I don’t have much to say. I will say that I am one of the few people who feels as much sadness for the shooter as I do for the children and their families. There is a big crack in our social support system and we need to fix it, not patch it or ignore it.
I have told my own girls that I love them about 3,000 times this weekend. I will give love to them and fill them up, no matter what.
Love is the answer 99% of the time, but when it doesn’t work, what do we do then?
Today we had dinner with good friends of ours, Jon and Colleen (who my clevernesters of old know as my old blogging partner) and the conversation turned to matters of social media. We pondered the pros and cons, wondering about the long term societal effects. Jon, who is an active blogger, tweeter and author, said that he sees tweets as a form of performance art. I completely agree!
It takes a lot of mental work to make a short sentence interesting to a broad audience. You can write a paragraph on facebook which complains about the crappy driver in front of you, or you can show your subscribers why this crappy driver was worth sharing with them. You can create a common experience. You can log in and say, “I’m having a terrible day staying here with my kids in the rain and they won’t stop fighting.” Or you can bring all of the other people who are also lonely and on the edge of running screaming into the sunset to your crazy house for a minute so you all feel less alone. I enjoy the art of writing small, accessible pieces which mirror my life and entertain my friends.
I have been more active on facebook than twitter, and both more than here on the blog, mostly because I get more responses on facebook than anywhere else. I’m a super extrovert who loves to see that my words were received. But I am really reconsidering where I want to spend my efforts writing. We have owned this domain and the content for 5 years. It’s not going anywhere. One day facebook or twitter could evaporate and all of my photos, thoughts and work developing my writing voice could walk away with the platform. Can I break my addiction to comments and focus on writing here? If I link to facebook and twitter so that I can keep my writing here, where it is mine and it’s safe, would the link bring the readers with it? Would I become irrelevant if I don’t use the corporate social media that is so easy for everyone to automatically get my content? Is facebook the wallmart of self publishing? How many more questions can I fit in this paragraph?
You think I would be working on my handmade Christmas presents full time. But you’d be mistaken. I spent my free time making these adorable cupcake toys while Cressida ate lunch.
They are made with brown fleece I got out of the remnant section. I cut a 9 inch by 2 inch strip of fleece and put a long bead of hot glue down the strip at an angle and folded the edge over. Then I rolled it into a  cupcake shape, fattest edge in the middle, moving out to the narrower edge. I covered the bottom of the roll with hot glue and stuffed it into a mini paper cupcake wrapper and squeezed a bead of hot glue around between the wrapper and the “cupcake.” After it was all gluey and my fingers were getting a bit uncomfortably warm I stuffed the whole thing into my mini-cupcake pan and put something heavy on top to hold it in until the hot glue dried.
I made a half dozen of the little guys. They’re great stocking stuffers, but I ruined the surprise by making them in front of Cress, so they went straight into the kitchen set toy bin.
It’s cool that I fudged the surprise. I’m making a hand knit poncho for Liv, knitted leg warmers for Elise and a koala applique shirt for Cress, so the handmade goodness is still going to flow. Â I’ll be sure to post pictures as I finish projects!