This weekend, Tate was home from Tennessee.  We spent time together as a family, enjoying our last days in Indiana.

Nearby where we live is a festival called the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon.  If you ever get the opportunity to go, you totally should!  All the participants dressed in garb from the late 1700’s.  There were artisans from all over, making beautiful items from wood and handspun yarn and food cooked in huge cast-iron pots over open fires.  The festival spanned several acres, and offered period entertainment with storytelling, music, and jugglers.

We had a blast, watching the sites, smelling the campfires burn, and watching the artists work.

On Sunday we enjoyed a most mediocre lunch at a local eatery. The place is a relic straight out of the mid to late 70’s, complete with heavy brown and orange decor. The place smells like fryer grease and the waitresses are a bit salty.  It’s a fun place to eat, nevertheless.

Oh Indiana. I’m going to miss you.

We leave for Tennessee on Thursday. On Wednesday afternoon, I’m going to return my cable box and *GASP* modem. That means I will not have Internet access for OVER 24 HOURS.

Keep the Internet spinning while I’m gone, will ya?

Have you ever had a post at the top of your page that you really wish wasn’t the FIRST thing people see when they happen upon your blog?  Well my last ultra whiny, self-absorbed post about my descent into moving hell is just that post that I’d like to be moved down the page a bit.

So here I am, not exactly taking a blogging hiatus, or possibly I am.  I seriously just want that last post to just move on down the page.  I’m not saying, “hey I’m totally fine with this move!”  I’m not fine.  But I’m trying to make the best out of a lousy situation and reminding myself that 1) we’re lucky my husband has a job in this economy and 2) I NEED to be positive for my sanity’s sake and my kids’ sake (and 3) It’s not okay to be as upset as I’ve been over the loss of my dream kitchen because DUDE:  GET OVER IT.  It’s merely a gas cooktop, sink in the center island, double ovens kind of kitchen.  SERIOUSLY, BIG DEAL.  WAAAAAH.)

Moving on…(ha!  Get it??  Moving?  God, I’m hilarious!)

Tate left Monday to start his new job and prior to his departure I was very worried about how I was going to be able to handle my two zoo-like wild children on top of all the stress.   “Ohs noes!  How ever will I do it alone?!  It cannot be done!  It cannot be done!  Woe is me.”

Writing this next sentence is probably going to condemn me to a life of vomit/tantrum/diarrhea/no sleep hell tomorrow surely, but!!!  This week has been surprisingly easy.

Possibly because I know that I don’t have reinforcements showing up, I’m freakishly calm and patient with the kids.  So far this week, I’ve had to take two children two and under to the BMV (B???) to get my license plate.  It was the easiest trip ever and my children…behaved.  Then I lost a filling in one of my teeth and had to arrange childcare and find a dentist and schedule an appointment.  Everything fell into place thanks to two of my neighbors and it turned out that I hadn’t actually lost a filling.

My son has become a pogo stick, jumping up and down at every attempt to dress or undress him.  Normally I’d be sweating and cursing under my breath and saying (yelling) things like, “CARSON.  ENOUGH.  Stop jumping right now or I’ll take away all of your trains and feed you to wolves.”  There would be lots of wrinkle inducing nose scrunching and eyebrow furrowing.  And eye rolling.  And huffing.   (There wouldn’t really be mention of being eaten by wolves.  Uh.  Yeah.)

But instead I find myself gentler and smiling and not allowing this annoying stage to get the worst of me.   I haven’t freaked out when Ella throws her entire tray of food on my just mopped floors.  My house is cleaner, the TV hasn’t babysat, and I’ve made lots of “progress” on our impending move.   And oddly, despite Tate getting to socialize and eat out every night, I don’t feel resentful or overworked for being the stay-at-home parent.

I’m not sure what being a better single parent says about my parenting abilities or mental state, but I’ll take the “good mommy” me over the “BAD mommy” me anyday.

**********

I’d like to thank each of you who has offered sympathy and encouragement to me as a result of our move to Tennessee.  To answer a few questions we are moving to East Tennessee, we’ve lived there before, and my husband is in management for a company and apparently he’s pretty good at his job so they keep asking him to help at other plants.

I’ve been trying to write these words for days and haven’t been able to form my muddled and numb thoughts into sentences.  In a very short amount of time, my life has been completely turned upside down.  I vacillate between intense woeful crying jags to sheer, bitter rage where I want to hit someone.

Tate has been transferred AGAIN.

We are moving to Tennessee.

I feel bitterly angry that I allowed myself to finally feel at home someplace.  In the ten years that I have been with Tate, we have moved at every request of the company.  For me, I moved begrudgingly and suspiciously and have watched over my shoulder and held my breath waiting for his company to call with our next move.

This time, though, I allowed myself to dream what it would be like to raise my children here, in THIS place.  I allowed myself to breathe after ten years. I immersed ourselves into this town and embraced all it had to offer.  We have made friends and we have made plans.  We have made a life and a home here in Indiana.  Never once had it occurred to me that I shouldn’t root myself and branch out and allow myself that hope of home.

I feel bruised and numb all at the same time.

