me down when I needed them most.

I’m rambling; blame the phlegm.  And the nogudnik techies out partying when they should be working.

Image via Wikipedia

 

I now have to catch up with the many comments that you managed to leave.  I appreciate them; I do.  Thank you.  I like having hundreds of comments to read in Christmas week when I should be baking or shopping or drinking.  Think I could manage that last one, actually.  But the CoWAbunger announcement will be late because I can’t award it until I read your many, many, many comments.  Thank you again.

Really.

Anyone know where the WordPress techies live?  I won’t hurt them, I promise.

Really.

Chaos Weary

Image via Wikipedia

Write post answer comments visit readers’ blogs clean the house walk the dogs make meals declutter the house declutter my head look after family write a haiku a day for thirty days post that haiku answer comments on other blog visit readers’ blogs on other blog walk the dogs oops did that already enter free competitions update task list do some tasks look after family oops did that already type up over one hundred poems print out over one hundred poems plus copies to go in notebooks write post oops did that already

Yes, I have a life exactly like yours.

I think Jackson Pollock says it best:

Screeeech!

Image via Wikipedia

That’s the sound of my head hitting the monitor when I saw the new ‘follow’ button which replaces the ‘subscribe’ button; and the sound I made when I went outside and bellowed at the world because WordPress can’t hear me.

I HATE it.  What are WordPress thinking?  And why so secret about it?  It just appeared.  Why not send us their usual email?  Did they know we would hate it, or did the prompt, Would you rather be a leader or a follower? indicate so many followers that they thought they could get away with it, without too much fuss?  Are we going to let them get away with this?  We are not!

What d’we want?

A subscription button!

When d’we wan’it?

Now!

Which reminds me of the joke Spud told me:

What d’we want?

Procrastination!

When d’we wan’it?

Next week!

This is not Facebook or Twitter; this is my own, personal space to say what I like for free and with no monthly charge…erm, well, okay, it is a bit like Facebook and Twitter.  But that doesn’t mean I have to like everything about it.  And I don’t like that possible new subscribers will now stay away in their thousands (what?  I’m an optimist) because they never hit ‘follow’ like I never hit ‘follow’, and don’t realise it’s a subscription button.

You just made my blog a flop, WordPress.  Thanks for nothing.

*

To shout at WordPress, go here.  Thanks, Piglet in Portugal, for the tip-off.

*

Related articles

• Why WordPress? (bloggingwithbeth.com)
• WordPress.com may be all you need! (e1evation.com)
• Align Polls Left or Right in WordPress Sites (polldaddy.com)

No Smoking Unless You Are On Fire

Image by howzey via Flickr

Time for some more searches that found this blog.

Sound Advice

• no smoking unless you are on fire
• life is short smile while you still have teeth

For Those Between Bloggers

• mezzanine levels blogs

People Often Come Here Looking For A Hard-Working Housewife Blog; How Disappointed They Must Be

• pain stripping housewife
• housewife tickle
• a housewifes job are newer done…
• my name is i am a housewife
• how to look like a hard worker
• housewife superhero 

The Search For Tooth

• big dogs with cheesy smiles
• good teeth smile
• homeless people teeth
• ugly person smiling
• tooth bathroom

Ewwwww

• brown stripe on root of wisdom teeth
• granies sex
• pet poo cartoon
• cartoon fart fog

Sigh.  I Totally Get This

• my hubby thinks im ugly poem
• ugly wife blog
• flaky mother

I Totally Don’t Get This

• ugliest yorkshire terrier
• gay socks eating
• temporary poem
• gay socks and fun
• sick clocks
• yoda police
• womanless rotary
• frog facebook

Why So Particular?

• cfs/me in kusadasi

Demonstrating The Value Of Knowing Where The Commas Go

• old fashioned house,wife rules

Demonstrating The Value Of Using The Correct Tense (And Complete Sentences)

• cartoons give birth

Should I Be Worried?

