You’ll see there if you look closely that Lesbian Dad has been nominated for a 2012 Bloggie for Best LGBT Weblog. Those who need know no more than where to vote may do so here until 10pm Eastern; 7pm Pacific, Sunday, February 19.  Either scroll down a bit or select “lgbt” from among the categories in the lefthand grey nav bar.

I am honored, flabberghasted, puzzled (can a person’s cumulative contribution really overcome a year of undeniably anemic posting? can it really?), and you name it. But there you go. There was a nomination period, some folks nominated this earnest (if lately anemic) thing–for which: thank you!–and somebody else from a random assemblage of nominators selected it from among the nominated. So there you go.

A few words are in order now about some of the other blogs recognized with nominations this year.  I’ve read Rob Tisinai’s work ever since he began to share his cogent analyses online in the wake of Prop 8 (he describes that vote as having sparked an “awakening” in him).  And I–alongside many others–have found that he has provided reasoned, researched, persuasive argumentation on facet after facet of the current debates around, predominantly, same sex marriage, but also more widely, fallacies about gay people which form the currency of homophobic hate groups and extremist political candidates. His blog is called Waking Up Now, and you should visit it regularly. I’ve now corrected an oversight and have it conveniently lodged in my link column down there to the right.

You’ll notice that the national spokesgay chap Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project is up too; I figure anything that gets content submitted to it by a sitting Secretary of State and a string of nationally known media personalities has a pretty high profile and doesn’t need me to call much more out about it.

In another category, the prodigious and witty gals of Autostraddle are up for Best Entertainment weblog, which rather undersells that website, I think any regular reader would agree. They do news, entertainment, opinion, and of course, “girl-on-girl culture” in a way that makes a thinking gal relieved there’s an internet and youngsters keeping it all fired up. They’re also up for Best Group or Community weblog, and that’s damn skippy what they are. AND Best Weblog of the Year. Which they also are. The fact that Effing Dykes is also  up for that last honor makes this The Year of the Dyke at the Weblog Awards, I’m totally willing to say.

That five of the six blogs up for Weblog of the Year are written by women also says something, I’m going to go right ahead and say about our command of this medium and the depth of our engagement with readers in it. That or the randomly chosen group of winnowing folks were all ladies or sympathetic to ladies. The former seems much more probable.

Schmutzie is up for best Canadian weblog, which it is, and it should be recognized as such.

The perpetually hillarious and big-hearted Jenny Lawson’s The Bloggess is up for (take a deep breath before continuing) Best Parenting or Family weblog, Best Designed, Most Humorous, and Best Writing. All true. Then again Hyperbole and a Half is also up for both Most Humorous and Best Writing.  Ouch: both brilliant, and brilliantly unpredictable; both quite essential to those who read them religiously. I recuse myself.

Up for Lifetime Achievement is the national treasure Joe.My.God.  His blog has been a regular stop of mine, particularly for breaking news of relevance to our community, for years, and I hop his audience of faithful readers helps him receive the recognition he deserves.

Me, I’m going to take the nomination and its voting period–through 10pm Eastern, 7pm Pacific, February 19th–as a jab to try to post more frequently (and with as much quality as my work and parenting hours will permit).  I think this may be one of the primary benefits of these sorts of contests: in addition to often bringing less well-known publications to a wider audience, they spur folks to produce their best work, for which I’m grateful.  And though I’d be honored if you voted for LD, in spite of the job-induced blogging anemia, I’d also tell you here who I think ought to make off with Best LGBT Blog, because of the quality and utility of his contribution, and the years-long, solo effort, pro bono spirit behind it:

But this week I’m pro-Babble: the capital-B kind.  Two different juries of my peers gathered by that website have seen fit to honor what I’ve been doing online with recognitions.  [Point of info: Babble is a widely-read resource website "for a new generation of parents."]  The honorifics (and the attendant challenge I feel to retroactively actually earn them) couldn’t have arrived at a better time, relative to the ebb and flow my work life.  For the past nine months it has been gushing, rather than flowing, and dadgum it I think it’s about to ebb for the first time since I started it.  Enter, stage left, in the after-work hours: much-neglected writing life!