Right now I have no desire to write.  My mind swirls with nothing except relocation companies, mortgages, real estate, and moving vans.  I don’t know if I’m taking a blogging hiatus for awhile or if the desire to write will return as I digest and stew on this information.  If you’ve recently emailed me, I will reply sometime.  I’m purposely ignoring my inbox because I simply do not have the power to think past myself and my family right now.

At least if we have to move, it’s to beautiful Tennessee and luckily we already root for the right team.

And you want to know something funny? I just got my Indiana driver’s license last week. I’m supposed to pick up my Indiana license plate tomorrow. [insert maniacal laughter and tears]

I think that one of the best things about being a parent is getting to experience the things my kids love.  Yesterday we went to a railroad museum.

Three retired gentleman proudly showed off their love of all things train. Like little kids, you could see their excitement to show off their painstakingly built models.  These men had known one another for years, finishing each other’s sentences and filling in gaps in their stories about the history of the railroad in this part of Indiana.  Their knowledge and dedication was apparent.

Carson didn’t care about the stories. He was in awe of watching as the model trains circled the elaborate track over and over again.

I could have stayed for hours, listening to the mens’ stories and watching the wonderment in Carson’s eyes.  Or at least imagining the wonderment in his eyes.  He wouldn’t turn around and risk missing one of the trains passing by.

Live in Indiana or close by? Visit the Linden Depot Museum in Linden, IN.

Things that are currently pissing me off

1.  CSS and php files.

2.  The Gravatars in the comments section which are in the wrong place.

3.  The Flickr Uploadr which is slower than a man taking a dump.

4.  My camera lens that I already had to send to Canon for repair.

5.  This low carb diet that I’m on.

6.  About 20 things that I cannot write about on my OWN blog.

What’s on your list today?

I know that many of you are very confused on how to use StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your site.  At least twice a week I have a conversation that sounds like this,

SU newbie:  “But Jenniferrrrrrrrrrrr.  I don’t GEEEEEEEEEEET it.  I’m lost.”

Me:  “Well, did you read my post about using the SU toolbar?”

SU newbie:  “Yes.  But I still don’t geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet it.”

Hopefully I can cover some of the BASICS of SU to help you all get a clearer picture of how to use this most awesome of traffic generating tools.  For those of you who are not SU newbies, scroll on down to Part 2 of this post where I’ll give some more intermediate tips.

The basics on how to use StumbleUpon, or StumbleUpon Preschool

1.  First of all you have to set up an account at http://www.stumbleupon.com. You’ll be asked to choose a name, try to choose one that best fits your brand.  Next, you’ll be directed to “Join and Download Now.”  The “download” part means that you’ll be downloading the SU toolbar, which is vital to getting the most out of SU.

2.  You need to set up your preferences once you’ve received your password via email and have logged into your SU account.  Along the top of the page, you’ll see four tabs:  Home, Websites, People, Videos.  Go to the “Home” tab.

Next you’ll see some more tabs:  What’s New, Favorites, Friends, Inbox, Preferences.  Go to the “Preferences” tab.  The first section you’ll come to is “Personal Information.”  After providing the necessary information, go to the next tab, “My interests.”  Here you will choose the categories of items you’re most interested in reading.  Go through each topic and choose as many subtopics as you’d like.

The final part of filling out your preferences is the “Public Profile” tab.   Here you can write a little blurb about you, your blog, share your interests, and customize the look of your SU page.  My blurb says, “I’m Jennifer, nice to meet you!  Come visit me at my blog http://playgroupsarenoplaceforchildren.com!”  You can write whatever you’d like, although I’d recommend putting your blog address, as this is the only place on your profile where you can do that.

Make sure you’ve hit the green “Save Preferences” button on the right hand side of the page!!!

3.  Start adding friends.  You can do this by allowing SU to search your email address book for people who are already SU users.  Click the “Connect with friends” button on the right hand side of the page.

(note:  StumbleUpon only allows you to add 200 friends.  If someone doesn’t reciprocate and add you as a friend also, it could mean that they’ve reached their friend limit…or it means they don’t really know how to use SU!)

4.  Now it’s time to start stumbling! There are LOTS of ways to do this.  (Using the toolbar is fully explained HERE).

Here are my favorite ways:

**Just read a post or found a website you adore?  Stumble it!  Hit the “thumbs up/I like it” button on your toolbar and write a review.

**Go directly to your friends’ SU pages and see what they’ve most recently stumbled upon.

**On your SU toolbar, look for the icon of two people together.  Clicking this allows you to stumble your friends’ favorite posts.

**From your own SU page, look for the “what’s new” tab and see what has most recently been stumbled by different friends.

5.  Write a review? Here’s what I mean…you can simply write a one sentence review saying what the post/site is about.

“Recipe for peanut butter and fudge pasta.”

Or you can copy a key sentence from the post for your review.

“From the post: ‘Obama and McCain are running for President of the United States and this is who I’m voting for.’”

6.  Approach SU unselfishly.  Certainly you want StumbleUpon to drive traffic to your site, but you’ll only get out of it what you put into it.  Stumble LOTS of people’s sites, not just your own or one particular site.   If you’re writing quality posts, other savvy SU users will review your work if you’ve reviewed them.