• noah ark 2011
• free porn tube
• knickerless women in the street
• poem for a knickerless lady
• gave my wife to another man

I Might As Well Face It, I’m Addicted To Blog

I am duty-bound to tell you that I will be painting one side of the bannister and the up-the-stairs skirting board over the next two days so I won’t be blogging as much as usual.  If it’s anything like last time, you won’t notice the difference.

What can I say?  My name is Tilly and I am a blogger.

I’ve Been April Fooled

I am typing this with my left hand, slowly and carefully.  I think I have RSI in my right arm.  It is mild at the moment but I could do some real damage if I ignore it.  I am being sensible because I don’t want to damage my Malteser arm, and because I momentarily blacked out yesterday when I used the spellchecker and saw all those red lines.  The Hub fashioned a sling so I could rest my arm.  I’m surprised he had the material so readily to hand; I suspect he intended to make a gag with it.

The car went in for an MOT this morning.  We took the dogs and walked back.  While I was faffing with leads and wet feet and cups of tea, he checked the emails.  He suddenly shouted to me from the lounge, ‘Tilly!  You’ve had a message from Viv – she says someone’s hijacked your blog.’    I ran like I was chasing an escaped Malteser, jumped over the dogs, flung away the cup I was holding, pushed the Hub off the computer chair, scoured the emails, heard a strange chortling, and found him rofling away in the corner. 

He’s mean.  And I can’t get him back because I’m rubbish at lying; and it will be after twelve when I wake him, so the statute of April Fool limitations will have expired.  Here’s a picture of him instead:

 

101/1001 (1)

Sarsm had a good idea: let’s do 101 challenges in 1001 days.  I didn’t think it was a good idea at first (too much like hard work), but I’m always banging on about grabbing opportunities so I thought I’d better grab this one and hold it gingerly by the fingertips and see what happened.  Once I’d hit on my first challenge and was able to start with something already done, I began to warm to it. 

This is how blogging about the challenge is going to work: I’ll put a copy of this post on its own page, for reference; I’ll update it regularly.  When I do something interesting relating to the challenges, I’ll blog about it as normal.  When I’ve completed a challenge, I’ll highlight it in red and bold. 

1. Accept a challenge I don’t really want to do.
2. Find another 64 challenges for the list.  (0/64) All suggestions gratefully received but not necessarily acted upon.  I’m a wimp.
3. Get a job.
4. Hit 100,000 visitors on my blog (39,036/100000)
5. Learn how to upload new photos from the camera to the computer for my blog instead of relying on the Hub.  I’ve been blogging for almost two years; I think it’s time.
6. Learn how to scan photos for my blog  See comment in Challenge 5.
7. Hug a stranger.
8. Submit thirty poems to competitions or publishers (0/30)
9. Blog 1111 times (1/1111) I don’t think this one is really a challenge for me but I need some that are achievable to keep me going.
10. Try out three new recipes (0/3)  To make up for the last one, this is a huge challenge: I hate cooking; I hate new recipes more than I hate cooking.
11. Try three new foods (0/3)  I’m not adventurous with food but trying new ones is how I discovered peppers, my favourite vegetable, so I’ll give it a go.
12. Read thirty books (0/30)  I lost the habit of reading for pleasure while studying for my degree.  I’m looking forward to this one.
13. Watch 101 new films (0/101)
14. Tell a joke every day for the next 1001 days (0/1001)
15. Visit five new museums/galleries (0/5)  This will be harder than it sounds because I’ve visited all the local ones and travel finances are restricted.
16. Make home-made lemonade. 
17. Manage ten real sit-ups.  Never ever managed it in 47 years of life.
18. Manage twenty real sit-ups.  I was going to make this a challenge on its own but I need to do it in baby steps; I did consider the challenge, ‘Manage 5 real sit-ups.’
19. Write 101 new poems (0/101)
20. Get 101 different flags visiting my blog (134/101) This was a little easier than I expected; I just went to the flag counter and I’ve already had 134 flags visit even before I start the challenge.  So, to make it harder and make up this list…
21. Get 101 different countries visiting my blog (78/101)
22. Save £1 for each completed task.  Once I get £101 together, I can treat my family.  £1 per task is my limit because, as the saying goes, there’s always too much month at the end of the money.
23. Finish editing SA Poems.
24. Send off SA Poems to a publisher.
25. Start learning to play the guitar.
26. Buy a guitar.
27. Walk the dogs for 1001 hours (0/1001)
28. Lose some weight: more than a little; less than a lot.  This is deliberately non-specific because I don’t care enough to work that hard at it, but I could do with shifting a couple of kilos for my health now I’m approaching heart attack season (I suddenly realised the other day that in fifteen years I’ll be 62 – that was enough to give me a heart attack there and then).
29. Go back to computer school.
30. Get the first series of Glee on dvd.
31. Mention Maltesers in my blog for 10 consecutive days (0/10)
32. Don’t mention Maltesers in my blog for 10 consecutive days (0/10)
33. Go to the theatre.
34. Reach 13000 comments on my blog (5204/13000)
35. Learn all the words to the South African National Anthem.  I did start to learn it for the World Cup last year but I never quite got there.  When I know it, I will post a video of me singing it with my eyes closed, to prove I know it.  It will have to be with me singing along, though, if you want some tune to it. 
36. Learn how to post videos on my blog.
37. Decorate our bedroom.  We’ve been in this house 14 years and it has never been decorated (if I discount the sticky-back plastic).