Babble Honorific #1: I was named one (okay, 47th) among Babble’s 50 Top Twitter Moms.  I wanted to turn right around and at least Tweet my thanks.  But when the news hit, I was still too busy chasing around after my work with buckets and mops (c.f. recent gusher imagery).   I think in actuality I was flying cross-country with some buckets and mops, and was just running out of battery juice on my laptop when I read the email.  To be 47th in a group of 50 is a delightful combination of fortunate and humorous.  It’s more humorous than 48th or 49th, since those numbers have some cachet.  You know, one’s an even number, which is always cool, and the other’s almost-50.  But forty-seven is just, well. Sitting there.  Hopeful. Feeling lucky to be there.

I was also named ninth “most inspirational” Twitter Mom, which had a much greater thrill than humor value.  Because contarn it half the reason I bother to put fingers to keyboard, at least in my writing life, is to inspire. Both self and other.  Either to greater compassion or greater awareness or even to laughter.  Needless to say, right away I wanted to Tweet nine inspirational Tweets.  But first I ran out of laptop battery, and then I ran out of time.  Story of my life, of late.  (For a bit of analysis and critique of last year’s such list, check out Annie’s post at PhD in Parenting last year.)

Babble Honorific #2: Lesbian Dad was named among Babble’s Top 50 Dad Blogs.  Holy ovaries! Especially on the heels of the Twitter Mom deal!  The juxtaposition of these two honorifics – mom + dad – speaks volumes to the capacities of this imaginative, communicative space, where I’ve worked so hard to explore that very overlap.  Kindred spirits and open minds can and do find each other here; a person can assay an undertaking as unlikely as define a heretofore absent parental space between two seemingly immutable, biologically-rooted “givens,” and not only find a sympathetic ear, but helping hands, even thoughtful collaboration.

I had hoped for something like this understanding from my home community – that is, other parents like me, gals not quite mother, not quite father, but a bit of both, who would find something familiar in my stories or my vantage point.  I was seeking out their insight and wisdom when I had no idea what this parenting path would be like.  What I didn’t expect those five or six years ago, when I started doing all this, was that my “community” would include so many allies.  Or, rather, that the people I might once have thought of as allies would in actuality be my community.

I have had the good fortune not just to read, but to come to know a number of the other dad bloggers who’ve been called out as among the Babble Top 50 this year.  I think of Doug French and Andy as friends as much as colleagues, and was honored to have shaken Mike Adamick’s hand in Chicago in 2009, right before he went on to read a post as one of BlogHer’s Voices of the Year (for which I was a reader that year, and yes, I adamantly inked in Mike’s beautiful post “Don’t all kids play in vacant warehouses?” on my “Absolutely Must Be Recognized” list).

Thanks to blogging conferences (run by women; Doug & Andy’s is coming up!), I’ve met  and have appreciated the work of  Jason Mayo,  Rob Rummel-Hudson, Shawn Burns, Whit Honea, John Cave Osborne, Jim Highley, Jim Lin, and Caleb Gardner, and and look forward to reading many of the others called out in the list.  I think Jeremy Adam Smith has done a whole lot for contemporary understanding of 21st century parenthood, the male version, but I know the Babble list was for solo-authored blogs, so his Daddy Dialectic didn’t have the chance to be recognized. Each of these men parent in different ways; each stretches conventional understandings of masculinity and caregiving to varying degrees. No matter what, I’m glad they’re all writing about their parenthood, because it’s fertile ground much in need of tilling. For the sake of their peers who are parenting, and for folks in the generation coming up like my son, who will likely be a parent when he grows up, and my daughter, who will likely (who knows! just an educated guess!) be parenting alongside a man when she grows up.

As I was telling my Pops yesterday, when I told him the news about this recognition: I was nervous when I first staked out this blog name and this space, virtually and actually.   All I could imagine, when I thought of my public reception by other straight men in particular, was indignation, based on the all-too familiar presumptions that (a) the universe is about stasis, rather than expansion, and (b) there is never enough room at the table, never a pie big enough, and so on.  Usurper! Interloper! Fraud!  At that time I couldn’t imagine the faces of friends, fellow parents who, not just in spite of but also because of their being men, saw we had much to offer one another.  I couldn’t imagine that they saw what I saw: that when someone like me elbows more space for my parenthood, it’s not like I’m poking them in the gut.  I’m making more space for them, too.  We’re all helping each other, when we stretch and redefine understandings of parenthood for our generation.  I’m hugely honored to be doing so as an ally to these guys.

