I just moved the furniture around in my house.  I don’t teach subjects the same way more than once.  I change my haircut at least once a year, and usually it’s more often than that.

While I am pathologically resistant to almost all varieties of significant change, I thrive on mixing things up in very small, non-threatening ways.  Hence, the furniture, the lesson plans, the haircuts…and, with frequent regularity, the face of my blog.

I thought that “If I Ran the Zoo” was appropriate for my perspective on life– it allowed for things to be a little hectic but still made me the zookeeper, even if I was just a hypothetical one.  But lately, even hypothetical control over the most basic elements of my daily life has proven to be elusive, and it’s forced me to acknowledge what’s been true all along: life does not go the way I tell it to.

So, I’m giving up on that.  What I’ve decided to seek instead is not control but balance, in areas both big…

(work vs. family
wife vs. mom
desire vs. obligation
contentment vs. striving
rest vs. productivity)

…and small

(cooking vs. eating out
shortcuts vs. real cleaning
literature vs. fluff reads
mocha vs. chai tea latte)

I thought about using the title “Life in Balance,” but that sounded too confident, too complete.  So I shortened it to a simple imperative, naming not only my final goal but the command I need to remember every day.

For those of you who have opinions on all things baby, check out the new “baby talk” page.  Right now I’m in the process of making my must-have list, so please enlighten me.

For the rest of you, be sure to check out the previous post, which I have enhanced by adding actual pictures of the ugly shoes in question.

Since we don’t have the internet at the house yet, I’ve been doing a horrible job of keeping up with my current two blogs- this one that you can read, and my secret diary that you can’t read. So I thought that the best possible move at this point would be to start yet another one.

Great timing? Probably not. But I had a fun idea and I thought I’d run with it. So here it is…this is my book blog, where I will keep running commentaries on my great (and not-so-great) finds. Those of you fellow readers who like this sort of thing are welcome to check it out. I’ve posted on my three most recent reads, but I’m planning to update with some of my other favorites from my summer and early fall reading soon.

So many books, so little time…

So I finally decided to add a Blogroll to my sidebar.  Mainly, this will make it easier for me to check blogs at work.  Wait, did I actually type that?  Obviously, this does not happen often…I actually work very hard during work hours…

I’m debating about which links to actually include on this page.  The easy choices are the ones that are currently on my page- these are blogs that belong to people that I actually know outside of the blog-world.  Posting the links to these pages doesn’t feel weird to me at all.  But I read several blogs of people that I do not actually know, and I have mixed feelings about including these in a blogroll.

One one hand, it makes me feel like a stalker.  Lurking is one thing, advertising for a stranger is another.

One the other hand, I’ve seen other blog writers do this, and I realize that this may be a commonly accepted form of blog-flattery.  In that case, I’m happy to do what I can to increase traffic to blogs that I think are entertaining or interesting.

Thoughts?

It’s pouring rain outside.

Grades are due tomorrow morning, and my stack-o-stuff to grade has been overwhelming.

The annual 4th grade play is next week.   So is our big auction fundraiser, which always keeps me busy assembling some sort of student-made art project.

I spent the weekend playing in Houston, enjoying family and beautiful weather.

The Kite Runner is a really good read.

From the look of my blog stats and blog lurking, no one is reading or writing much anyway!

That’s why there have been no new posts.  Hopefully soon.

The other day on one of our customary walks, KarenD commented on the migratory trend among our Blogger friends toward WordPress. I hadn’t noticed, but when I looked more closely, there were several of my regular reads with new links as the latest post. It piqued my curiosity.

I toyed with the idea for a few days, visiting my WordPress forebears with extra frequency, noting the features in the side columns, the snazzy headers, and the options for multiple pages. At Stephen’s suggestion, I signed up for a free webpage that I secretly began playing with. (And when I say secretly, I mean noticed only by my faithful friend T). I had fun playing with new and exciting features, including the neurosis-enabling blog stat tracker.

Although I was excited about the idea of a brand-new, fresh start, I was a little concerned about losing readers and archives from my old CGS page. As it turned out, the archives were very easy to transfer, and Stephen’s job news came up. I hoped that with an intriguing enough hook, I could lure my old friends to my new page.

I am feeling very at home with the new site, and I am happy to see that I have had over 200 views so far. (I hope that is not counting the 150 times I have logged in from my computer at work) But I do have one question for WordPress veterans: Is there a way to put a “home” tab in my header? I can’t figure that one out.

Thanks for visiting. Come back soon.

