Man Overboard!

Emotional Overload
Yeah, I did it again. What started out as something I really wanted to do — and still is, became a little too much yesterday.

The fury of emotion summoned up in writing about my Mother for two straight days, kind of nailed me to the wall yesterday. Combined with the news of my Uncle John's death, I was a complete mess. I had to shut it down, rather than continue on with the series, which now turns to the subject of my Stepmom, Maxine. At this point, I really have no idea how hard that one will be to write, and I will write it — just not today. I need to turn off the emotions for a couple days at least and give myself time to recover just a bit.

And if you're asking yourself why I devote so much of my blog to subjects that always seem to lay waste to me emotionally, well, y'know that's really a pretty good question. I would have to say the number one reason would be that I started this blog to be just what it is — a place for me to record and relive my memories. I don't know whether or not someone stumbling upon this blog might think my stories melodramatic or even narcissistic, the way I write about my life, but I really don't care. This blog is all about me. I am an emotional person and I make no apologies for it.

However, that being said, I also acknowledge that I too can be my own worst enemy when it comes to allowing myself to feel too much at one time. Such was the case yesterday, and I've decided to take a step back for a few days.

In the meantime...
There are a few minor upgrades that I've been wanting to make to my blog. There are also a couple of utility programs that a few of my friends here in Blogland use that I've been interested in looking into. So I'll be spending the next couple evenings doing that instead of writing. Another thing I've wanted to do now for some time is to create a separate web page that will be an all-inclusive story index to make it easier to navigate my archives. Blogger.com's default archive linking method quite frankly sucks in my opinion. So I'm going to create one of my own.

A little som’som for my friends, yo...
You may have noticed that I've updated my "Faves" link section, which many people generically refer to as a "blogroll" after the blog utility which automates the somewhat awkward task of managing HTML hyperlinks in your template. Personally I enjoy what little opportunity I get to tweak HTML code, so I prefer to do it myself. Besides, I don't like the large and in my opinion, obtrusive “Powered by BlogRolling” link that comes along with it. But that's just me.

However I have decided to shamelessly steal an idea that a few others have employed in their Blogroll, in which they set descriptions of their blog links as ALT or Title tags (that's the geekspeak terminology for the yellow boxes that pop up when your mouse cursor hovers over a link). So if your site is listed here, check out my little message to each of you. Some are serious, some are facetious. They were all written to bring a smile to your face. I hope you like 'em.

But for now...
At the behest of someone who knows me well, and whose opinion I trust, I've decided to just do something light today that hopefully everyone will want to participate in.

Ever the one to whom I look for fun ideas to steal, our favorite bleating-heart blogger, Fleece, recently posted her results from an online personal poll that quite a few others in turn answered and placed on their blogs. I'd like to do something somewhat similar, except I'm going to ask you to choose to answer and talk about one of five questions, the subject of which you hopefully have never discussed on your own blog. You obviously can make yourself anonymous if you'd like, but I'd encourage you to give us a chance to get to know you better.

Give as much info as you care to in answer to one of the following questions:

1.) Talk about your popularity in high school, and the effect it has had on your life in the years since.

2.) What's the one thing you did as a kid, that you never told your parents about?

3.) Whose voice do you hear in your head most often besides your own? Do you listen to it, or ignore it?

4.) Complete this sentence: “In high school I was pretty much considered ‘most likely to [blank].’” How close has it come to being true?

5.) Lay your all-time favorite joke on us — dirty, clean, or in-between!

You can answer as many questions as you'd like (obviously). I know that some of these questions are a bit personal, but hey...just pretend you're me for a little while...

I'm going to leave this up for awhile. I hope a lot of people participate.

I'll be back in the saddle here with the next installment of my “Mom” series in a couple of days. Thanks again to everyone for your tremendous support yesterday. Your comments were embarrassingly generous.

Ciao for now.