Intrepid campers, Olema, CA.

We took a camping trip a few weekends back. A micro-trip: one overnight, left town Saturday afternoon after work, came back Sunday night. Camped out in the brother-in-law’s camper van. Stayed in one of those commercial RV park dealies, because of course the whole thing was spur-of-the moment and nothing at a state campground was free.  At least in our state.  But lord love us we went.

The beloved and I were both in foul states of mind, en route. Stressed, sad.  Neither of us has made appreciable headway in our respective work/life arm wrestling matches.  Balance, we each feel confident, is on the horizon. But at the moment the horizon line remains tipped.

The kids were not about to let our gloom obscure their delight with the entire experience. The fact that we attempted and were rebuffed at three state campgrounds dimmed their spirits not a jot. Neither did the steady mist that turned into a rain.  Nor our setting up in the dark, cussing, muttering. At the end of the line, there were hot dogs and s’mores. That, they later reported, was the best part about the camping trip.

The next morning, as Mama and I were rubbing our backs and nursing our coffees, they remained in the pop-top area of the camper van, spinning one elaborate imaginary tale after another.  Couldn’t have been happier.  Their resilience–really, their single-minded dedication to finding the fun, even at the bottom of an empty tin can–was  instructive, nearly shamingly so.

We need some more. Time, together. Balance.

My output here has slowed to a trickle, due, as I have noted before, to the fact that the spare time I used to squeeze blogging into has all but evaporated, and now I squeeze my kids into that spare time. Work, which I STILL haven’t told you about (what’s to tell? it’s all-consuming and also really nifty), looks to finally have a period of (relative) quiet coming up. I hope to exploit that by finding a way back to writing here. Since I have found that some of my sadness has come from not writing. (Want to know a sign you’ve finally arrived as a writer? When not writing makes you sad.)

So! Though I have a tendency to over-promise and under-deliver (I have a hunch it’s supposed to be the other way around), I am going to take up that dagnab NaBloPoMo challenge in November.  Yes, yes I am.  And you can’t talk me out of it. Here’s a preview of what I expect to Po during that Mo:

• pictures of kids
• pictures of inanimate objects that are not kids
• short bits, not much on current events but some (it is HARD for me to not actually weigh in w/ thoughtful analysis, so what I’m left with is a blank silence)
• an essay or two or three? (o please o please let me find the time for an essay)
• some reflection even on the change in focus here from kids (they are private beings, I learn, and respect) to…?

First thing to report on is that I combed through and updated all twenty-some-odd links on the LGBT Parenting Resources page I list here at the yet-again-pulled-back-from-the-brink blog (design tweaks still ongoing, as the observant might note).  If you haven’t perused that page, please do. Or if you have a friend who is hunting down a compendium of resources, by all means send ‘em there. And let me know if you think I should add more.

Next, in honor of the Back-to-School season, a half-dozen bullet-pointed resources (followed by some anecdotal commentary) that may be of help:

