So far no one else seems to have contracted our tummy bug, so for that I am extremely grateful to God. Today was a day of laundry, blogging and allergy doctor appointments.
Laundry
This morning I took a nap and then in a fit of energy decided we needed to strip all the beds of blankets, sheets, mattress protectors and pillow cases.
Now I have a lot of beds in my house. 9 actually including all the crib mattresses and the pack n play. Which makes for a large pile of bedding.
Looking at this pile, the kids all ran to far end of the house, shouted “go”, then raced the length of the house jumping into the pile of laundry like it was a pile of leaves. Okay kids, jump into the dirty bedding laundry, whatever. They then repeated this at least 20 times. Kids.
Blogging
In between loads of laundry I spent a fair amount of time working on my blogging. I spent some time editing the colors and fonts. After that I started working on my course that I bought a few weeks ago called Elite Blog Academy 3.0. It is helping me focus on improving my blog in a structured and organized way.
I spent kind of a ridiculously long time working on my tag line. If you will notice, where it used to say “Journey of a Young Widowed Mom”, it now says “Enhance Your Mom Life Today and Prepare for Tomorrow”.
While I am writing about all the things from a widow lensed perspective, I’ve realized that I don’t seem to be writing just to widowed moms. I have gotten quite a bit of feedback from non-widowed moms who find my posts encouraging, inspirational, and helpful.
I’m enjoying my daily post writing exercise as it helps me see what themes are recurring in my life. So eventually when I find myself going off on a tangent, I will probably dedicate a full blog post to that topic and give it a little more depth. Then I’ll reference those posts into my update posts that I then publish less often than daily.
After coming up with my current tag line, I then wrote the following “elevator pitch” for what my blog is supposed to accomplish:
“My blog troubleshoots parenting struggles, promotes self care, inspires living life to the fullest, and encourages preparing for both tomorrow and emergencies.”
I think those 4 themes cover most of what I want to write about and seem like they would all appeal to many mom readers. Which might mean it is too broad, but I guess I’m going with it for now.
I originally started this blog just over two years ago thinking I would be writing more about survival and prepping topics as that was an interest of mine at the time. It is still an interest of mine, but once Kraston was diagnosed, my life pretty much went into Survival Mode. My blog has subsequently meandered around dipping into brain cancer topics and then a few widowhood posts.
I know many moms spend time in Survival Mode for various reasons and various lengths of time. So it makes sense to me to cover both topics, but addressing preparedness in a mainstream way, not a Doomsday Prepping sort of way. Preparing for natural disasters such as tornadoes and building financial security basics are stressors two which most moms can relate.
Why Do You Read? (Feedback Request)
Do you think my posts are accomplishing any of the things I talked about in my elevator pitch earlier? I am struggling a little bit about my overarching theme, besides “random stuff that happens in my life”.
Are there any other themes that I’m missing or problems I’m solving for you as a reader?
What do you feel like you get most from my daily posts?
- Encouragement?
- Inspiration?
- Perspective?
- Appreciation for life?
- Parenting Ideas?
- Ways to make tomorrow easier with kids?
- Amusing kid antics or conversations?
I’ve had a lot of people tell me how much they enjoy my blog and to keep writing, but (maybe this is a self esteem issue, I don’t know) what really keeps you coming back for more? Because whatever it is, I want to make sure I don’t lose sight of that. And if there are things you find yourself skimming over, I want to know about that too.
Most of the value to me in writing a public blog is knowing that I’m helping someone else in some way. Otherwise, I could just go back to writing with my purple pen in my spiral notebook.
Allergy Doctor
After my nanny arrived, we loaded up and headed off to the allergy doctor, picking up Eleanor on the way. All 4 kids had appointments and got treated for various and sundry things. Our accupressure allergy treatments are amazing (I’ve written about it briefly in my post on ear infections).
It is fantastic to actually get treated for an allergy or sensitivity and have it actually be cured rather than just maybe desensitizing yourself to it a bit.
Normally we go out to eat at Jason’s Deli after our allergy doctor appointments, but the kids were loud and obnoxious so I had to nix the usual plan in favor of a drive-thru on the way home with the “promise” of physical activity in the back yard until bedtime.
We ended up picking up some food from Sonic for dinner.
Final Note
I’m going to leave you with this amusing conversation that we had on the way home from Sonic:
From the back seat, Rosemary announced, “Mom, my hot dog doesn’t have any meat on it.”
In my mind, I get an image of an empty hotdog bun. At the next stop light, I glance back. There was indeed a hotdog on the bun as I recalled seeing when I gave it to her.
“What do you mean, Rosemary? There is meat on your hotdog.”
“No, mom, no meat!” I have no idea what she is talking about.
“You mean, chili?” Sherita, my nanny asked.
“Yeah, meat!”
“The kid’s hotdog doesn’t come with chili on it at Sonic, Rosemary.”
“Well, how come they didn’t know I wanted chili on my hot dog?”
“I don’t know, Rosemary. They can’t read your mind.”