And here I thought it was hard breaking the blogging habit. It was hard breaking the blogging habit. But you know what's been even harder? Getting back to it. It's like the longer I stayed away, the easier it was.

Especially when... um... well, when...

Okay, I have a confession to make. I actually ended my fast-from-unnecessary-internet-usage just over two weeks ago. Okay, almost two-and-a-half weeks ago. And even though I have continued during that time to neglect my blog, I have been consistently...

um...

well, I've been... on facebook.

I know, I know. *hanging head in shame* My faithful bloggy friends sit and patiently wait, and I am off running around with... you know, the "other" thing.

Yeah, you can say it. Philanderer.

I really did take a break from internet-- blogging, facebook, everything. I really did need to. And I really intended to blog again as soon as I broke my fast. I didn't think I could really stay away that long. I've never been able to before.

But the habit had been broken, and when I went to pick it up again, I was momentarily distracted. (It was a really long moment.) Because... well... it was so easy to just pop back into facebook. And I figured I'd pop back into blogging the next day or so, but I didn't.

Because facebook is so easy and brainless, whereas blogging is a lot like work.

You know, like, thoughts pop into my head-- little witty one-liners... okay, yeah, you know me better than that... little witty 12-liners is more like it. Anyway, little thoughts pop into my head, and previously I'd think, "Huh. I should blog that." And then I'd go, "Nah, too short for a blog post, never mind." And then I'd simply set the thought aside (yeah, as if) or my brain would start elaborating on it to turn it into a blog post, and I'd start writing and rewriting it in my head, and by the time I actually had time to sit down and get it into written words, I'd either (a) have forgotten it, (b) be too tired to write it, or (c) be up until 1:30 am getting it onto my blog.

Still. Get thoughts onto my blog I did, at least a couple-three times a week, usually. Because I needed that writing fix.

That was then. This is now. Now what happens is, little thoughts pop into my head. I go log into facebook, bang them out as a "status update", read new updates from friends, log out, and go back to whatever I was doing. Or I hold the thought until I get computer time, I actually remember it because my brain hasn't bloggicized it to death, and when I get a little free time, I log in and post it.

Three minutes, and I get my writing fix. Quick, easy, and virtually brainless.

And then if it's night and I'm tired, I bomb around facebook reading friends' pages and then play Bejeweled Blitz a time or three or twenty-nine and get to bed at 1:30 am anyway.

Sad, I know. Faithless, I know. And my foray into the world of facebook was bad, bad timing. Because if I hadn't had facebook there waiting for me when I ended my break, I most certainly would not have been able to stay away from blogland for this long.

So there you have it. I will await my court-martial.

But I have missed blogging. Really, I have. I am not in love with my mistress facebook. I have very mixed feelings about her it, in fact. It's fun and easy, and it's been a nice way to keep in touch with friends & relatives. I've even been "facebooking" with a long-lost, never-really-knew cousin, which has been really cool. But in many ways, facebook does not hold a candle to blogging. It's kind of... shallow might be a good way of putting it. There's a genuineness and a comeraderie among bloggers that really isn't there so much on facebook, at least not that I have seen. Although facebook is supposed to be all about "connecting", blogging actually seems to be better for building relationships. Maybe it's because bloggers write, and in doing so we share ourselves with each other.

One thing I do know-- when I posted here that I was taking a blogging break because of "family issues", I got bazillion genuine, caring comments. I am still getting them to this day. When I posted something similar on facebook, among people I actually know or am related to "in real life", I got zilch. Not that I was fishing for comments, but it was kind of hard not to notice the discrepancy. I actually ended up removing that post from my facebook page, because the lack of any response to it made me feel stupid about it. Apparently one doesn't say words like "family issues" on facebook.

Or whatev.

And so that naturally brings up the question that you all are wondering about: Are the family issues resolved?

Nope.

But as Jesus once said, "Family issues you will always have with you, but bloggy friends you will not always have." Or something like that.

Okay, that isn't what He said, and I shouldn't misquote Jesus. Perhaps if I were more reverent, I wouldn't have family issues. On the other hand, if I didn't have family issues, perhaps I would be more reverent, so round and round it goes. I'm in a mood that way. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling really rebellious and listened to Chicago's Greatest Hits on the way to church instead of praise & worship music. See?-- irreverent. But let's not go there.

Anyway. This has been a long rambling post about nothing in particular, which seems to me like a great way to get back into the blogging habit. Really, it was the only way I could do it. Every time I started trying to come up with a post, I'd give up and get lazy and go get on... oh, never mind.