• Dana Rudolph’s evergreen Back to School LGBT Resource List at Mombian, a compendium of super-helpful links she revised in 2008. And while you’re over there, check out her poll on Back to School Concerns: perhaps not surprisingly, our worry list goes 1-2-3: LGBT-friendliness of teacher &/or school, then academics, then social issues/ adjustment.  It’ll be a bright fall day when we only worry about items 2 & 3, eh?
• Our Family Coalition’s 10 Steps to Bring LGBTQ Family Diversity Conversations to Your School, all really important, few very easy, but we didn’t any of us accidentally become parents, did we?
• Family Equality Council’s Back to School Tool: Building Family Equality in Every Classroom, a handy-dandy PDF listing 8 things you can do as a parent, from questions to ask school administrators to policies to ask about to resources to community-building  (from the Safe Schools Coalition’s page for GLBT Parents/ Guardians)
• Another PDF gem from Family Equality Council, this one you can give a sympathetic teacher or administrator: Opening Doors: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Parents and Schools. While there’s stuff for parents, sections like “Stories Kids Tell Us About What Happens at School,” “How Educators Can Best Support Children in LGBT-Headed Families,” and “Nonjudgmental Ways to Answer Children’s Questions” are concise and invaluable.
• Requiring a bit more advance planning than a review of any of the links above, but preposterously valuable are Groundspark’s groundbreaking documentaries exploring how to talk about gay issues in elementary school, It’s Elementary (first aired in 1999) and It’s STILL Elementary (a follow-up with the teachers and students who were in the first film, documenting the right-wing attacks on It’s Elementary and its creators). Each of Groundspark’s films comes with extensive material discussing who should see the film, why address gay issues with children, curriculum guides, and additional resources. Need I say more?
• Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming Schools: School Bullying Resources, Family Diversity Training and Tools for Educators, a phenomenal and wide-ranging curriculum resource for administrators, educators, and parents. Building a school community where all students feel welcome and see their family a part of it, inside and outside the classroom, takes years of deep commitment. So does parenthood. You’re up for it, and you have more allies than you know. Also, you can always start with baby steps, like your kids did.

I want to finish off with a few anecdotal notes for parents of kids younger than mine, who this fall are looking at the very first launch of their kid into a preschool or elementary school. Your experiences will of course range very, very widely. Ours has been in one of the most LGBT-friendly metropolitan areas we could possibly afford to live in, and still we’ve been a distinctly tiny (if mighty) minority in every schooling situation.  Meaning, never once has our daughter or son been in a class with another kid with same-sex parents (and yep, we just saw the class list tonight: year 3 in the school and yet again, not in the same class with the one other girl her age with two moms). Still, looking at 2nd grade in another 8 or so hours, we’re doing ok.  Or, more importantly, our daughter is. (Here’s some evidence from the end of her Kindergarten year: Open House.)

What has mattered?

• For as long as I could, I volunteered like crazy, both at our kids’ preschool and at the elementary school.  I wanted to know everyone and I wanted everyone to know me, and there I was in all my mannish lesbian glory, so no matter whether or not folks (parents or kids) found me, well, undeniably mannish for a woman, there I was, a familiar figure.  Now that I’m working full time, I can’t figure out how to volunteer during school hours, and it’s killin’ me. But if you have the flexibility to do this, doing good for others at your kid’s school is the A#1 fast track way to start easing your worried mind in the best possible way.
• At the preschool, I basically celebrate Banned Books week by donating a half a dozen of the best picture books featuring family diversity or kids with LGBT families.  If you can afford one, great.  (The best preschool wish list to go off of? Welcoming Schools’ PDF Picture Books for Students Inclusive of Gay Family Members and Characters.) I’ve been spending years in wonderful conversation with the director and we each are hugely grateful.  Elementary school libraries generally have far more formal acquisition processes, but strike up a conversation with your school librarian and talk with her or him about this page from the Welcoming Schools Guide on bibliographies (includes sub-pages like “Your Role as Librarian” and subsections with all manner of bibliographies, like “Inclusive of Gay Family Members and Characters” or “Highlighting All Kinds of Families,” ranging from picture books to chapter books).
• With every new school year, we make it an express point to buttonhole our kids’ caregivers and/or teachers, introduce ourselves (this part is the ordinary part), and then ask when it would be convenient for us to say a little more about our family, so that s/he can best know how to refer to us in class.  This is because though we’ve been blessed with progressive-minded folks all along, we will kick in open doors every time. Do not assume that a kindly person will have a clue about such things as:
•  how you want to be called, and what your kid calls you, or
• whether and how you refer to how your family came to be, or
• how you celebrate “Mother’s or Father’s Day” (here’s the Welcoming Schools Guide PDF on it, for instance), or
• you name it.

