Archive for the 'Blog' Category
January 19, 2010 @ 5:42 pm | Filed under: Blog, Blogging
This blog will be five years old tomorrow (Wednesday the 20th). Five years, 1928 posts (this one makes 1929), over eleven thousand comments. That last figure does not seem possible but my dashboard is telling me 11,495 comments approved. Which speaks to exactly what has kept me enthusiastically blogging these past five years: you. Thanks, all of you who visit me here, sharing your humor, your insight, your warmth.
A lot has changed since I wrote that first entry.
The children. These days the girls are calling themselves Jane, Rose, and Beanie. Well actually it’s Jane and Rose calling the youngest one Beanie, but she answers to it. And then there’s the baby, whom we affectionately refer to as Wonderboy. Their ages are 9, 6, almost 4, and 13 months…I write. Scott writes. Both of us, here at home, in this messy office with my photocopies of 18th-century Edinburgh all over the wall and his comic-book-hero statues staring at us from atop the shelves.
I miss that office! Now I write sitting on my bed, on this laptop, and the hero statues are in storage. New comics art ornaments Scott’s office walls but that isn’t here at home anymore. And those little girls, oh my. That nine-year-old was in a heavy Jane of Lantern Hill phase and “Jane” was her make-believe name of choice, that month. Beanie’s about to be the nine-year-old now. Wonderboy has become the big brother. How can Rilla be the almost-four-year-old? How can Huck be past a year?
When I began the blog, I thought it would be a time-saver. (I will pause until the laughter dies down.) I was spending lots of time answering email queries back then, questions from all sorts of readers about the Martha and Charlotte books, children’s book recommendations, a whole gamut of topics. Not that I was (or am) so full of answers, but when it comes to books I usually have a thing or two to say. 
I had a primitive website on which I was attempting to answer the book questions, and I had begun reading blogs and was impressed by the possibilities. A blog seemed a likely place to post answers to the kinds of questions I was hearing most often.
What you don’t know until you start blogging is that a blog takes on a life of its own. It’s a conversation, not an essay collection. You meet new people; your world expands; you keep encountering new things to be interested in and you can’t help but share the discoveries.
So I won’t claim that it has been in any way a time-saver, but it has certainly been a joy, in so many ways.
One unexpected element of blogging, something I didn’t foresee at the beginning, was what a treasure this record would become to my family. Our stories are chronicled here, not just our major life events but the small moments, the funny ones, the extraordinary ordinary. I’m grateful to this blog for getting me in the habit of writing down these things down. Huzzah for the searchable archive!
But mostly I’m grateful for you. The 11,495 things you’ve said, and the quiet readers among you as well. Thanks for making Bonny Glen a place I love to be.
UPDATED! I got to Melanie’s comment below and let out a whoop—I hadn’t realized our blogs shared a birthday! The Wine-Dark Sea is one of my favorite places on the web: I can always count on reading something smart, thoughtful, and full of insight. In the unscientific labeling system that is my attempt to organize the subscriptions in my feed reader, Melanie started out in “thinkers,” quickly moved to “favorite reads,” and now resides in “pals.” All three descriptions fit to a T. Thanks, Melanie, for the way you consistently exercise my ponder muscle. Happy blog-birthday!
It’s also the actual birthday of my real-life friend Laurie of Seaglass Hearts. Happy day, my dear!
January 1, 2009 @ 9:23 am | Filed under: Blog, Family
January
I contemplated fresh starts.
I experimented with a a new departure in flavorings. (My famous chicken tortilla chai soup recipe. Mm mm bleck.)
Then it was time to Journey North again!
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February
I finished crocheting a sweater, almost. (Never did put the buttons on. Rilla won’t wear it, anyway. No ladybugs on it.)
We had bad days and good ones.
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March
I sang out loud in the grocery store.
John Stilgoe knocked my socks off and got me contemplating how Way Leads on to Way and how Every Face I Look at Seems Beautiful.
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April
In a word: Barcelona! Barcelona! Barcelona!
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May
I contemplated my Mother’s Days and celebrated 14 years with That Cute Boy.
I got very wordy about houseplants. Twice.
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June
Scott battled a fearsome beast in our laundry room. I read about the epic fight on IM.
I explained my Doctor Roster.
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July
My big girls went to Colorado for a week.
We were happy to get them back again.
Then we ditched them for the San Diego Comic-Con. (Scott had to: it’s his job. Me? I tagged along for the photo ops.)
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August
We started the 100 Species Challenge. (And though we’ve not kept up the blogging-it part, we’ve done really well with the species ID part! I think we’re in the 60s now.)
I had a little hospital adventure.
