Three years of blogging

There's a pup napping over on the bed to my right. She's almost 13 weeks old, and she's already learned that when I start my blog, she takes her first morning snooze upstairs with me.

Kea, the Border Collie, is the youngest of our Lovestead pets. I'm guessing Charlie, the Persian, is the oldest at 13 or 14, and Annie Dog isn't far behind at 11 or 12. Then, the other cats, Lonesome Love, Festus, Licker and Fuzzy Wuzzy range in age from 4 to about 7 or 8.

This morning, I'm thinking about my blog in pet terms and realizing that it's been around longer than Kiwi, Lily, Lefty, and Kea. They've all received written and pictorial introductions to the World Wide Web via the blog---as has the Lovestead---which has turned into my favorite focus over the past 17 months.

I'd have to look back and see what the opening date for Slight Detour happens to be, but I know it started around this time of the year in 2004. Again, this daily ritual started as a bit of a lark for me and as an instrument to get my brother some exposure for his collection of cartoons called Slight Detour.

Since then, Jim has headed off on his own slight detour, becoming a regular cartoonist with The River Journal and with a national hang-gliding magazine. He's also doing illustrations for writers and would love to illustrate children's books, so if there's any aspiring writer out there looking for an illustrator, he'd love to talk with you.

Back in 2004, I figured I'd stay with this project for a few weeks and drop it to go on to something different. I'm a journalist, and we types like change in our lives, so I'm astounded that I've stuck with it this long. Plus, I'm more than satisfied. Slight Detour has evolved from a passing interest to a passion.

I can hardly begin to adequately express the broad range of rewards this morning discipline has brought me----new friends, reconnections with old friends, three years of life chronicling, an outlet for my writing desires, endless opportunities to vent, almost daily topics for humorous treatment, sometimes topics for out-and-out reflection.

In a keynote speech for two recent Young Authors conferences, I told the audiences that I did not need a shrink because I take care of most of my issues through the written word.

Others may disagree with that last statement, suggesting from time to time that she surely does need a visit from the white jackets cuz she seems a bit crazy. But when life is always sending you on a slight detour from what you had intended on any given day, a little craziness might just go with the territory.

Take yesterday, for example, i.e., my rant about the sink holes in the barnyard and the plans for Bill to come home at noon so we could string wire along a fenceline for the horses' alternative winter enclosure.

Well, Bill came home as planned. Bill ate his lunch. Bill got dressed for outside work and gathered his toolbox for fencing. As Bill walked from the house toward the barn, he noticed something odd about the storage quansit. Upon further inspection, Bill noticed the roof had separated from one end of the shed. The weight of at least hundreds of gallons of water--melted from 25 inches of snow and four inches of rain thrown in for good measure---caused the separation, and all that water was still in that sagging segment waiting to freeze.

Slight detour: All labors focused on the quansit roof, on emptying the water from the sagging section of roof and figuring out how to stretch a roof's worth of vinyl back into its locked position. Three hours later----with ladders, pliers, rope, a come-along, landscape rake, and vise grips----the job had been completed.

The pasture fence remained as is---- thin, tenuous goat wire and mighty tempting for any horse wishing to go on a slight detour. The fence will get done on a later date.

It really helps to write about these daily calamities because they happen to us and because many readers can identify---and when you know that happens you kind of calm down and know you're among friends. In fact, I talked with my sister later in the afternoon, and she had read the blog. Her report of storm damage wasn't quite so bad but definitely frustrating.

My sisters had spent a couple of days this past summer putting new gravel bases in all of their box stalls. They figured all would be great for winter. Turns out three stalls were water-logged after the storm, and their indoor arena even had the first small lake they've ever seen. In that conversation, we both agreed that our situations were frustrating, but pretty darned minor compared to what those folks over in Western Washington and Oregon have experienced, thanks to the storm.

So, three years of reporting on daily catastrophes, moments of joy, community issues, and personal perspectives later, I'm still glad to be writing my blog and thrilled every time someone tells me they read it on a regular basis.

That kind of feedback enhances my desire to keep it going, even if some days do tend to be less interesting than others. It seems there's always something, though, and I get a kick out of writing about life as it happens.

As for today, that pup is still sleeping soundly on the bed. That means she's not pooping or peeing somewhere in the house, which has decreased dramatically, by the way. I've yet to go outside and find any unwelcome discoveries, and I'm truly yearning for a "non-event" day.

It would actually be fun tomorrow to return to this computer, watch Miss Kea snooze, and to report that everything went exactly as planned yesterday.

HA!

P.S. Annie's got some neat new photos posted on her blog: (www.nnlove.blogspot.com). Check 'em out.