Do not go laissez faire on this stuff, is all I can say. Do not. I repeat: a sympathetic soul (the best we often can hope for) does not of itself lead to a clue. Remember, a great many folks who are old enough to be teaching our kids grew up when (a) LGBT parents were completely unheard of and invisible, so therefore so were their kids, and  (b) references to LGBT people of any sort were very, very often pejorative, misinformed, and negatively stereotyped. So it’s not surprising that many can only conceptualize references to gay people as pejorative among kids this age. But our kids are kids this age! “Your mom’s a lesbian” is merely a statement of fact, not an insult.

Anyhow. As Mark Twain (& others) said, sorry this is so long; I didn’t have the time to make it shorter.  Until we see parents’ day greeting cards made by Hallmark and Harvey Milk Day celebrated in all our elementary schools, the onus is on us to educate the educators.  Which starts with educating ourselves.  ***RIIIIIIING*** Can you hear it? School bell’s callin’.

{Any of you-all care to share some of your own Back-to-School tips for LGBT parents new to the whole to school thing?}

Meanwhile, to answer the question, “Is it over? Or is it just beginning?” I leave it to Bette as Margo Channing. Though I’m anticipating more “fun” than “bumpy.”

At the Huntington Library, Art Gallery, & Gardens, San Marino, CA.

What began as a simple hello, along with an overdue Weekend bonus shot, morphed into an ill-fated WordPress update which borked the blog.

So what you see here encasing this post–that is, if you view this puppy outside your reader & in the comfort of its mothership URLis a blast from circa 2008 or so. Trippy! What you see as the container for the content is a minimalist stopgap which will now be patiently awaiting further detailing as off-work, weekend, nonchildcare time allows. Meaning: don’t hold yer breath for the pretty thing we used to see here! But do chime in if you have design thoughts because I think the doors are wide open for bright ideas.

I have sent an urgent message via the batphone to the design wizzards at the other side of the country whom I hope to enlist as Blog Saviors. Meanwhile, for anyone who didn’t visit this blog way back in the olden days of 2008, this is way more what it used to look like! (Header here: me hoisting kid #1, back when I could hoist her above the head instead of on the hip, which, yes, I still do & she’s nearly 7 yrs old as of this writing.)

Needless to say I keep a shiteload of content in widgets (currently shrouded by a heavy curtain of borked HTML) in the sidebar, not least of which is a ton more explanatory info, links to various orgs [got them back; they matter], and some BlogHer ads [fixed that right quick: peeps, they help cut the losses this thing: I'm only out a few hundred, annually! ] to help keep this project from draining the family finances. Hopefully within the week or so it’ll all be back to normal, or even (better yet!) a new normal.

In lieu of something written by me (I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!*), I offer here, for your Cinco de Mayo reading pleasure, something written by my daughter at an unspecified time last month.  It just appeared in the house one afternoon. I know two of her classmates and chums have visual artist moms who have been volunteering art instruction in the class, and I know at one point — months ago, I think — they talked about Frida Kahlo.  I asked the girlie where she learned this stuff, and she said there was a book in the class that she’d read.

So there we have it.¡Viva educación! Viva las madres y las artistas mujeres y las madres que son artistas! ¡Y hoy, especialmente, viva México!

As written [with translations as needed]:

Frida Kahlo was one of the first women Artists. When Frida was very young she had to stay in bed becas [because] something was wrong with her leg. When she got beter her brain grew and so did she. One day Frida was rideing the bus when a troly [trolly] was riding in the opisit direcshon! the bus hit the troly and Frida Fell out! Something hapend  to her spine. Quickly pepol [people] rushed to help Frida. the bus driver called Fridas Parents. they too rushed to help Frida. the scooped up Frida and broght her to the hospitel. She needed to stay ther for a while. She will always feel pain, but she will always be a wonderful Artist.

When I read this, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Frida Kahlo died nearly 60 years ago.  Other than that oversight, this is pretty spot-on. She will always feel pain, but she will always be a wonderful Artist.

