At Last!!! Post Number 100!!! How About a Giveaway?

Wow. I can't believe I've reached 100 posts. It seems both quick and also like it should have happened long ago. Starting this blog is one of the best things I've ever done. It may have saved my sanity. Here's my blog story...

We moved to the suburbs about 2 weeks before Rexy was born. Being city dwellers, we only had one car that my DH now had to use to get to work. We lived with that situation for more than 2 1/2 years. That meant that I was stuck at home every day with only a baby to talk to. (you can only force the relatives to stay on the phone for so long.) Of course I loved being with my baby and am lucky to be able to stay home with her. It's the stuck part that got me. Most of my old, city friends worked during the day and the ones that didn't lived 30 minutes away - on a good traffic day. My family all lives 45 minutes or more away - on a good traffic day.

(I know it sounds like we were crazy to live here, but this really was the best choice. We could afford it, for one, and it's generally recognized as a great place to live. Seattle Magazine recently wrote, “Shoreline turns up again – just as it has in the last few years – as a top-value neighborhood. A lauded school system, lots of parks and decent commute times to the city add up to a good family community...” This was in an article that rated our neighborhood number one overall as the best place to live in Western WA.)

I was also not working for the first time (for any signifigant length of time) since my first job started a month after I turned 15yo. I was 41. My last day of work at my very public (I physically interacted with 200-300 people a day and talked to just as many on the phone each day) was also 2 weeks before Rexy was born. Yes, I quit my job, bought a house, moved, and had a baby all within about 6 weeks - talk about life changes! Anyway, suffice it to say, I was going crazy being essentially by myself every day. On top of that, I knew something was up with Rexy but I didn't yet know that it was Autism. I was worried about her lack of speech. I was depressed, I was lonely, I gained about 900 pounds.

(Gina Smith)

Then I discovered blogs. Beautiful, lyrical, sweet, friendly blogs! What a world! What a life! What amazing people! And they liked what I liked! It was a revelation. It all started when I started researching ATCs on eBay...

(Jan Thomason)

I was researching my new love, altered art, on eBay and I noticed that all the art I liked had a little note at the bottom of the listings that said "proud member of ZNE." Hmmm. What was that? I finally came across a listing with a web address for ZNE and lo and behold! A whole community of like-minded artists! Then I found the groups on eBay. And the groups on Yahoo. All of a sudden there were hundreds (if not thousands) of people who liked what I liked. As the days went by and I read more postings in the discussion forums of eBay, Yahoo, and ZNE, I noticed more and more people talking about blogs.

(Suzan Buckner)

Blogs? Weren't those just journals for techies? So I started clicking on links and you know what happened next. That link led to another link, which led to another link, which led to another link...suddenly it was two hours later and I was immersed in whole new world! It was love at first sight. I could never have imagined that so much beauty lived online. Could you?

It took me 6 months to start my own. December 16, 2006

Why such a long delay? I dont' know. I think I worried about posting the "wrong" thing. I think I thought I should have a more exciting life. I perseverated over every post at first. Wrote it, rewrote it, wrote it one more time....Silly. I was certainly not that critical of everyone else's blog. I was, and still am, happy to read whatever anyone writes. If you want to share it, I want to read it.

(Pam Carriker)

And here I am today. A happy blogger; proud - and delighted - to be a part of such a beautiful, diverse community. Most of all, I am grateful. Grateful to you brilliant, lovely, kind, generous, and brave readers and fellow bloggers who put yourselves out there in your blogs and in your art - day after day - sharing yourselves with the rest of us. You set a fine example, one you can be proud of. If I could give each and every one of you a big, huge gift, I would.

(Lorraine Reynolds)

I can't do that, but I can give one gift - so I will. I will put the name of every person who comments on this post in the next two weeks into a hat. On October 10th I will draw the name of the winner. The winner will receive an original piece of my art. And this is it:

Friendship in Our Hearts

The larger, cut-out words read, "Sing to me of friendship, laughter, and love." and the hand written words on the edges both read, "I remember my first friend and my last friend equally well. No matter what now keeps us apart - or unites us - we will always have that friendship in our hearts." It is an 11" x 14" acrylic and paper on canvas. The colors are magenta, pink, brown, and aqua. I painted it specifically for this giveaway.

(slightly larger detail)

In this post I have included links to some of the lovely blogs that I have come across in the last two years. Each picture (that isn't mine) is a link to that person's blog and each link in the body of the post - each underlined word - is a seperate link to a different blog.

Note: Each picture here is of artwork that is copyrighted solely to each artist.