Entries in family (6)
Perambulation
June Recipe Round Up?
If there’s someone willing to host the Recipe Round Up for June, there’s still time to have one. Or maybe it would be better to take a summer break. What say you all?
This Week’s Stat Stuff
I don’t look at my blog stats much, and by that I mean that I often go a month or two between peeks at them. I used to care about my stats, but not anymore. I know that enough people read what I write to make my blogging worthwhile. What more do I need to know?
One big advantage to not looking at my stats is that then they don’t dictate how I do things here. What I put up on this blog reflects either what I enjoy or what I think is valuable (and sometimes both) and I’d like it to stay that way.
Today I looked at my stats and found something that made me want to investigate things a little more. Most often, the top individual pages for the past week on a blog will be the most recent posts. (When it comes to blogs, out of sight really does mean out of mind.) Not so at this blog during this week. Five out of the top ten pages here are older posts.
- Number 1 most popular page, with more than double the views of any other page, is the theological term post on providence. I can’t find a referring page for that, either, but I did get a lot of referrals from email, so perhaps that’s where all those page views have come from. That this particular page is popular pleases me.
- Number 2 most popular page is the recipe for beer batter deep fried halibut. That’s still a relatively recent post, so some of the views come in the usual way, but I also have a whole lot of search engine referrals on that one. Everyone and his cousin seems to be searching for fried recipes of one sort or another (fried halibut, things which can be battered and deep fried, deep fried halibut, halibut deep fry batter recipe, to name the top searches) and they are all landing on my halibut frying instructions.
- Number 5 most popular page is Is a Headless Chicken Stupid? I’m pretty sure Neil Shay will take credit for this one scoring so high because he has it linked in his sidebar as The Best Frivolous Blog Post Ever. (I’m still waiting for my trophy to arrive in the mail, by the way.) What I think really happened is that recently, somewhere, in some piece or other, someone mentioned Mike the Headless Chicken and all the readers ran out to google for more information. Here are a few of the headless chicken related searches: longest life of a chicken without his head, mike the headless chicken song, headless chicken lifespan, living headless chicken, and one I won’t post because I’m pretty sure it breaks the third commandment. (Don’t you think it’s strange that several people would search for the same rather odd headless-chicken-related, commandment-breaking phrase? How does that happen? Same person, forgetting they’ve already been here, perhaps?)
- Number 7 most popular page is On Preparing for Suffering and Evil from D. A. Carson, which contains my notes on the sermon by that title. That post is always right up there, month after month. Those notes do get linked and used! And that makes me happy, because it means people are listening to Carson’s sermon. If you haven’t, you should. You’ll find it linked in the post with my notes.
- Number 10 most popular page is Theological Terms in Alphabetical Order. I’m glad so many click through the graphic on each theological terms post to the alphabetical listing. I’ve concluded that at least some people are using it as a reference and that’s what I was hoping for when I started the list. Those posts may look like they don’t take much time since they’re mostly cut-and paste jobs, but I spend lots of time vetting the information and links in them. It’s nice to get a little confirmation that I’ve put my time into something that others find useful.
Plans for Summer 2008Oldest son will be moving into his own place on June 15 (and oldest daughter has gone back to Vancouver), so soon it will only be youngest son and I (and three pets, too) here at home. We’re not sad because we’re predicting that, just like his younger sister who has already moved out, he’ll be here daily to eat.
Also on our agenda is installing lots of new windows. My house was built in 1950 and many of the windows are original. They are in good shape, most of them, but energy efficient they are not. So I’m getting new ones, installed by my son the glazier as soon as they arrive. That means I’ll be doing a lot of painting this summer and fall.
My son tells me that I can’t expect these new windows to last as long as the old ones. Pity.
This Year’s Garden
I planted only half the garden space this spring. If youngest son goes away to school in the fall, it’ll be just me and the pets, and the pets don’t eat vegies. Except for the dog, that is, who loves ripping pea pods from the vines and crunching them.
I planted only half the garden space this spring. If youngest son goes away to school in the fall, it’ll be just me and the pets, and the pets don’t eat vegies. Except for the dog, that is, who loves ripping pea pods from the vines and crunching them.
Posted on Wednesday, June 4, 2008 at 03:56PM
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rebecca
in bloggy business, real life, family
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rebecca
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A Dog Story with a Happy Ending
I’m reposting an old post from a summer past as my contribution to tomorrow’s Dog Days collection. Sorry about that, but typing without an index finger that bends is a frustrating exercise.
Somewhere in those first few seconds of instinctive paddling, she discovered that she likes swimming. Maybe she loves swimming.
This week we discovered that our dog is a retriever. Of course, we knew when we bought her that her official title included the word, but she failed to live up to the promise of her name. She thought fetching was boring after a toss or two, but what she hated most of all was going into water any deeper than her knees.
Every summer before this, we’ve tried to coax her to swim with us. She knew it looked like fun and she wanted to be out there with the gang, so she’d make a half-hearted attempt to join us. But as soon as the water touched her belly, she’d turn around again and slink back to the shore. We tried gentle coaxing with sticks, throwing them out into the water for her to retrieve, but she was already an unenthusiastic fetcher, so she had no qualms about leaving a stick floating if fetching it required more than shallow wading.