* Since I dove feet first into full-time employment (head first? all in?), I have quite obviously been struggling to maintain anything close to a regular blog posting schedule. Weekly will be my ideal, whereas every other daily used to be de rigueur. Two months into the gig, I thought I was hitting my stride, and I began to, work-wise. But it’ll probably take ’til after 90 days are up — they can’t fire me after 90 days, right? — ’til I’ll find enough equilibrium and time to simultaneously work + be a loving, attentive parent/partner (the non-negotiables) + write here (very close to next in line). I do want to say, though, to the two or three folks still checking in (by god I love ya!), and for posterity in general, that writing here has surpassed being valuable and important to me, and become downright therapeutic —  irreversibly so.  I so value the exchange of thought and intent that takes place here, and in all blog communities like this, where kindred spirits sincerely share and help and enlighten. I have received far more than I have given, and genuinely wish I could give more than I have, particularly of late.  The nice thing is, my conviction that blog dialogs are so vital and valuable led me fairly directly to the day job I have now.  I’m hoping I’ll wrangle it into some kind of balance soon enough. Thereafter: a bit more about the job, so’s not to keep it in the dark. And then: back to the miracle of parenting these kids.

Whenever he comes even close to skinning a knee — the surface of the skin isn’t even broken; maybe there’s just a wee abrasion — he calls out with a dramatic intensity on a par with graduates of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, “IS IT BLEEDING?!”

Don’t know when it will be that I stop keeping Band-Aids (the never-fail placebo) in my wallet. When that day comes, a major chapter of this parenthood will have come to a close.  Of course there’ll be whole new ones to follow. Probably in which I turn around and apply the Band-Aid to myself.  (“Is he even in this ZIP CODE?! This AREA CODE?! The frigging TIME ZONE!” Or, “Would it kill her to just text me back A SMILEY FACE EMOTICON SO I KNOW SHE STILL  POSSESSES THUMBS AND EYEBALLS?!”)

That day will come. And I’ll be damn lucky to see it.

In related news:  right around when I got the good news this blog was a finalist for Best LGBT Blog for the 2011 Bloggies (about which, again: thank you! whichever of you nominated it! now aren’t you glad the voting period is over and I can get that sticky post down off the top of the page?), I got even more fantastic news. And I’m not talking about the boychild finally (FINALLY!) forming a more direct relationship with our household plumbing system, if you know what I mean. That itself was thrilling news. Thrillinger still has been the unexpected appearance on the horizon, then the bearing down   la the Queen Mary (and you have to picture me dutifully bobbing around in my dingy, waiting to flag this baby down for ages), of a real, live, bona fide, fantastic, made-to-order, I couldn’t be more hopped up about it, full-time, J-O-B.

I am a modest and circumspect type (*cough!*), so I will wait a bit ’til I say much more about it other than, WAHOO!

All the hopping around the house WAHOO-ing was quickly followed by feverish flow-charting and Excel-wrangling and phone-calling and text-messaging, since we had to facilitate the transition for the first time in our parental history from being one-and-a-half income-earning parents to being two full-timer/ over-timers.  Overnight, the childcare puzzle bumped up from tic-tac-toe-level complexity to three-dimensional chess. (Fortunately, as we’ve learned before, the more the merrier.) The S.S. Full-time J-O-B comes at what feels like an optimum time, family-wise.  And we live in co-housing community, so no matter how wobbly the transition, we’re likely to be able to summon helping hands when needed.  Hey, what do you think we’ve been meeting and compromising and processing like mad for, these past five years?  The steep discount on our shared DSL? The eased grocery run burden? The free ‘n’ easy loaning back and forth of sugar-beers-cars?

Perhaps not surprisingly, through all the hub and the bub, I have been unable to give all my LD-appropriate thoughts the time and care they so richly deserve. Smack dab in the midst of the Bloggie voting period. So that whatever droves might have drove here wound up seeing… well, the blogular equivalent of my butt crack smiling sideways up from the rear of my jeans waistline as I bent over tending to my offline life. Heck, I even had a great chat with Cheryl Kilodavis, author of My Princess Boy, when she was in town over a week back. My fondest hope is that my interview with her gets to see the light of computer screen sometime before my interview with Lisa Cholodenko and Annette Benning does. Which, given I talked to those gals going on nine months ago, ain’t saying much. Still, a gal can hope.

Meanwhile, I tell myself what gobs and gobs of spiffy Anglomaniacal merch can now help remind me: keep calm and carry on.

