WARNING: Boring site information to follow.

At Nick's suggestion, I added links to my other web homes (in the sidebar under "Find Me"). Apparently I'm horribly outdated because "everyone's doing it"—everyone except me. Since I think sheep are a lot more adorable than salmon, I made the update.

I was going to add a Flickr badge, but I just wasn't fond of all that clutter in the sidebar. Icon libraries were definitely the cleanest way to go. It's really too bad that I don't have a Twitter account because some of the little bird icons are totally cute.

All but one of my sites are fairly common and available in almost every style, but I had to limit my searches to those sets that included Vimeo (which I don't use often, but there are some videos out there). I suppose I could have created my own, but I did not care to expel the effort.

I didn't add anything for Google+ because no one uses it anyway.



So…Baaaaa!

I have been home from the hospital for 10 whole days now—all the while looking for things to occupy my time. I've started a handful of posts, but they all get too serious and heavy, so I leave the drafts to think about later when I'm feeling light again. That's been my pattern for quite some time now. There's one out there from March titled Procrastination. I don't remember what it's about, and I always mean to click on it to figure out what I was trying to spit out…but inevitably I put it off for another time.

Self-fulfilling prophecy right there, my friends!

My blog turned seven years old last month. I've been more reluctant to publish in the last few years, but I love that my life has been chronicled from innocent goofiness, to loss, to illness, to aloofness. It's an eloquent sequence that I could not have captured in one place because I needed my voice to change in the process.

Of all the gems of wisdom my mother shared with me, one echoes in my head more than others: everybody has a story. I like thinking about the stories, thinking of myself in those stories, and examining how I would feel if they were my stories. Along the way, I landed in my own.

I started blogging to keep in touch with family. At the time, I had been living 1,200 miles from home. The early stuff is very rough, and I am embarrassed just reading those entries…but they were geared toward a specific audience who wanted to feel like they were part of my day-to-day life. It was an inane, one-sided conversation.

I also remember struggling with what I could write that wouldn't offend anybody ever. The heavy censorship I placed on myself crippled me for awhile. I got over that fear with time. I don't think I'm particularly offensive anyway, but I'm such a little goody two-shoes—seriously, it's sickening.

As I said, eventually I got over the fear of stating that I think low carb diets are ridiculous and that I didn't particularly care for meat. Sorry if you were offended. (Go ahead, roll your eyes.) I had just been through a major transformation while living so far away from my family, and diet and clean living was/is something of a major fascination for me. I lived and breathed macronutrients and micronutrients. I ate that stuff up—pun most certainly intended. I had a lot of silly opinions that were very important at the time.

The first year of blogging was a very manual process. The site was a simple, hard-coded, static page. At the end of every month, I would save the index file with a unique file name, then save the blank copy of the index file so I could start writing for the next month (that's back when I published something every single month—usually multiple times each month…total Bizzaro World, right?). Then I went in and edited the archive page to add the latest month. Wow, I am exhausted just typing all that out. I had a picture page then, too. I suppose it was my Facebook page before Facebook existed—I like taking pictures, but pictures aren't very important now that I'm living close to home again (so they're gone).

Ooh, but I got a new haircut and low lights yesterday! (Ignore the paleness. See first paragraph: had major surgery less than two weeks ago.)

In 2005, I had enough with all of the hard-coding and the blog was switched over to a software that would store all entries to a database for archival automatically. At the time, I was married to a PHP/MySQL programmer, and the decision to use an open source software was a no-brainer. I even had someone in my pocket to install Serendipity for me!

Blogging is so easy today. I think, when I am old and gray, I will say that one of the greatest developments that I have seen over the span of my lifetime was the explosion of social media. Once upon a time, a person actually had to buy a domain and know HTML at the very least. Now, sites offer blogging profiles as an assumed service free-of-charge. I am excited that so many more people have the opportunity to be heard. Guys, that's pretty damn cool.

I don't think I write to be heard…not at the forefront anyway. I write to salve hurts, to take a photograph with words, and to remember all the charming little moments of life that are so easily forgotten when things get rough. By the end of 2005, the tone of my writing changed.

But then, the tone of my life had changed as well. I bled across the keyboard of my laptop for most of 2006.

That's not to say that there were not happy moments (there were many). Quite simply, my life had new dimensions that I needed to explore. I was feeling more than I ever cared to, and I had to clean out my wounds before they would heal properly (they have).

And what's left of the rubble in that procrastination draft? I miss writing. I miss looking for the entertaining parts of my day that I can "embellish" into a feature-length story.

I say that I started this blog for family, but really I started it for my mother because she missed me terribly. For the longest time, she was my only reader. Then she found it humorous enough that she spread the word. I think that's been part of my hang up: who is left to read now that Mom is gone?

I am always surprised when someone comments on a post because I don't know why anyone would hang around here when I have been so inconsistent. I stopped looking at website traffic eons ago…but apparently some of you are still out there. Thank you for caring enough to share my life and stop by for a visit now and then. I think I've got more family out there than I realize.

One of these days, I really will take a look at that Procrastination draft. Maybe tomorrow. More to come…

A mini face-lift for LauraLore! I think I have caught and updated all of the old styles from the CSS, but time will tell. I decided I wanted to change the design oh, about an hour ago. I guess gone are the days that I would stress about a design and spend days playing with a duplicate (hidden) version of the site before going live. What fun is that anyway? This feels much more in the way of a devil-may-care attitude, and I am thinking it just may sufficiently take care of my spontaneity quota for February!