As you can see, my list falls somewhat short of 101 things to do so if you have any decent/amusing suggestions, I’m all ears.

By the way, if you think this sounds like a fun thing to do, why not join us?  You tailor the tasks to yourself and set your own start date.  You’ll love it.  We have a badge and everything! 

On Optimism & Pessimism

Image by VCU Libraries via Flickr

I heard this quote as a teenager and it has stayed with me:

The optimist believes this is the best of all possible worlds;
the pessimist fears it is.

James Branch Cabell

*

Editor’s Note:

My Blog Director has advised me to stop saying ‘This is from a WordPress prompt’.  As my Blog Director is also my eldest son, I have to obey him because I want him to visit me from time to time.  I’m weak, I know; but I like him. 

From now on, all posts based on WordPress prompts will have a tag called ‘WordPress Prompts’. 

I look at it this way: those of you using the WordPress prompts will know what they are; no one else will care.

Is that alright, sweetie?  If you visit this weekend, I’ll do a gammon roast.

Hope: I’m In Favour Of It

WordPress postaday2011 asks today: What gives you hope? And what, if anything, makes you question hope? And what makes you question your questions of hope?

I hope to one day get the hang of this stupid blog because the text absolutely refuses to change to black today.

I hope you’ll forgive the brevity of this post.

I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t go for the obvious again.

I hope you know what the obvious is, or my work here has been all for nought.

I hope you will check out the misery and self-pity that is today’s sapoems post.

But most of all, I hope for better WordPress prompts.

Postaday2011: Why Did I Start Blogging?

Image via Wikipedia

My son made me.

Today’s postaday2011 prompt asks why I started blogging.  I started because I was sick of Tory Boy’s nagging.  For years I sent out news emails I called ‘smails’ (because I was too lazy to write ‘news emails’ every time), in a similar style to this blog.  People often asked me to add a friend or relative to my mailing list; by the time I stopped I was sending smails to about forty-five family, friends and strangers. 

Trouble was, no-one ever replied.  I would get emails from those same people on other matters, but hardly ever on the smail subjects.  I reached the point where I wondered if I was talking to myself.  Not beyond the realm of possibility, because the smails were usually seven or eight pages long and who has enough time in their day to be bored by a stranger’s rabbiting?  It’s much better this way, where people who are interested come to my blog (better not mention my blog is linked to Facebook and Twitter so I’m kind of thrusting it in the world’s face).

Tory Boy nagged me for about eighteen months to start a blog and I finally got sick of his moaning and I did it to shut him up.  Of course, he was right: I am addicted, and I was from the first week.  It’s not just the writing; it’s the bonus of the fascinating people I’ve met online, who live such different lives to mine.  I love reading about their doings.

But the best part is the instant feedback in the comments box: ego-stroking is a nice way to start the day.  So, thank you, dear readers.  Please remember to wash your hands on the way out.