This year, more than any since I moved back to NC in 2003, was one of achieved balance for me and my family.
My daughter decided to stop homeschooling (and I miss having her around the house. Kinda). (Okay, I don’t miss the snarky teen attitude all day long.) She has set goals for herself, and realized that some “close” friends were getting in the way of those goals. I’m so incredibly proud of her independence (though it’s also a gigantic pain in my ass at times). She’s established herself socially, found her “look”, and has realized that yes it IS possible to be a brainy chick and rawk hardcore at the same time.
Daniel and Joseph are nothing BUT change in progress as they grow. I can’t think of any major (out of the ordinary) milestones at the moment.
I finally found my groove at school, went back to work part-time, and have almost completely conquered the panic attacks. My supah-secret message board celebrated its first year, I joined BlogHer and BlogHerAds, and attended ConvergeSouth 2007.
And now, in order to make this post COMPLETELY meme-ish, here are my favorite posts of 2007:
January: I tripped the rant fantastic about being slave to Daniel’s texture issues. I also oh-too-briefly declared the right to choice.
February: My fourth divorciversary came and went, and I whipped out the boobs again.
In March I Calculated the cost of sick kids, had another cheap date, and stumbled upon a good visual interpretation of how I feel during panic attacks.
My piano came home, I pondered the dichotomy of pro-life campaigns, ranting about gender equality and packaged curricula in April.
May found me pondering life’s mosaic, and a letter to Campbell’s Soup company.
I loved my WordPress plugins, taught my darling CaraMichele how to introduce her invisible friend Jesus, sneaked my birthday in on my friends, and shelved the kids when Holly came to visit in June. And I kissed June off with a day in the park with Esbee from Life In Forsyth.
Overstimulation almost ruined our Kernersville Fireworks Experience, but I recovered and immediately dashed across the state lines to put my laptop in Mamaw’s lap. I broke some rather surprising news and pondered on blogging and self-censorship.
Hey Em? You’re not gonna get this done by midnight.
August was sweltering and I spent most of my time inside defending against blog scrapers, writing a letter to the girls who saw Knocked Up , Being Nice, being frugal, fantasizing about a bathtub.
September was a light blogging month since I started the Fall Semester at school. Mom wrote things down, I found some things, and wrote letters.
I gave Holly blue balls when she came to visit me in October. Then I dumped our kids on my Dear Sainted Mother and spent two days hanging out with The Bloggers and lovin’ it. I ranted about the lack of promotion of Kernersville’s feature in Southern Living Magazine, took some pretty pictures of rain, waxing thoughtfully on why I blog.
Lessons in procrastination kicked off November. I said goodbye to my baby clothes, examined a fork, and was mean to my Sainted Mama. I also embraced The F.
Light blogging was the theme of December as I dropped the fork I examined, prayed to Our Lady of Perpetual Laundry, asked for your kindness, and showed the Christmas Tree being vigorously protected.
Happy new year, kiss someone you love, and stay safe in 2008.
I’ve decided that I Do Not Love the way my blog looks. I love The Sandbox; I love the fact that I didn’t spend hours on it, but it’s Not Me (yet). Don’t worry - I’ll keep tweaking and tweaking until it’s just right. (and then they’ll issue an upgrade and I’ll start it all over again. *heh*)
And in other news, I’ve discovered a WordPress Plugin that has revolutionized the way I look at blog maintenance. The One Click Installer by Anirudh Sanjeev. It has the distinction of being the only WordPress Plugin (thus far) with its own Firefox extension. (You can use the plugin without the extension, but you cannot use the extension without the plugin.) If you use the extension, you simply right-click on the zipfile’s location, select OneClick Install from the dropdown menu, and select if it’s a theme or plugin. Unzipping and uploading is then handled by OneClick. Not using the extension? No problem - you can c&p the zipfile’s URL into the plugin page, or you can download the zipfile to your computer and then upload it through the same page. Once it’s uploaded, you go to your plugins page and activate as usual.
One word of warning: I’ve already had one issue with a plugin unzip, but that was *not* the fault of OneClick. The plugin developer named the zipfile one thing, and named it something entirely different in the plugin’s code.
I’ve already added several plugins using OneClick (did you notice my Amazon Wishlist over there? huh? didja didja?) and upgraded to the latest version of my plugins.