Sigh…

Yes, I know I've been neglecting you again, dear blog. I've been at this thing for over five years now. I remember hard-coding everything in the first several versions, but then the archives just got too cumbersome to handle manually. In a time when I was more "techie" than I am now (I don't think I will ever forget the hyphen's HTML entity code), and married to a PHP programmer, I found an open source weblog system called Serendipity. The site basically runs itself now—so much so, I can go weeks without even updating! Whoa. Actually, I really do love weblogging, and I hope that one of these days things will settle down enough for me to write for fun again.

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I am officially "sterile" now (unofficially, before). I had surgery two weeks ago, and while I was confident that I was making the most unselfish and ethical choice, the day before surgery was very emotional for me. I returned home from work to find a clean home scented with cinnamon, my favorite meal, and a fresh pumpkin pie…these are a few of my favorite things. Nick left work early to put together the surprise for me. The day of surgery, I was given a gown that fills with hot air—heavenly! After I came out of the anesthesia, I had a bag of ice in a place that wasn't all that heavenly.

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I am having difficulties finding time to run with my current class. I ran the first time post-op last week and it went relatively well (though I was in no mood to push it with speed). With daylight savings time, I'm rather ready for bed by the time I get home from work, too! It's dark enough!

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Tuesday after work, we stopped at Great Dane for one last happy hour with one of my favorite beers: pumpkin spice ale. The tap was not working properly, spitting and sputtering and making a downright mess of our pint glasses. So, the bartender poured a pitcher to let the head settle and charged us for pints—sweet. See all these plans that interfere with my running schedule!?

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Sophie got her bum shaved today. I love long-haired cats. They are so beautiful, but oh so much work! She got two lion cuts last summer, and it was the first summer that she didn't spend panting as she crossed the room. We'll let her keep her hair for the colder months, but something has to be done about that butt.

Poor thing wet herself in her carrier during the ride to the groomer's. I lifted her out of the carrier (the groomer wanted no part of it, understandably) and walked her to her "suite". I couldn't stand the smell of myself in the car (again, understandably), and Nick took off his sweatshirt so that I could strip off the soiled clothing without riding in the car naked. Besides issues with decency, it's frickin' cold!

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Well, I guess I have put off writing my essay on Wal-Mart's initiatives as outlined in their 2009 financial statement long enough. I'm a hobbyist writer and find distance education too writing intensive. How do normal people survive? If only essays could be on things that interest me (like the evolution of foods on a stick, for instance), and I could use the word "it" without caring about number agreement—and run-on sentences should be allowable expressions of a thought that just does not want to die. Really, proper grammar is overdone. Now someone who is a little hyphen-heavy (and even knows the HTML entity code!), now that someone is interesting—someone I'd like to know!

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Over and out.

Waiting: the thief of youth. My young life always about what was going to happen next, never what was happening at the moment.

I renewed my domain this morning, when I vividly remember purchasing it three years ago to replace the website that carried my ex-husband's name. Three years ago...wow. What a different place I was in then. Just learning to live again, wishing Mom's Cancer away, and figuring out if there was anything I was excited to wait for.

Dark days.

I became a prolific blogger, often publishing twice a day. I've always written my way through the hard times. I remember the waiting then, waiting for the ache in my heart to lessen, waiting for the outlook to brighten, waiting for life to go back to the way I was comfortable with it being. Writing filled the overwhelming emptiness of the wait.

My blogging has fallen by the wayside in recent years. Not that the art is not the same faithful friend that it has always been, but rather that I no longer feel like I am empty. I am not waiting. I have now arrived at the stage in my life where I am living.

Last week, I finished my associate's degree. I have two more years to finish the bachelor's program before I tackle the next level. I finished with a four-point-oh. I had a work review with my manager earlier in the week, and he told me that I will go far—that he did not know me well enough to be certain, but that I seemed driven to succeed at all costs.

That caught me. I do not deal in absolutes. At all costs? No...but at most. I am fortunate to have learned early in life, albeit the hard way, how to prioritize and use whatever time I have to accomplish what I want to accomplish. I regret the time I wasted mourning the death of my former life in the fall of 2005. I did not see the opportunities before me, only those lost. The wasted time of waiting, indeed…

Ignoring the fact that I have almost no free time at all (and when I do, I usually dedicate it to something truly needy such as an overlarge laundry pile), I think I blog less simply because I no longer need a witness or someone to substantiate my claims of a brighter tomorrow. Tomorrow will be whatever it will be, but today is what I can change.

I was tired of waiting for that elusive something that would fix everything…especially when the girl in mirror seemed more than capable of turning things around. And lookie-there: she did. Yes, I was a different person when I decided to chronicle my lore. I wanted someone to enjoy, someone to approve, or maybe just someone to care.

With that sad little door shut, I suppose I should warn you that I will be here and there for the next four years with mundane drivel about my chubby cat, pesky significant other, or exasperating family (all of whom I love beyond words) sprinkled with dull tidbits of my forays through Finance. Now, now, hold that excitement in.

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HAH! I just realized that the title may be a touch misleading with the recent election. I won't say much on that subject but to tell you that for the first time in, hmm, maybe eight years, I woke Wednesday morning with a lighter weight on my shoulders.