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September
I made curtains! (I didn’t say I made them well.)
We kept on learning new stuff about our sweet Wonderboy.
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October
I celebrated the San Diego autumn and small happinesses. And more autumn, and more happinesses. (About that sourdough starter, though? Epic fail.)
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November
My parents came to visit, and we enjoyed a fabulous week of exploring SoCal with the big girls.
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December
‘Twas a month of Twittered moments, and birthdays, and sewing, and books, and Advent moments both magical and mucky.
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And now it’s 2009, and we’re about to make another fresh start.
December 17, 2008 @ 8:40 pm | Filed under: Blog
Visit Dreambox to see who else made their Top 8.
And thanks!
November 10, 2008 @ 8:10 am | Filed under: Blog, Handcrafts, Sewing and Handwork
I’ve added a list of my favorite handcrafty blogs to the very bottom of the righthand sidebar. What it really is is the handcraft folder from my Google Reader—I’m sure this is very old news, but I just figured out that I could make individual folders on my Reader public, and therefore accessible via link or RSS. Nifty. One of the options available is sharing the folder as a blogroll, so: there you go!
If you’re a craft blog addict too, please check out my list and let me know of any gems I’m missing!
August 25, 2008 @ 7:38 pm | Filed under: Blog
I’m still missing some three hundred subscribers…if you’re reading this on the blog and wondering why my recent posts haven’t popped up in your feed reader, it probably means you’re among the people who were suddenly unsubscribed by my Feedburner snafu last week.
And I’m still hearing from readers whose IP addresses have been blocked from loading the site, for reasons neither I nor my hardworking web person can fathom. If you are one of those people, send me your IP address and we’ll get you unblocked. (But how will you know to do this, if you can’t load the blog AND have been unsubbed? I wonder if there will be people out there who think I just stopped blogging one day?)
So I’ve got the SURPRISE! YOU’VE BEEN UNSUBSCRIBED problem. And the SURPRISE! YOUR IP ADDRESS HAS BEEN BLOCKED problem. And let us not forget the WHOOPSIE, YOUR BROWSER IS SHOWING YOU A CACHED VERSION OF THIS SITE WHICH MEANS YOU AREN’T SEEING THE MOST RECENT POSTS problem which has been plaguing some readers for a while. (At least we know a solution to that problem. Register for the site and as long as you’re logged in, you will always see the most recent posts. Only—for Pete’s sake don’t forget your password because if you try to log in with the wrong password, my hypervigilant spam filter will label you a Suspicious Character and block your IP address. See problem #2, subset A.)
Thanks, friends, for hanging in here with me while I continue to try to sort out these obnoxious problems. I’m sorry some of you are having to work so hard to make it past the goblins to new posts. And then I go and reward your trouble with a boring post like this?! Heck, the goblins are more interesting!
August 21, 2008 @ 5:40 pm | Filed under: Blog
I’ve just discovered that over half of my subscribers have been unsubbed. I don’t know why or how, but there it is. If you wouldn’t mind resubbing, that would be ducky. Thanks so much.
Of course here again we have the problem of the people who need the message not being able to see the message. If any of you feel like spreading the news, I would really appreciate it!
August 21, 2008 @ 6:34 am | Filed under: Blog, Family
Well, in addition to the Mystery of the Blocked IPs, we now get to add the Mystery of the Wonky Feeds on Bloglines to this week’s blog drama. It seems some Bloglines users are finding that when they click through from my feed in their reader, they wind up at Old Bonny Glen (Typepad) instead of here at New Bonny Glen (Wordpress). As best I can figure, this is the result of my having accidentally and for two minutes only reconnected the Typepad blog to my Feedburner feed, which blunder I discovered immediately, because suddenly a six-month-old Typepad post (the one announcing the launch of this here website) reappeared in my Google Reader.
It’s all very strange. I didn’t actually reconnect the Typepad blog to the Feedburner feed for this blog—what I did was create a new Feedburner feed for Old Bonny Glen, but for inscrutable and maddening reasons, Feedburner ignored the new feed and hooked the Typepad blog back up to my original Feedburner feed instead. And so I changed it right back and said argh a lot and have been scratching my head in befuddlement ever since.
But none of it matters because this post is so boring all my subscribers are going to unsub in disgust anyway. It was lovely knowing all of you, really. I’ll miss you.
Meanwhile (she says, speaking to the empty room), life! is! so! busy! And these are supposed to be the lazy days of summer? Ha! Appointments, appointments, appointments. ‘Tis eval season for my boy: OT, PT, you name it. Speech therapy resumed yesterday after a two-month hiatus. He receives it through the local public school district (but not OT/PT; I’m going through medical for those), and the schools here started back up on Monday! August 18th! They didn’t let out for the summer until late June. Which was last week, I’m pretty sure. The calendar claims there was something called “July” in the middle but I didn’t see it, did you?