Occasionally I’ll get obsessive about my comments and start to worry that my blog has turned into little more than a public conversation with Karen. Or even worse, that I’m pontificating to an empty room or indifferent passers-by, like a crazy street prophet on the side of the road. The idea makes me extremely self-conscious, despite the fact that I still officially maintain that this blog is primarily for my own benefit.

Every once in a while, though, I discover a blog lurker (Hi, Katie!), or I get a comment from a semi-lurker like my mom and Abbey. I have decided that these people are my favorite readers. I have no idea when they do or don’t come around, but I can always comfort myself with their presence. On a really insecure day, I can imagine an army of readers, peeking at the blog from the shadows, laughing hysterically at my jokes or stroking their chins thoughtfully at a serious point. Even as I write this, I’m reminding myself of the poor protagonist of A Beautiful Mind, but, it’s reassuring anyway.

I have a fondness for lurkers not just because they shore up my own self-confidence, but because I am one myself as well. I comment faithfully on about two blogs. I read about ten, some of which are written by people I have never met. That’s the beauty of this whole thing.

This post is not an appeal for lurkers to show themselves by leaving comments. If anything, this would probably ruin my illusions. But, to those of you who are out there (you know who you are), I’m glad you’re reading.

My school is further cementing my loyalty by purchasing new laptops for all teachers. On Friday, my boss sent a couple of us home with a Mac Powerbook to test them out and see how we liked them. All of my computer experience has been with PCs, but I have heard a lot about Macs from friends who are loyal Apple fans. I was excited to explore the wonderful world of Macs for myself.

So on Saturday morning, I toted my pleasantly lightweight laptop up to Panera, my favorite wireless hotspot (for how much fun can it be to explore a computer with no internet?). I watched the “Getting Around Your Mac” tutorial and clicked around the brightly colored icons at the bottom of the screen. I took pictures of myself in Photo Booth (note the new profile pic), admired the lovely stock photography in iPhoto, and listened to the demos in Garage Band. I played with the settings as much as I dared on a borrowed computer.

It’s a little bit like getting used to a new car, when you keep turning on the windshield wipers every time you want to use the turn signal. Obviously, there are many fun new features. But I am also a little clumsy, beacuse my keyboard shortcuts don’t always work, buttons are not where I expect them to be, and I keep having to click the mouse button rather than just tapping the finger pad.

After an hour or so of playing with all the pretty toys , I decided to look for the software that I would actually use the most: whatever would let me do word processing and spreadsheets. I knew better than to look for Microsoft Office products right off the bat, but I couldn’t find anything! I had to laugh at a computer that made it easy to create my own DVD but challenging to create a document.

After much searching, I finally found a Microsoft Office demo. It was a little anticlimactic (don’t know if I spelled that right…and I can’t figure out how to open a new window to check dictionary.com), because Word was basically the same. I also worried that having to pay a couple hundred more dollars for a software license might be a deal breaker for my getting to keep this computer. Of course, there may be a superior word processing program right underneath my fingertips and I just don’t know where to look…I’m sure you AppleHeads will let me know.

Meanwhile, I’m going to keep exploring.

I am happy to announce my most successful first day of school yet. I had the fewest recurrences of my first day of school nightmare (basically, that I show up for a work day that turns out to be the first day of school and I’m unprepared) during the last few weeks, and I felt the most prepared I’ve been going into today. My lessons went well, and I didn’t have to use many of my made- up- time- waster activities.

In other school news, I’m joining an experimental group of lunch buddies. The idea is that on Sunday, this group (there are currently three of us) will cook a yummy meal and package it up in portion-sized containers. We all bring our meal to school and trade around, and we all end up with three homemade lunches for the week. We’re hoping to expand our club to cover all five days. I’ll let you know how it goes, but I’m thrilled at the prospect of fewer peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Finally, I have finally joined the most high-tech of teachers, and I have a school sponsored class blog. It’s not nearly as interesting as my personal blog, of course, but if you are interested in the minutiae of my daily schedule, it’s a riveting read. You can find it easily through my school’s website. No stalking, though.

Okay folks, I’m off to soak my weary feet and rest up for Day 2.

On Friday it will have been forty days since I removed the comments from my blog. That means my Summer Lent is over! I am going out of town on a school retreat until Saturday, and I will be enabling comments on the next post after I come back.

I feel that after my time away from comments, I am prepared to put them back on my blog without obsessing about them. I will continue to write whatever I want, without regard for feedback, and you can all entertain me and each other with your witty responsive comments. So check back next week, and comment on the post. Or not…whatever.