A New Year, A Blank Slate

To everybody who stayed loyal during this latest blog drought*:  thank you!  An end-of-the-year corollary to the mathematical equation that rules my life has been discovered: 

Brisk walk + Strong strong coffee (squared) - Kids in school = 

Big fat zero blog entries (and writing in general).

To commemorate the new year, I should probably immortalize a list of resolutions I probably won't keep (lose ten pounds, draft the novel I've had on the back burner since Elder Girleen's birth, meaningfully augment my social life, have a house as glossy as house porn while simultaneously maintaining a satisfying and lucrative creative life, recycling more, spending less, and so on and so on...) but the girleens are still home from school, and the playing-together-quietly timebomb is ticking down, so alas for both me and you, I can't.  

But the New Year is a time for ruminating after all, so I'll try to squeeze in a little mental cud-chewing before I have to go break up a fight between siblings:

The world is full of internet and blog naysayers fond of tossing out a line that goes like this —  online interface is mostly just self-absorbed, one-sided  navel-gazing; as prime an example of fiddling while Rome burns as ever there was.  

I won't argue the validity of such a position, but five months of doing this has made me happily aware that  friendships formed online are, in fact, legitimate friendships, and besides that, the internet isn't bad at serving as glue for relationships that, due to distance, motherhood, and time constraints, have been in need of tending.  

So, as the new year starts, I'm a convert.

*Mainly The Husband, who checks in a couple of times a day, even if he knows I'm... like, off at the dentist or something.  Which I'm afraid says a lot more about the compulsive nature of the internet than it does about the deathless nature of my prose.