Archive for 2010

My life almost ended.

No Comments
Posted 22 Mar 2010 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category please and thank you, The Hubs

For 36 hours this weekend, good ol’ Bessy, aka my four year old iBook stopped working. It shut itself down, and then refused to power up again. We’ve neglected to unplug it from the power plug so the battery was crap, but no reason to not turn on. I panicked. Not only because I had pictures on there that were not backed up of Abby’s first date with rice cereal, but OMGINEEDMYLAPTOP. Seriously. I know I’m addicted to the likes of Twitter and Google Reader, but I had no idea how much. I attempted to turn it on numerous times to no avail. I started imagining how much it was going to suck to go another $1800 into debt because Bessy wouldn’t fire up. And another $350 or so on the Adobe Web Premium (thanks educational discount). And then, randomly…I gave it one last try before using it as a doorstop, and it magically turned on. Only one other time can I remember being so relieved, and then was when John the Midwife announced Abby was out and GOOD GOD I no longer had an inside baby. So, yeah – that’s why I was absent over the weekend.

All kidding aside, there’s a serious event taking place early tomorrow morning. The hubs’ mother is going in for brain surgery to remove a tumor that’s pushing in the olfactory area of her brain. She’s lost her sense of smell forever, but they need to remove the tumor to ensure that she doesn’t lose anything else. It’s pretty scary. Luckily they can access the area through her nasal cavity rather than having to pull her skull back (::shudder::) so her recovery time will be minimal at 6 weeks. Also, more than likely the tumor is not cancerous, but of course they won’t know for sure until they do a biopsy.

The hubs is getting up at 4am tomorrow to pick up his folks and drive them to the University hospital, where he’ll spend the day with his dad, waiting for his mom to endure the 6 hour surgery.

Thoughts, prayers, good juju – whatever you have to spare would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, hi there.

1 Comment
Posted 15 Mar 2010 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail, The Hubs

Yeah, sorry about that. Kinda disappeared there for a bit. I got caught up with my BFF visiting and a new friend moving to town. Plenty of trips to IKEA and near massive amounts of beer consumption were had. But all was well.

Anyway, Abby is cute as can be and made sure to make up for lost time with her Auntie A by blabbering all weekend long. She’s also managed to find her feet. However, she’s struggling to get them into her mouth, because…well…that’s where everything goes, of course.

And also internets, the weather here in the MPLS has been GORGEOUS. Auntie A (who will now be known as “Sister Wife” only because we made a lot of people confused over the weekend by referring to each other as such), the hubs and I walked around NE for a while, browsing shops and giving Abby a chance to try out the stroller sans car seat. It worked, for the most part. She was a tad slouchy, but she made it work. Today is the second day of having windows open in our home and it is SO NICE. I know that by publicly proclaiming my love for sunshine and fresh air that it will more than likely snow tomorrow. I’m talking to you, Mother Nature. Don’t let me down. I give a mean side-eye.

Today, I’m working my way through a mountain of laundry and attempting to clean the house a bit. The Momma is coming to stay with us next week and although she insists I don’t worry about these things, OF COURSE I am. Also…the sunshine that’s finally gracing us is also doing a really good job at highlighting all the dust and kitty tumbleweed littering our floors. Gross. So, I’m trying to take care of that. I’m considering “bjorning” Abby and vacuuming. It will be a sight to see.

Hey Look! BIG UGLY TEARS.

No Comments
Posted 11 Mar 2010 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category motherhood

This is so well written. Anyone who is a parent to a child of any age will more than likely shed a tear (or thirty if you’re PMSing like me) while watching this.

Spring cleaning.

No Comments
Posted 11 Mar 2010 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category Abigail

Some of you awesome readers are having difficulty with my blog being a jerk. I still do not understand why the right side is giving some people problems and others none at all.

Regardless, I’ve been wanting to make a change, and it seems like now is the time.

I’ve owned bloggedbliss.com for quite a while without doing anything with it.

I think, my friends, I may be getting a divorce from Blogger, asking for a get and briskly running into the arms of WordPress. And serving all of you from the more formitable bloggedbliss.com.

That’s right, time to get your panties in a twist. I’m hoping it’s awesome.

I may have some time this weekend to work on things, but of COURSE I’ll let you know when stuff is happening.

In the meantime, I’ll have you know Abby is perfecting her Shakira imitation skills. No, not belly dancing, but using the Shakira yodel to get her point across. You know how she kind of goes into Pee-Wee laugh voice when she sings? Like, in Hips Don’t Lie when she sings “baby when you talk like that” it’s kind of a weird, like vocal thingy? Alright, maybe you don’t hear it. But anyway, Abby does this now. All the time. It’s her new way of talking to us…like Shakira.

A history. And…to giveaway, or not to giveaway?

11 Comments
Posted 10 Mar 2010 — by Mrs. Jenna
Category baby business, not so much, wedding whatnots

I’ve been blogging for a long time. My first blog post was back in 2000, where I basically bitched about writing papers for college and apologized for not blogging more. Then I started again in 2004 and ranted about things that bugged me. There was no such thing as “followers.” People didn’t subscribe to RSS. I didn’t care if I had readers because I was doing it for myself.

In November of 2006 I decided to start blogging about our wedding planning since the majority of my friends and family lived elsewhere. Blogged Bliss was born. After the wedding was over, my good friend A inspired me to keep the blog going, and it turned into my outlet for everything. An outlet of course, that my friends and family could read.

February 2009 and we’re trying to get knocked up. I start a new blog. A secret blog where I can complain about how long it’s taking us to get it done. And then I get pregnant in the first month. Trying to conceive blog turns into pregnancy blog. Secret turns public. Over time, I acquire around 70 followers and around 100 RSS subscribers. Then I have Abby and pregnancy blog makes no sense anymore, so I move all my posts and my bad little self back to Blogged Bliss.

So there, a brief history.

Now, getting to my main point. My moral struggles with blogging, followers and giveaways.

My blog now has just shy of 50 followers and a bunch of RSS subscribers. (Where did that 20 go from my other blog? Come back!) Anyway, I obviously would like for more readers. I think most every blogger’s dream is for someone to find their blog and pay them billions of dollars in ad revenue so that they don’t have to work anymore. Right? Some bloggers are just lucky enough to have enough readers where companies send them items to review and or give away and that’s totally awesome. I hope I get to that point some day.

But some bloggers have giveaways with items they purchase on their own…and to enter the giveaway you must follow the blog, vote for them at either of the sites on the right or stand on their heads or something. That’s fine for the people that do that. I don’t think that I could. Gaining “followers” based solely on something you bought to give away seems like cheating. I want people to read my blog because they like what I have to say, not because of the off-chance I might give away some fancy-ass diaper bag.

Of course, these blogs then have eleventy billion followers and top ten listings in the “Top” blogs. They make me a little sad when I see my little following, but I feel better knowing that my peeps are there because they wanna be. They won’t ignore most of my posts because the word “Giveaway” isn’t in the title.

Don’t get me wrong, if hell freezes over tomorrow and some company was all – “DOOODE. Here’s this awesome toy we want you to review and we’ll send you one to giveaway to your readers,” of course I’d do it. Because it was genuine. I just don’t agree with the other practice.

To each their own, though.

What are your thoughts on giveaways?

← Previous Entries
Next Entries →