Or, Get out your snow goggles, it’s a blizzard of links!
A few stray posts on this blog date back to May 2005, but those are false labor signs. Blogular Braxton-Hickses. I sent up a flare from the blue-black darkness following my nephew’s death, then went back to licking my wounds and staring a hole in my daughter every night as she slept.
March 2nd of last year marked the first proper turn of the blogular wheel, which, though it took another month to actually pick up some regular momentum, has been rolling along weekly for a year. Highlights include:
participating in Mombian’s Blogging for LGBT Families Day and learning how enlightening and enlivening it would be to jump into this ongoing national conversation about parenting and life, queer and otherwise;
‘virtually’ meeting other lesbian parents who are sharing their thoughts and lives through their blogs online, like Dana at Mombian; Lisa at Lesbian Fatherhood; Liza at Liza Was Here; all the other contributors at Lesbian Family like Art-Sweet at Artificially Sweetened, J. at Cheese and Whine, Kwynne (currently plowing her online writing into Lesbian Family, and offline writing into her Ph.D. diss), Round is Funny at Round is Funny, and Trista at An Accident of Hope;
forging connections with progressive-minded dads, who see the big picture and think it’s as filled with love and possibility and humor as I’d like to think it is, folks like Brian at Looky, Daddy! and Jeremy at Daddy Dialectic and Eric at DI Dads Speak Out;
reconnecting with old friends, some offline and one on, simply as a result of them stumbling across this assemblage of lesbo bon mots and sussing out that it was indeed I, their chum from days of yore, who was churning them out;
feeling palpably connected to of all sorts of people I’ve never met before and likely never will, of all kinds of persuasions (parental and non-, queer and non-; you name it) who have been kind enough to strike up conversations here, and/or offer words of comiseration or congratulations;
stumbling into, then hanging on for dear life during the wild and wooly roller coaster ride that was the 2006 Weblog Awards Best New Blog competition (it was by no means a simple meritocracy), which taught me (a) the Power of Isis! and her friends, since so many people actually bothered to vote this thing into first place, and (b) the Power of Hate and its opposite, since that’s what I saw as the primary engine behind the head-to-head hullabaloo that defined at least my own experiene of it;
feeling, from time to time, either as a result of a post, or from things people have written me offline, as if I might actually be able to do some real service with this thing, other than foist an endless stream of baby pictures upon a hapless and unsuspecting public;
realizing, after a year of putting my half-baked thoughts and images out on the windowsill to cool in broad daylight, in front of goddess knows who, that we really are never alone, and that probably everything’s going to be alright after all.
Gentle reader, I thank you for your time, and assure you that the pleasure’s been all mine.
happy birthday, bubbie! I am so happy I stumbled upon your delicious and most progressive read this year. I wish you many more years online so that we may learn a little something new each day.
be well,
k
Happy Birthday to you, LD! And thank you for making the blogosphere a better place with your presence. You are most certainly doing “some real service with this thing”. Keep writing and we’ll keep reading. Even the endless stream of baby pictures.
Happy Birthday, LD! I just realized that The Other Mother has the same blog birthday, only it’s 3. I started it a week before Pearl was born. Are we twins? Sorta? xo
…Separated at birth, rreagler! I consider The Other Mother an elder statesgal of the lesbian parent blogosphere, and regard any association with you & it quite an honor.
Thank you LD, and Katie, (and virgotext, chez elle) for your warm wishes. Your kind and supportive voices make the virtual actual, if that makes any sense.
A very happy birthday, LD! Here’s to many more years to come! It’s been a pleasure reading your posts and sharing ideas.
And how lucky are we that you began this venture- love your insights, photos, and your love for your family. Thanks for sharing.
Happy Blogiversary! Keep it up. I love your blog.
Congratulations! I wish you many happy years of blogging.
I would have commented sooner but we have been snowed in here in Minneapolis. Aren’t you glad you got out while the gettin’ was good? ha ha.
Thank you sisters, all, Dana, Lynn, FemKnit-M, Vikki. I’d-a never thunk I’d actually manage to get anyone beside the beloved to read this business. And I’d-a never imagined so many nifty people could be found simply by casting a net out into the World Wide Internet. Virtue has got to be part of the word virtual, which seems to underplay what this net/work of conviviality is. A quick check of ye olde online etymology dictionary sez yes, kinda:
In effect, indeed.