So anyway, it’s appointment season for my lad. And for me: all the OB stuff. (I miss my Virginia midwife, sob.) And Jane: Jane is getting braces. Probably next week. So that’s kind of exciting. Today is x-ray and tooth-molds day for her. (See how clever I am? Scheduling it for back-to-school week? When, for once, the orthodontist has no other patients? OK, fine, it was a total accident caused by my procrastinating all summer, but if I HAD planned it this way, I would be a genius.)
A nice thing that has been happening lately is we’ve got our read-aloud groove back. For the past year, the Rilla-and-Wonderboy combination has made peaceful reading aloud, um, challenging. I have missed it! I gnash my teeth in jealousy in the quiet evenings when the little ones are asleep and Scott stretches out in the cool, breezy sunroom with a bevy of eagerly listening girls for uninterrupted reading time. OK, I’m not really gnashing my teeth—because I know, now, what my parents paid for the braces that made them nice and straight.
About which, by the way: um, thanks for that, Mom and Dad.
But anyway, recently I got it into my head that I wanted a return to happy readalouding (hush) of my own, so we’ve been working on it, working out ways to keep the little ones happy while I dust off all my best accents for the big girls. And it’s working, sometimes. Enough of the time. I’m satisfyingly deep into Understood Betsy with Rose and Beanie—Beanie was two years old last time we read this book aloud, so it’s new for her, and of course Rose is right there hanging on every word, because how can you not be? It’s one of the best read-alouds ever, and I don’t say that lightly. And you already know about my Austen revels with Jane. (Jane and Jane, ha!)
Nothing could be more delightful, to quote Jane the elder.
August 20, 2008 @ 9:54 am | Filed under: Blog
If you are reading this in a reader but are unable to get the site to load when you click through, it means your IP address is suddenly being blocked for some mysterious reason. Email me your IP address and I’ll get you unblocked posthaste. (You can look up your IP address at http://whatismyip.com.)
Now: what to do about people who are being blocked but don’t subscribe to my feed, and therefore won’t have any way to see this message??? I sure hope they will send me a note to say they can’t get the site to load.
In the meantime, I’m double-posting all new material at the old Typepad site. But keep commenting here, if you can get through.
Thanks!
August 19, 2008 @ 4:51 am | Filed under: Blog
This is one of those posts that makes no sense, because the people who could use the information are the very ones who won’t be able to see it. I’ve heard from a few readers that they have been unable to load Bonny Glen for the past few weeks. I’m working on discovering and solving the problem, but in the meantime, if you do see this post and know anyone who is having trouble, here’s a temporary solution you could share (and I’d be ever so grateful):
Try this link instead: http://feeds.feedburner.com/bonnyglen
That should load my blog’s feed, which is a stripped-down, no bells-and-whistles version of the site. Posts only, no sidebars. (Of course you may also subscribe to this feed in a reader like Bloglines or Google Reader, and then you’ll never miss a post!)
If the problem persists here on the blog, I may consider double-posting at the Typepad site and having that be a mirror of this one. Not an ideal solution, but it’s the back-up plan if we can’t figure out what’s wrong.
Thanks, everyone.
August 2, 2008 @ 7:53 pm | Filed under: Blog, Photos
All right, all right, I’ll post a picture of the Green Bag tomorrow. Can’t tonight because my camera’s out there and I’m in here.
In the meantime, feast your eyes on this shot by my pal Kristen “Hey, Joss Whedon! Yay!” Rutherford. Does she not take the best photos?
Some of you will not be seeing this post for a few days, due to that browser glitch we discussed a while back. I mention it now only as a reminder: if your browser is afflicted by the glitch, you can get around it by registering for the site. Click on any post, scroll down to the bottom of the comments (right above the box where you’d leave your own comment), and click on “Register here.” And then, as long as you’re logged in, you’ll always see my most recent posts. If you’re seeing this post on Saturday or Sunday, then you’re not experiencing the glitch and can ignore this paragraph. Or not! Register anyway and make your own little avatar for the comments. I like that so much.
In other news—y’all know, right, that there was one name I had to leave out of my Internet Baby Boom post, even though I was bursting to spill it? And finally she has spilled it herself? Hey, Alice Gunther! Yay!
Scott and I have taken geekdom to a whole new level lately by communicating via Twitter. John Stossel’s mustache is so jealous. Everyone else is probably grossed out.
