hi, bloggers! yup, I'm still here--well, sort of

So, where to start?

First, sorry, bloglanders, I haven't been keeping up-to-date with your doings. I've got a lot of you on my RSS feed in my email program (I really do love Macs!), which is great, because I don't have to keep checking the web to see if you've posted. Which means... I have no idea what you've been twittering.

But what that also means is that I can see how many of your posts I haven't read. If you are, like me, probably overwhelmed with life, then I've probably read everything you've posted. Dee, thanks for reaching out the other day! Not that I can find your email now, but I appreciated it. And thanks to Facebook, I guess, your feed is clear. There's no little number next to your account that keeps pestering me that I haven't read you. So when I see a little number 1 next to your name, I can get all excited and be like, "Oh wow, dee posted, I need to read this." (OK, I originally wrote this two weeks ago, and in October, dee was all like me, not posting or anything, but now that we have NaNoNaNoBloPoMoJo thingy going on, dee's posting every day. And, OK, yeah, I'm still caught up on her posts, because I gravitate to that little number "1" in my RSS feed.)

For now, the only folks I'm caught up with are dee, the kilowatt hour, Petite Anglaise, Kitty Cafe (I love that name! and sorry, I can't remember if you're "out" about your name, so I'm keeping you undercover), and Jo over at Counting Sheep. My guess is that they're just as overwhelmed busy as I am. I read all of Peevish's new incoming posts, but I seem to have skimmed over a few somewhere, so a sad little "3" sits by her name.

I was a lurker over on blackbird's blog for probably more than a year before she did the delurking thing that encouraged me to start blogging in the first place. But I'm way behind, and she has a "32" next to her name. Now, my life is out of control busy, so there's no way I'm going to read all those Survivor posts, even though I used to read them and everything else she wrote religiously, even though I've never seen a single episode of Survivor in my life.

And then there's Pumpkin over at My French Swiss window who is a diligent poster. During the summer I was pretty much up-to-date with her doings, but now I'm really over my head, and the number "101" 97 (hey, I'm catching up!) is next to her name in the RSS feed. Pumpkin, I want to know what's up and when your daughter is coming, but that huge number is a huge deterrent for me right now. Occasionally I click on one of her posts and look at the lovely photos and read what she's up to, but honestly, it doesn't happen very often now.

Another blog I had been keeping up with since January has been Dave over at 365 Days of Trash and now his number is up to "142." Sorry, Dave, I have no idea what kind of trash is in your basement right now. I do occasionally read a post that has an interesting title, but I can't deal with all the details right now.

And then there's Jen on the Edge, who I think is interesting, and I was reading her posts pretty regularly over the summer, but she is just too damn prolific for my school-year schedule. I really can't deal with the "185" in the RSS feed, and it keeps getting larger. I want to know what's up with her house and the kids and all the cool stuff over in Jenworld, but really, I just can't overcome that huge number.

I already deleted the Yarn Harlot from the feed, as she, too, was too prolific for me. And I really enjoy her writing, too. I actually found out about her through one of her books (yeah, she's a pro!), but her posts are many and long. I can't even tell you how many hundreds of posts there were for me to catch up on, even during the summer, and so I couldn't take it anymore one afternoon, and I deleted her. She's still on my blogroll, though. That much I can deal with, although I don't look at my own blog too often. Just too boring, I mean, I almost never post!

And yes, if you've made it this far, it's my birthday!