(Thank you, nominators & finalist selector folks!) You may vote here (one per carbon-based lifeform!), if you feel so moved (click the category name to get zipped to the LGBT blogs, or scroll waaaaaay down). And if you’ve got time for a chit-chat about the whole thing, read on!

For folks new to this blog and actually doing research on which to base their votes, might I direct you to this About page? And this Best of page? And if you like origin stories, here’s mine, at least as it pertains to and helps explain the vantage point of this blog.

Now: I was going to do a jaunty little pro/con list, basically trying to make the case why any or all of the other blogs up for Best LGBT Blog this year are more deserving of praise and recognition.  You know, followed by the caveat that I’ll still have to vote for this one, undeserving though I may be tempted to think it is, since all those therapy dollars have to be good for something, least of which ought to be an ability on my part to check the impulse for self-criticism. (Therapy doesn’t put a dent in the propensity for circular logic, though! Ha!)

Then I thought I’d  list a few of the other blogs I think are noteworthy. Not because I fancy myself a “social influencer” or what have you but, when time permits, I prefer to be sporting and a gent, and it’s neat to participate in this community.

Then I got to thinking, as I usually do, about the larger context of all of this bloggery. I’ve had occasion, recently, to revisit Scott Rosenberg’s fascinating Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters. In light of that far-reaching history and analysis of this medium and its (dis-, mal-, and overflowing table of-)contents, any few short words on the topic of a year’s collection of noteworthy blogs feels like haiku.

The above three paragraphs serve as well as anything can to demonstrate how easy it is for me to think myself into not writing a word.Perfectionist writer types: sound familiar to ya?

I will now valiantly try to boil down a few thoughts on ye olde weblog award topic, knowing that incompleteness and inadequacy is inevitable (particularly in the mind of the perfectionista).  Aha! If I number them & keep it to six, in honor of the number of years I’ve been at this.  I’m hoping this arbitrary device will enable me to get this here post up before I have to scoop the youngins from school!  With way more doodoo than ado, and no further of it, here are my half-dozen accompanying thoughts:

1. I’m hugely humbled by even being nominated, much less finalist’ed, for any sort of award.Particularly when I know I speak to and from a small slice of the community that constitute my blog’s “beat” (LGBT / parenting).
2. Many of these weblog awards dealies are funny things. Randomized, popularity or volume-of-readership contests, less than starchy, well-vetted meritocracies.  I posted my aghastness at last year’s Bloggie nom here; posted a list of blogs I felt were way worthier of note that year here; way back at the outset of this blog’s public life, I posted about the wackiness of the Weblog Awards process in December 2006, here.
3. Fortunately, this year’s fellow finalists for the Best LGBT Blog category are way more frequently updated, much more TLC’ed for of late, more highly trafficked, more widely cast, topically and more multiply authored.  So I am no longer worrying myself about the burden of representation and earning the due. I will still be heart-warmed by your voterly support, but fully expect to applaud any of the other four finalists, who are:
   • Dorothy Surrenders (lord I love her; lord she’s smart; lord she keeps at it, week in & out; if Ms. Parker were alive she would put down her Martini and applaud the wit)
   • Queerty (look at that volume of content! political, cultural, you name it! they’re on my short list of news sites to tour, after Pam, Bil et al., Joe, & that guy I keep thinking of as Towelroad — pronounced like “Vowel Road,” which I know it’s not — oo! and [later note, sheepishly] David)
   • After Ellen (what need be said? it’s the Dinah Shore Weekend splashed all over one humungous website) and
   • Effing Dykes (a plucky, zingy gal blog that’s also up for Best Whole Entire Blog, so at least I can feel okay about trying to draw a vote from her)
4. Over this past year, I never did quite figure out how to gracefully write through an ongoing and fairly significant real-life emotional challenge (none of which, I happily and hastily note, entails heartache or heartbreak within the immediate family, but my emotional shoelaces have been tied in tight knots off and on for a good year, suffice to say), so the result, blog-wise, has been a drop in post volume that has been way notable to me, if not to regular readers (again: my apologies). This gets chalked up in the “Occupational Hazards of Non-fiction Personal Narrative Writer” column.
5. While we’re at it, after those nasty cranky overseas extremist chaps hi-jacked this blog for that long weekend in December, I never could figure out how to clean up the HTML completely, so there’s been a formatting hiccup RIGHT THERE ON THE TOP OF THE MAIN COLUMN ON THE FRONT PAGE, fer crikey’s sakes. While the family still doesn’t have discretionary funding for cleaning up my errant HTML, I am going to break a piggy bank and try to pay someone to scrub that, for the special occasion of these awards-voting weeks. If anyone knows of a good WordPress mechanic, do tell, by the way.
6. As to this year’s other Bloggies finalists: I can only vouch for blogs I’ve read and admired, so I’ll just say that I myself personally am going to happily vote for
   • Her Bad Mother for Best Canadian Weblog, since Catherine Connors writes so courageously and well about such a range of important things.
   • Women in Planetary Science for Best Science Weblog, since “astronomer/ astronaut” is among my daughter’s professional aspirations).
   • I’m too stumped for Best Political Weblog, since I read several of the finalists regularly (argh!).
   • Chookooloonks for Best Photography of a Weblog, since Karon Walrond’s vision extends so far into and beyond her photography and I’m a whole-hearted booster of both.
   • The Blogess for Most Humorous Weblog, since it is; read it, you’ll see; also for Best Writing of a Weblog, because I’m  not up for that category (*cough!*).
   • Finslippy for Lifetime Achievement, since she’s a helluva writer and humorist, and even though she’s still young (!), her blog apparently isn’t.  I hope an honor like this doesn’t feel like one of those Academy Award lifetime achievement things that are like the parting gift for nonagenarian thespians.
   • Effing Dykes for Best Weblog of the Year, especially so I don’t feel bad stumping for Best LGBT one.  Hey, I’m trying to be honest here. Also, she’s a hoot.