Once the boys took turns carrying her out into deep water and letting her go. She was a strong and competent swimmer as long as the swimming was straight toward the shoreline. As soon as she reached the beach, she’d slink off to the bushes, crouching low, hoping to remain out of sight so she could avoid that happening again.
Friday night, the youngest son and I took her for a walk on the Miles Canyon trail. When we got to the little pool along the edge of the river that is good for swimming, my son tossed a stick just a few feet from the bank. I’m sure it looked like a simple enough fetch to the dog, so she jumped in willingly. What she didn’t know is that the bank drops off steeply in that place and there is no wading. Once you’re in, it’s swim or die.
Somewhere in those first few seconds of instinctive paddling, she discovered that she likes swimming. Maybe she loves swimming. Out she swam to the stick and then round and back to the bank. Again and again, round and round, eager for more when we grew tired.
Last night we took her with us to Long Lake. She ran down ahead to the beach and then out into the water to retrieve what she thought was a stick, but turned out to be the branch of a dead tree lying just under the surface of the water. The three of us tossed sticks for her until we all grew tired.
After we stopped tossing, she jumped in to swim out and greet some canoeists passing by. We had to call her back before she got close, since nothing makes paddlers more nervous than an enthusiastic dog swimming toward them.
Posted on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 09:28PM
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rebecca
in monthly theme, real life, family
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rebecca
in monthly theme, real life, family
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Ghost Box
When your youngest kid is seventeen, this is what the old sandbox looks like. Old Nanook, the dog for whom the dog house was built, is long gone, too.
And speaking of neglected things, visit Bugblaster and help keep his blog from becoming a ghost blog.
Graduation Dinner Photos
Here’s a photo of youngest son and me after his grad dinner, but before the sometimes boring and sometimes inappropriate speeches. The lack of decorum, by the way, was not on the part of the students or the parents, but by the principal and one of the teachers in their speeches. And in case you think it was just old fogey me who found some remarks shocking, my older children’s jaws dropped during some of the program.
The principal asked questions, intended to be humorous, about the future of some of the graduating students, and several of them crossed the line from funny to rude or humiliating, and at least one had sexual innuendo which was just disturbingly creepy when made by a fifty-year-old principal about an 18-year-old girl student.
In youngest son’s case, the supposedly funny question was about whether he would become a male stripper. I think the remark was meant to be a funny compliment about his athlete’s physique, but it embarrassed youngest son. Made by one of his friends or by his brother in a teasing way, he might have thought if funny; but hearing it from his principal in front of several hundred people, his family included, was a whole different matter.
I’m not sure most 17 and 18-year-olds are ready to endure public roasting type remarks anyway, even if they were all tastefully done. Sure they laugh it off—they have to, or they look like a poor sport—but do you think they enjoy it?
But it was fun to see youngest son all spiffied up and in a tux, and to see all the other students in their formal wear, too. Two of youngest son’s close friends gave a speech together that was short, funny, and superbly done, and I wouldn’t have wanted to miss that, either. So all was not lost.
Here’s a photo I took of all four kids together.
In Flux
Oldest daughter moves in today and youngest daughter moves out tomorrow, so things are very busy here. Oldest daughter lost her cat Wednesday night when someone broke into her apartment while she was at work, and then left access to the outside through a broken window. If the cat isn’t found by the time daughter has to leave for the airport this morning, it will have to be left behind. As you can imagine, this is causing her quite a bit of anxiety.
And I still have a lot of planting to do.
Update on Friday, June 1, 2007 at 09:48AM by
rebecca
rebecca
Well, the cat came back just as oldest daughter was leaving her apartment for the airport! It would be difficult to overstate how relieved and happy she is.
Belated Yet Again
Yesterday was Youngest Daughter’s birthday, so I’m wishing her blog birthday greetings. True to form, they are belated greetings, although I was not so negligent in real life. Real life just got away from me yesterday, and the blog was neglected, but the girl wasn’t.
Here she is at four. She had just discovered the game of Candy Land. Every day, right after her nap, she would carefully set up her Candy Land game on the chest she’s sitting on in the photo. Then as soon as her father walked in the door after his day’s work, she would rope him into a game. How could he say no? If you’ve ever played Candy Land, though, you know how much he’d have preferred to do anything else.
Recently I had a conversation about coddled kids whose parents have never let them lose at anything, so they have skewed expectations for how things ought to go for them in life. In our house, teaching the child to lose at games was their father’s job. Here’s a little word of free advice to dads who want to follow his example: When you pick a game to use to teach your little one the skill of losing, choose checkers, or Chinese checkers, or Jenga, or pick-up sticks. Never, ever, choose Candy Land. At least if you want to keep your sanity.
So here are belated twenty-third birthday greeting to Youngest Daughter, the sweet little girl who drove her dad crazy with her Candy Land game.