So I'm back, I think, although I'll let you know right now that I am probably going to be really sporadic this month. I have two --yes, TWO-- kids graduating and all the accompanying hoopla, and there is stuff to be done, and more stuff to be done, and stuff that should have been done already but isn't. Not to mention homeschooling. And family stuff. So we shall see.

But I'm going to start catching up on reading my favorite blogs, and I'm sure that will help get me back into the bloggy swing of things even if I don't have much time to write. So yes, I will be here.

I am still rambling. that's because I have yet to come up with a good ending for this post. Must I? I think I'll just, you know, end it.

Like that.

It's good to be back.

Thank you, O Anonymous Kindred Brain, for taking part in my little puzzler! I was beginning to feel, you know, rejected or something.

Now please tell me who you are! I really must know who was (a) weird or (b) kind enough to actually play along with me. Besides, Anonymous comments keep me awake at night wondering. (Not really. The whole not-knowing thing deeply disturbs me for about two minutes and then I go on to other things. And then I keep on coming back to it and wondering, wondering, wondering... but I don't actually lose sleep over it.)

I do know who you aren't. Because I have gone through all the comments on my last many posts trying to find an IP number that matches this one, and alas, I have come up empty-handed.

(Why no, I'm not obsessive; why ever would you ask such a thing?)

I was, however, able to identify a couple other recent Anonymice ("Anonymouses" just didn't look right) during my Great IP Adventure. Didn't figure out this one, though, although it's pretty close to the four IP numbers logged by one of my blog friends. (Yes, four numbers from one person. How the heck many computers do you have, JJ?)

Back to the Puzzler... Anonymous Kindred Brain was correct, not that any of the rest of you care.   As for the additional questions posed by AKB, I will just say that Fuzz is the one with the, um, "infamous" birthday, which means, according to the family info given on the sidebar (which is true to the best of my knowledge, and I should know), that the birthday occuring on the 23rd is first not only in date but in year as well.

Oh, and I was gratified by all the comments on my previous post showing that, although my Data Brain apparently makes me somewhat of an oddball, there are plenty of fellow bloggers out there who are similarly beset with Editor Brain.  (If only all bloggers were. *Sigh* But that really is another post entirely.)

Huh. I must admit to being deeply dismayed and direly disappointed at the devastating dearth of discussion regarding my previous post. It really wasn't all that difficult.

Apparently the things my brain comes up with are beyond anyone else's range of comprehension. Or beyond anyone else's range of caring, which is far more likely.

Have I ever mentioned that I knew from the day Cheez was born that she would miss being able to vote in the 2008 Presidential election by eight measly days?

Apparently I have what my cousin calls a "data brain", which is why I can remember the middle names and birthdates of people I barely know and haven't seen for a couple decades, but I can't remember to put my laundry in the dryer. It might also explain why I find it irritating when people equate zip code with jurisdiction and say they live in one town when they in fact live in another, or why it annoys me for parents to say a child is six-and-a-half when he is really six-and-one-third. And don't even get me going on apostrophe abuse. (I know apostrophes aren't technically data. I have an "editor brain" as well.)

Anyway. My apologies for bothering the cyberworld with musings about half-birthdays. I will do my best in future posts to pretend to be normal.

It occured to me the other day that, while Spaz' & Fuzz' birthdays are 19 days apart, their half-birthdays are only 16 days apart.

(It has probably occured to you that it takes a very strange person to even notice half-birthdays in the first place, let alone go around thinking about them. I have no argument with you there.)

So my riddle for you is: Given the fact that one of them was born on the 23rd, what are Spaz' & Fuzz' birthdays?

Once you have figured that out, you will doubtless be inclined to point out that there is a slight caveat to that 19-16 rule, so I'll add a bonus question: Considering that Fuzz is now 10, how old was she the first time that the 19-16 rule was temporarily suspended?

My inkjet printer/copier/scanner has had issues for several weeks, so when I want to make copies of history maps or grammar pages, I have to trek fifty feet in the frigid March air out to Hubz' shop to make my copies on his fancy-schmancy printer.

My laser printer, on the other hand, is working fine, but the computer it's normally connected to isn't. So rather than hit Print from my comfy chair and have the printer spit out the kids' daily checklists from across the room, I now have to sit at the desk and plug the printer into my laptop.

How much more inconvenient can things possibly get? Life's rough, I tell ya.

(Yes, despite all the interesting and worthwhile posts bobbing around in my brain, this is all you get for today. Sorry.)

So this is one of the hazards of falling asleep while blogging.

I knew that I had been pretty much sawing logs by the time I finished last night's post, so this morning I figured I'd better check to make sure everything was good.  I already knew I'd forgotten to put in the A B See graphic, and it didn't surprise me to realize I'd forgotten to link up.  What did surprise me was finding that I had not one but three new posts up.

