5 posts tagged “blog”

This morning, I noticed that someone from Riyadh had looked at my latest blog post.  This is what the blog looks like for them.

ArabicBlog

2 comments

This is the longest time between posts since I started blogging here in late 2006.  Back then I was newly-married and had just moved to Costa Rica.  Travis and I were on a kind of extended honeymoon.  We explored by day (when Travis wasn't working) and went out by night - the typical expat thing.  I miscarried and we went on a consolatory vacation to the Dominican Republic where I was charmed to have one of the local guides talk about "Sir Francis Drake, the English pirate."  In my anglo-centric history lessons, he appeared a great explorer.

Things are very different now.  We live in my home town in our very own house.  I've barely even left town, let alone the country since we got here.  I'm travelled out for the moment, although I'm still collecting places to go (Norway, Jordan, Tunisia, Greece, back to France and Spain...)  It's Saturday night and instead of going out I'm sitting in my dining room listening to spring rain hit the window.  I'm someone's mother, which still surprises and delights me after almost two years. 

Life is unexpected, but good.

Is it just my little corner of Vox that's gone quiet, or are there fewer people posting regularly on Vox these days?  

I have three half-written posts waiting to be finished and made public, but I've run out of words.  My life is busy, but domestic, full of things that don't seem like they'd be that interesting for anyone else, even though they're absorbing for me.  Things like my troubles getting plumbers and plasterers to turn up when they say they will.  The buggers come, look at what needs done, make soothing upbeat noises, promise to return in a few days, then don't show up.  Funny way to run a business it seems to me.

Or like the weather and my last power bill, which was so huge that I thought there'd been a misprint.  I love my heat pump/air conditioning unit but it would seem that it's a power hog. 

Or like my new pilates venture.  I'm having one on one sessions with a dauntingly perky and wonderfully encouraging pilates instructor/physiotherapy lecturer/physical coach.  So far it consists of small movements that make me surprisingly stiff and tired.  I feel taller and straighter already.  Last time I was there, I sat down beside the client Cindy was seeing after me.  He was an overwieght guy who looked very nervous because it was his first time.  He told me that he'd been at the pool and Cindy had come over to him and said that he looked like he could use some help.  "So here I am."  I found that an oddly touching story.  Because Cindy had been bold and kind enough to reach out to him even though that has the potential to go horribly wrong (what if he'd been offended?).  And because he'd trusted her enough to put himself in a new and scary situation on the basis of a chance encounter.  

What's the most obsessive-compulsive thing you do in a normal day?
Submitted by Nikki. 

Checking to see if Neil Gaiman has updated his blog.  I love the way he writes about his kids and colleagues/friends; I'm curious as hell about his wife because he hardly ever mentions her; I enjoy the glimpses he gives of the life of a busy, insanely productive, and very famous writer; and I like the oddities he links to.  I check his blog several times a day.  I also check Wil Wheaton's site, Go Fug Yourself (they're so mean that I just can't resist), and a couple of political blogs - maybe I need to get out more!