Part 2

This section will cover a few more intermediate tips for those of you who are more savvy SU users.

1.  Review your friends’ SU blogs.   The term “blog” in this instance does not mean their actual BLOG that they write posts for, but rather the collection of sites they’ve stumbled upon.  Your SU blog is your SU homepage (mine is http://playgroupie.stumbleupon.com).

To review your friends’ SU blogs, go to one of your friend’s SU page/blog, and click the “thumbs up/I like it” button on your toolbar.  Write your review (”Love his stumbles, such a variety!”), add the tag “stumblers” and you’re done!

The more reviews you write and receive, the more weight your stumbles carry.

2.  Take advantage of the StumbleUpon’s Photoblog It! feature.  This feature adds the pictures you’ve stumbled upon to your page/blog.

When you stumble upon a photo that you’d like to review, you can right click on the image, scroll down to the bottom where it will say “StumbleUpon Photoblog It!”  Click that, write your review, add your tags, and done.

3.  DO NOT ONLY REVIEW YOUR OWN SITE.  I mentioned above to approach SU unselfishly and I cannot stress enough how important it is to stumble and review OTHER’S sites.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with stumbling your own site occasionally.  However if you stumbled your site today then before even CONSIDERING stumbling yourself again, you should go out and stumble 10-20 OTHER sites.

I’m certain that there will still be questions about StumbleUpon.  Feel free to leave your questions in the comments section.   I will not have computer access until Sunday afternoon so I’ll be unable to answer any questions until then.

Other Blog Tip Sharing Project articles can be found HERE.

I arrived home the other afternoon from grocery shopping to find a very large man happily vacuuming my living room.

“Oh hi!” he said.  Seeing my puzzled look, he continued.  “I’m just vacuuming your living room!”

“Yes I can see that, but….”  I said coolly.  At the same time, Tate came into the room looking at me with wide eyes and a “help me” look.  “He’s a vacuum cleaner salesman,”  Tate explained.

The house was in complete disarray, the children were in the playroom screaming, there were bags and bags of groceries to be unloaded from the car, and it was time to start preparing dinner.  And the vacuum cleaner salesman was trying to spout the wonders of his Kirby over the chaos.

I was not amused.

My darling husband kindly offered to retrieve the remaining groceries from the car, leaving me to deal with screaming kids and the fracking vacuum cleaner salesman, who continued jabbering on and on and vacuuming every surface of my house.

“See this flexible hose?!  It’s great for getting to all those hard to reach places, like behind your TV.  Wow!  It sure is dirty back there…”

Annoyed, I attempted to calm my children and unload grocery sacks, AND start dinner.  I completely ignored the vacuum cleaner salesman.  Tate invited him in, Tate could deal with getting him to leave.

He kept right on talking (and talking), as if I were listening.

Tate finally completed the unnecessarily long process of unloading the groceries and went back to the vacuum cleaner salesman.  I was sure that Tate could see my irritation, it was obvious in my glare.  He surely could also hear the children crying because of hunger, and I KNOW he could see all the groceries that needed putting away.  Head hanging low, Tate went to deal with the vacuum cleaner salesman.

The vacuum cleaner salesman apparently had some sort of mesmerizing effect on Tate.  “How much would you be willing to pay for this vacuum?” he asked Tate.

I wanted to scream, “NOTHING.  Please GO AWAY.  Can you not see that this is a VERY BAD time?????”  Surely I didn’t need to say anything.  SURELY Tate would tell him to leave.

My darling husband kindly inquired about the price and told the man how impressed he was with the vacuum.  I nearly screamed.

The vacuum cleaner salesman refused to give a price and somehow wrangled himself inside of our bedroom to give a demonstration of it’s “awesome” mattress cleaning abilities.

With the groceries put away, I began to fix dinner.  I could hear the vacuum cleaner salesman wheeling and dealing with Tate.

“This is a one time offer.   I’m just down from South Bend, doing the folks here in New Town a favor by offering you this Kirby.”

I can hear Tate stammering in reply.  “Uh.  We don’t.  Uh.  No.  Uh.  Can I just get your card?  Uh.  We’ll call you?”

After about TWENTY minutes of this “It’s a one time deal,”  “Uh.  No, we don’t want it,”  the vacuum cleaner salesman finally gave up.

I wanted to scream, “Praise Jesus!  He’s leaving, he’s leaving!!!”

That’s when Tate did the unthinkable.  He said, to the ALMOST FINALLY DEPARTING vacuum cleaner salesman, “So, you’re from South Bend?  You a Notre Dame fan?”

And that’s when my head exploded.

As I was picking up the remnants of my skull, I heard Tate offer the vacuum cleaner salesman a DRINK.  A DRINK!  For the next HALF HOUR, they talked football.  FOOTBALL!   All the while, the vacuum cleaner salesman is guzzling glass after glass of water and hinting about how the dinner I was preparing sure smelled good.

I know one thing.  When you’re trying to get a MALE SALESMAN to leave your house, under NO CIRCUMSTANCE do you bring up fracking FOOTBALL, nor do you offer them food and drink.

Let this be a lesson learned.