Every year in December, my husband and I send out approximately 50 Christmas cards to friends and relatives all over the country – well, mostly my friends and relatives, because half of Jeff’s family and friends live pretty close to us. We include family photos and/or photos of our kids, plus a letter sharing the main events and progress made (or not) during the year. (The “annual update” usually has a humorous angle. I’ll give Jeff credit for 98% of the humor and content; my main responsibility is correcting spelling and grammar, and “approving” content.)
The rest of the year, we are busy living our lives. We work full-time, and our sons (Kyle is eight, and Ryan nearly six) always have school activities and sports and things they need us to do with them or for them, and we try to keep the house somewhat clean and organized, and there’s always shopping to do, and frequently we find ourselves playing referee as the boys argue and bother each other daily — it’s just BUSY, all the time, and it’s enough to wear a body out. I’d like to be more in touch with friends and relatives, but leisure time is generally short and often interrupted by a boy needing something (nearly always requiring a move to another room), a spouse wanting a turn on the computer, or an eruption of yelling and/or crying which leads to referee duty, as noted above.
And finally, there’s that time difference thing. Most of my relatives are in southern New England, and I’m in Kansas, where everything happens an hour earlier. (It’s true: primetime television starts at 7 pm instead of 8 pm, and there is no 11 o’clock news, it’s on at 10 pm. This is contrary to the clock I was on for the first 24 years of my life.) A good time for me to call Massachusetts or Rhode Island is the time when they’re having a meal or about ready for bed. It’s only an hour, but it can really complicate things!
I had a blog on my MySpace page, but there, people can only see the most recent entries unless they log in. Most of my relatives and “real life” friends have no desire for a MySpace account, and I completely understand that. (Also, I can’t access MySpace at work, and spend very little time there now – especially since I found LibraryThing last summer.) At the same time, it would be next to impossible for me to send separate e-mails and letters to all the 50-odd people who get our annual update, letting them know what’s going on in our lives, say, every month or six weeks.
So, I finally decided to sign up for a Blogger account and make this a tool to provide friends and family with semi-regular updates about our lives. It’ll also be a place for me to – hopefully – stop for breath, record what’s going on in my head, and reflect upon it. That’s the plan THIS month, anyway! 😉