Might as well face it...

...I'm addicted to blogs (you have to sing it Robert Palmer style to get the full effect)

So I am a blogging novice but I have learned much recently about the blog-o-sphere, as I have heard it called. I now do what is known as "lurking."

It all starts fairly innocuously. You are invited to visit someone's blog and while there you inevitably see their list of recommended blogs, so you check those new ones out, and so on and so on and so on - I bet you repeated that last part JUST like that shampoo commercial from 1975 - come on, admit it! Well, you did if you are over 35.

Anyhoo, I have become a blog "lurker" for sure. Admittedly, when I first visited a site of someone I did not know, it felt a wee bit voyeuristic. In some cases I am reading details of a person's life that were obviously directed to their good friends and family - lots of inside jokes that I didn't get. Others are written for more general consumption. Some of these people should be getting paid for what they write - smart, witty and full of thought provoking observations. Some are amazing stories of daily struggles with fatal illnesses, wrapped in faith, family and lots of love.

The ones I visit most are done by your basic run-of-the-mill mom, like me, using their blog to vent, share and seek encouragement, often times for their perceived short-comings. A consistent theme in these is a desire to know that they are not the only ones that let their children watch TV during dinner too often, hate doing laundry, have yelled at their children that day and cannot remember the last time they used the bathroom in any kind of privacy 

These are the ones that I truly connect with as they all elicit a universal camaraderie of motherhood that makes me feel normal. Some days, their lives seem a lot more fun than mine. Other days, I think, "whew, thank the Lord I do not have three kids with the flu and a dead car battery all while my husband is away on business!"

There are some that I just find unbelievable. I mean, this one mom has 4 kids, another on the way, home schools two of them, has a side business making jewelry, a couple of off-shoot online magazines and not only posts really fun, hilarious items once or twice a day, but, from what I can tell, reads all of her posted comments and replies to them frequently throughout the day with comments of her own! Lord save me from over-achievers. Seriously, does she ever sleep, do laundry, or go to the grocery store?

Oh well, I can say that one good thing that has come from my becoming a blogophile: I have finally broken my addiction to those cheesy romance novels :)