Today I woke in a grateful mood. Ironic since that is so NOT the mood I went to sleep in last night. I got up to find Prima Donna Daughter at her computer playing/singing Christmas songs. When she saw me coming into the living room, she jumped up, ran to me and hugged me and said, “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up, Mommy.”
We scrounged the kitchen for some breakfast and no sooner than her toast popped up, but her friend from next door (the one that makes me want to sell the house and move) knocked on the front door. So, wolfing down the remains of her breakfast, she ran out to play next door.
Oldest Son was still crashed on the couch and Second Son had not yet emerged from his room, so I waited for the coffee to finish and took a mug back to bed. I then spent the next two hours watching a movie with one eye and snoozing with the other.
Figuring the Earth would surely stop spinning if I didn’t get my behind out of bed before noon, I grudgingly got up and emptied my hamper, sorting the clothes to start today’s round of laundry. Once the washer was swishing away, I came here to the beloved laptop and checked in with the world.
In my email was another friend request from NaBloPoMo, which upon checking out, I found not only a great blog about parenting challenging children called ‘A Wild Ride’ written by Elizabeth, the sender of said friend request, but a link back here to my blog on today’s post at her blog, calling my blog a blog worth checking out!
Ok, so maybe it takes very little to make my day.
Or maybe, just maybe, it’s not such a little thing to be complimented like that by an as yet perfect stranger.
I’m going with B.
With my grateful heart, I say it’s NOT a small thing. How many times have I turned to my connection to the WWW to seek out a small slice of sanity, if only in the fact that I am not alone in this perfect madness we call life?
I, for one, feel blessed to be alive in this day and age, despite all it’s problems, because 100 years ago, if I woke in the middle of the night scared I’d made a blunderous parenting decision that irrevocably marred my child for life, for example, I’d be alone with that fear. Because it’s 2007, I am not alone with any of my fears unless I choose to be, no matter what the hour. And I like blogs the best because there’s no pressure to make sense or be coherent – I can start at one blog and make my way to and through countless others, partaking of their humor, perspective and candor without disturbing anyone. I can simply read and absorb, or I can participate – it’s up to me.
I’ll save the chicken/egg debate about the cause of the ills we suffer today (some we’ve brought on ourselves with all this technology and connectedness, to be sure) for another day. Today I’m grateful for my circle of online friends, old and new, because they enrich my life in ways my offline, face-to-face friends can’t. (Of course, the opposite is true, too, let’s not forget.) But how blessed are we, all of us, out here connecting with others we’d never have met any other way?
No man (or woman) is an island, that’s for sure. And it’s my non-professional opinion that we are all on some kind of wild ride or another by virtue of the fact that we are breathing. Take some time to hang out over at A Wild Ride. Not only will you enjoy what you find there, Elizabeth is great about pointing her readers in the direction of other great blogs on a regular basis – a great example this blogger will do a better job of from here on out.
So, thanks Elizabeth, for making my day!