Thank you for reading, either just this post, or this whole blog dealie, for any amount of the going on six years it’s been puttering along. Your company has made it all exceedingly worthwhile.

By the way, if at any point in the future the URL that’s home to this mild-mannered parenting blog deals you out something suspiciously resembling a cranky screed by overseas hackers with too much time on their hands and too much bile in their whatever, please be assured that (a) while I might have an odd sense of humor from time to time, it is not that odd, and (b) the fine folks that host this mild-mannered parenting blog and I are working ’round the clock to fix it.

Before I return to the calm of the daily photo posting, which I will in a moment, I want to thank the half-dozen or more LD readers and friends who either shot me an email or Tweeted me that something was fishy and then kept me company while I fished the fish out. I likened the feeling, last night on Twitter, to the neighborly love you’d feel when an asteroid drops down in your front yard and folks come out in their fuzzy slippers and robes and offer you a cup of tea (spiked!) and scratch their heads alongside you as you all take in the smoldering mess. And I also want to thank the fine folk at Acorn Host for their hard work cleaning up that mess: Arthur B., Gordon M., Jane W., Phil Z., and Victor T.

I asked Jane, who was the first to graciously put some nice LD wallpaper over the mess left by the bilious biley chaps, whether she and Acorn Host’s boss Emma could share a favorite charity so’s I and any other grateful LD community member who wanted could send some appreciation. Here’s what she said:

I would be happy to share that my favorite charity is p:ear, it’s a Portland org that works with homeless youth through art. Emma’s is Village Reach — innovative last mile healthcare logistics in the developing world. Which she found through Give Well, which is a fascinating site about measuring the true impact and ethics of charities.

See why I like my web host so much? I mean, that was from my web host. At 3:00 in the afternoon on a Sunday.

I would like to invite whichever of youse are glad to see this here and not the cranky bright green scrolling rant from the bilious overseas chaps to donate something — anything! today’s latte money! better than zip! — to either p:ear (click the “donate” link at the center of the page) or Village Reach, or both (!) as a gesture of thanks to Emma’s crew at Acorn Host. I pay ‘em lots more than my latte budget every month to keep this site up and running, but I’m going to send some gratitude to those orgs as a means of making a tasty lemon meringue pie out of a pile of green lemons.

Now give me a moment and I’ll get another picture up. And thanks for coming back.