Apparently at some point while I was visiting la-la land, I managed to post two of my unfinished entries from the last couple weeks.  Nice, huh?  I promptly removed them upon discovery, but of course those of you who already picked them up via a reader will have them permanently, finished or no.  I don't mind so much about the Bugle of Balaclava one, although it was very obviously unfinished, ending in the middle of a sentence and all.  But the Conversation With My Printer post was one of those stupid ones that I'm not sure would have gotten posted at all, and worse yet, it ends stupidly because it was in fact unfinished, though that is not immediately apparent upon reading it.

Oh well.

Now I fall asleep while blogging, but I used to fall asleep while emailing, and I'd get up in the morning thinking, "Oh no, what did I write?"  The worst thing that ever came of that was that I sent an email to the wrong group of people, but fortunately it was nothing personal. *Whew!*

Chocolate complicates this sleeping-at-computer business even further.  There is a headphone jack at the front of my laptop here that is still plugged with chocolate from a falling-asleep-at-the-computer incident that occured nearly a month ago.  (You know, warm computer plus chocolate stick plus dozing computer operator...)  Good thing I don't use headphones.

Although it is now morning, I'm actually not awake enough yet to come up with a good ending for this post, as I've not yet had coffee or shower.  So, you get what you get.  At least I am coherent, which is more than I was when I was last here.

I hate it when I end up going a whole week without posting.  *Sigh*  Sometimes you blog about life and sometimes you just live it.  The trouble with having a blog is that it can easily become One More Thing to get behind on.  (Or "one more thing upon which to be behind", if you are picky about prepositions not being something one ends sentences with.  I mean, with which one ends sentences.)

Anyway, it's not as though I haven't tried or intended to.  (Sentence-ending preposition alert!  What into with for.)  But you know all that because I've mentioned it before, and if I do one more post about head-blogging and falling asleep at the computer and blah blah, you are going to permanently delete me from your reading list and all that, yes I know, so I'll spare you the litany, and yes I know this is a run-on sentence but it's fun and I'm in a grammatically rebelious mood at the moment.)

Um... what was it I was going to post about about which I was going to post, again?  Oh, I remember.

To top off my already-busy week, this morning I went out shooting birds for two hours in 15-degree weather.  That's commitment, eh?  I've attended classes (my Christmas gift from Hubz) the last 3 Monday evenings, and today was the final session, when my classmates & I got to put our lessons into practice.  It was an opportunity I didn't want to miss.  It isn't often that one gets a chance to shoot birds at a nature center with the full cooperation of the birds' handler, but the real opportunity was that I got to do so with help from a professional shooter.  Of course, the pro (our instructor) shot the birds with a cannon Canon while I shoot with an Olympus, but that made little difference. 

You did NOT think I meant shooting birds with a gun.  Please tell me you didn't fall for that.

I layered up warmly except for my thin gloves; all the better to handle the camera controls.  Or not.  Kinda hard to push buttons and spin dials or even care about doing so when one's fingers are frozen stiff, which was the case about two minutes into our metering session.  I was not the only dumbkopf in that boat, but I was happily rescued by a classmate who'd brought a few extra pairs of thick warm gloves.  While the gloves made it much more difficult to handle the camera, once the metering was done we didn't have to fiddle too much with knobs, and the gloves at least made it possible to remain out there long enough to get some decent shots.  Otherwise I don't think I'd have made it.  The others without sufficient hand covering didn't seem to do too well.

So I was fine while I was out there and once I was back into the lodge to warm up.  It wasn't til I got to my van that I started feeling light-headed and a little faint-- although not so much so that I couldn't drive home.  Even after a little food and a long, hot shower, I still feel wiped out and just a tad delirious.

Not that you'd have noticed the latter by the time you were halfway through the introduction or anything.

After falling asleep about three times just in the process of installing the pics onto my computer, I finally figured it out.  "I bet," I said jokingly to Hubz, "that my long underwear cut off blood flow to my brain."

"Dear," he replied, "you're on the right track, but the circulation to your brain was cut off long before you ever bought long underwear."

I didn't think that was very nice.

And speaking of long underwear and not being nice, earlier in the day he'd joked that long underwear for me really has to be called "short underwear" (a reference to my 5'3" stature and relatively short legs-to-torso ratio).  "No," I said, playing dumb, "it's LONG underwear, see?  It goes all the way down to my ankles."  And I pulled up my pantleg to show the bottom cuff of my pink thermals.  Before he could come up with a smart remark, my 10-year-old interjected, "Hey, look!  Mom's showing us her underwear!"

I really hope that does not get repeated outside of our four walls.

