Effortless Effervescence

What can I say? I’m a giver. And I’m on a sugar high from birthday-cake-for-breakfast, which makes me feel jittery and generous.

I read some awesome blogs, y’all. And it seems that I add to the list every single day. As I told a coworker yesterday, I’m a bit of a Blog Addict. But unlike heroin or cigarettes, which will kill you or at least give you wrinkles and a sallow complexion, blog-reading addiction causes very little trouble in one’s life other than keeping one up much too late at night. Drinking alone is no fun (and generally frowned upon) and neither is solitary blog-consumption, so I am here to share with you some of this week’s best of the web. Or, at least, best of the parts of the web that I read.

Betty Duffy, who is clever every day, shared some marital insight yesterday that really resonated with my soul:

My husband and I have always positioned our bed under a window, and one summer night, the bats were out, flying very close to our screen. We both jumped up to our knees to look out the window. It felt like we were two children, suspended for a moment by our mutual fascination in something other than ourselves–matrimonial innocence, like two lovers before the fall.

It was just a little taste of the sweetness that ensues when we quit treating one another like a trick pony: I’m here. Talk to me. Other couples talk. Why don’t we have anything to talk about? If we can look outward together, we are bound and united by our mutual experiences and labors. We don’t need to talk so much.

Lenore Skenazy of Free-Range Kids: fame, posted an update to a recent post about pregnant women being driven crazy with worry about Every. Little. Thing. They. Do. (Not that I can relate to this AT ALL.) What you’ll notice about these two posts is that Skenazy is sharing insights from her readers and leaving the table open for other readers to comment on the issue and talk amongst themselves. I think the best kind of blogs are those that faciliate interaction and connection, and Lenore gets an A+ for drawing her readers into a lively conversation every day.

Jessica Gottlieb, who strikes me as one of the sweetest and most loving mommies that ever lived while simultaneously being the kind of person that my mommy wouldn’t want me to hang out with, tells a hypothetical story about getting stoned and forgetting where she - or, er, the hypothetical heroine of her story - hid her pot. And worrying about her kids finding it before she does. If you’d like to laugh until you cry, check out her most popular posts. Fair warning: don’t consume any beverages while reading.

No, really, put the soda down.

I’m sure everyone else on the internet already knows about The Bloggess, but if you don’t, YOU SHOULD. The Bloggess is another writer who makes me weep with laughter and gets me in trouble when I read her posts while I’m at work. My cube-mate was understandably disturbed by my reaction to yesterday’s post about Google’s “helpfulness” - I mean, it is rather disconcerting when the person next to you is alternately guffawing and sniffling, right?*

I don’t think I need to say this again, do I? Put the soda down.

It occurred to me the other day what an incredibly diverse group of blogs I have hanging out on my Google reader. Food-focused, natural-living-focused, family-focused, Jesus-focused, and… um… F-word-focused. Well, you get the idea. I suppose this says a lot about my diverse interests, but it also calls attention to what’s MISSING from my blog roll. I don’t read any GLBTQ or feminist blogs regularly, nor do I really follow “current affairs,” unless you consider People magazine a reliable news source.

So, I’m hoping that my readers will be willing to give me a few NEW blog recommendations. It is my birthday, after all. If a blog challenges me to think, I’ll likely follow it; if it makes me laugh, I’m sure to adore it. Thought-provoking AND hilarious is the Blog Holy Grail as far as I’m concerned, so if you have a link of that ilk, I’d love you forever.

* The same thing happened when I first discovered I Can Has Cheezburger. I scrolled through several pages one afternoon - you know, taking a much-needed and much-deserved break from worky-type things - and later that year ended up with THIS on my annual review:

Disclaimer: Any links within this post to Amazon.com are “affiliate links,” which means that if you purchase the product I’ve recommended, I will receive a small portion of the profits. That shouldn’t deter you, though, because I’m a good person. I’m such a darn good person that if you knew me well you’d want to give me the money outright!