You probably are hoping to see pictures.  (Okay, just pretend you're interested, then.)  Unfortunately, my brain being as it is at the moment, I dare not edit, and even if I had some that needed no editing, I'm too tired to upload them to the net.  You'll have to wait.  (Pretend to be disappointed.)  And yes, I know that means I probably won't end up getting around to it.  I'll try.  I know that, given my past record, "I'll try" means nothing.  (Pretend to still be reading this.)

Oh well.  At least I posted!  And now I get to haul my tired self out again for a sixth straight evening of Go Somewhere Or Do Something.

I have blogged in my head since I was a little kid.  Only I didn't know then that it was blogging.  But God knew.  Before the internet was ever formed, when it was just a speck in Al Gore's eye, even then I was destined to be a blogger.  Or something.

So much to blog about, so little brain with which to do it.

Some of my bloggy friends lament that they haven't had enough to blog about.  That is not the problem here.  The problem is the brain-to-computer connection. 

I have numerous bloggable thoughts rattling around in my noggin which will never see the light of day.  Some have actually been written out in my head ("head-blogs", I call them) and some are just collections of random thoughts that have not gelled into a cohesive or coherent post, but regardless of status, few if any will actually make it onto the computer.

Some make it onto the computer and get halfway finished or even 81.7% finished before I either fall asleep at the keyboard (this happens a lot) or get called away by that thing called life.  Others don't get finished because I sit there and stare at them and cannot come up with the right ending for my thoughts.  Whatever the reason, they sit there unfinished and will sit forever because (a) they are now outdated, (b) I have lost interest, (c) other posts have come along and pushed them out of the way, or (d) I just haven't made up my mind to finish and post them.

This is exciting isn't it?  I've posted these sorts of thoughts before, haven't I?

So anyway, here's what you guys have missed out on lately:

*Christmas pics, including the great Stuff That Hubz Built, Version 08.

*Putting Away Christmas, complete with pictures.

*A great Wordless Wednesday called "The Life Cycle of a Christmas Tree".

*A link to a great (now month-old) post by my cousin Jesse.  (A link.  How hard is it to post a link?  I could have, if I hadn't kept trying to write intros in my brain.)

*Why a Bored And Stir-Crazy Spaz is not a good thing.

*Why homeschooling is even more difficult and disrupted when Hubz, aka Spaz Senior, does not have enough heat or enough work in his shop.  (Hint; he keeps coming into the house.)

*A random ABSee photo meme post of Pipecleaner People, Pajama Pants, and Pepperoni Pizza Pockets.  (I decided to just stick with alphabetical order btw.  Yes, I know you knew I would.)

*Bananagrams.  (You may get that one tomorrow, if I can manage an ABSee post.)

*Musings about our family's current economic crisis and one good result of it and a certain old song that helps to put it all in perspective.  (That one almost got finished and posted on Monday.  Almost.)

*A couple rather humorous quotes from Spaz & Fuzz.

*Hubz' humorous diagnosis (not) of my computer's recent 'issues".

*Musings while driving home from photography class on how easy it is to live life on "Auto".

*A post inspired by a fellow blogger (see, I'm too lazy to even link) on all the stuff I have never done in my life, like owning a DVR or setting foot west of Minneapolis.  (....or painting daisies on a big red rubber ball...)

*Books we read for "school" last fall.

*The history schedule I just wrote up for the next couple months.  (Oh, doesn't that sound horribly exciting?)

*Random comments on IEW and why writing with Spaz sucks up all my energy and why I am not using the recommended fable called "The Salt Merchant and His Ass."

That's just the recent stuff.

Oh, and let's not forget...

*A myriad of life-at-the-WACKOS posts, many beginning with the same thought: "An ADD Mom homeschooling an ADHD kid is SUCH a bad idea."

Which sort of sums up the lack of time & brain cells, I think.

Anyway, I feel better at least getting all that out there.

That's all I got for ya today.  Aren't you just so glad you stopped by to read my incoherent ramblings?

Note to self:

When I start obsessing over the fact that Cheez' Fun Gift is wrapped in red & green while Biz' and Fuzz' are wrapped in blue, and whether the Media Gifts ought to just be called Book Gifts since that is what they all are, and how I should code them all lest I forget which gifts are which four days from now (because heaven forbid that one kid should open a Fun Gift while another is opening a Clothing Gift), and what the Miscellaneous Gifts ought to be called anyway... it's time to just quit wrapping and go to bed.

Still.  I might actually get all my wrapping done before Christmas Eve this year.  Now that would be a noteworthy accomplishment.

Another note to self:

Not the best post here.  Readers deserve better after yet another six-day drought.  What happened to all those clever & interesting headblogs from the past couple weeks?  Go to bed now.