How do they do it?

I have many blogs that I like to read as often as I get the chance. Lately, I've been wondering how people like PZ Meyers at Pharyngulaand Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist can write more than one blog post a day!! I can barely find the time to write one blog post a month!

In the past couple of weeks I've seriously contemplated putting an end to this blog. The day that I posted my last post, one of our dogs became ill. The next day he died. This was really unexpected because he had been running around and playing that day. It really hit our family hard. If you're not an animal lover, you may not understand. But, I can only compare the loss of Toby to the loss of a family member. I think it was worse because it happened so fast. Running around and playing one day...gone the next.

His death was a reminder of how precious life is and that we need to make the most of each day and each experience. We're planning to have a little family ceremony to celebrate Toby's life...although I haven't been able to go through all of our videos and pictures yet to put it together. Once I do, I will write a post about it.

I'm sure you can infer from the previous sentence that I have decided not to end my blog. However, I will only write posts when I have the time to do it and therefore it will not be a consistent thing. I know as a reader of blogs that this can be frustrating...when you find a blog you like, you want a consistent schedule of posting. But, this is all I can do right now. I'm not going to stop writing because I've heard from many people that it's nice to have another blog that has postings about atheist parenting issues. I'm hoping that when I finish school (in 52 days...but whose counting?) I'll have more opportunities to write posts.

I'm Back!

No, I wasn't on vacation the entire time that I've been away from my blog. But, I have been enjoying life and just haven't found myself in front of the computer much. We had an excellent vacation...so much so that my kids were ready to move to the Oregon coast so we could be near the ocean every day :)

Since we got home, both the kids and I have started back to school, soccer practice and games have started,we've had some fun end of summer outings, I reorganized and redecorated our computer room, my husband and I painted our ceilings, and we've started babysitting my 4 month old niece on Mondays and Wednesdays. So, that hasn't left much time for blogging. But it's so nice to have all of my projects done and now I've been focusing on family and school.

I owe some people my deconversion story....yes I still remember :) So, I will try to get that finished up soon. I also wanted to address a couple of things that have come up in e-mails. First, I've been criticized for not accepting anonymous comments. I had felt that my explanation on this was clear, but since I've received some e-mails about it, I guess it wasn't.

Plain and simple: my blog is set up as a way to put my opinions out there and have discussions with other people. Imagine trying to have a discussion with 3 people of the same name on the telephone. How would you clarify which person you were speaking to if everyone had the same name? It may be able to be done, but it would be quite difficult. It's the same on my blog. If there is more than one anonymous comment, how could someone know which anonymous I am replying to. It's just easier for people to make up some name for themselves(this is called a pseudonym..kind of like humanist mama). The only reason I see people having a problem with this is if they are just here to criticize and have no interest in discussion. People whose minds are that closed need not bother to leave a comment. I'm not interested.

Another thing people seem to have a problem with is my quote generator. I've been told that just because those people are smart people does not mean that they know everything. OK...I never claimed that they know everything. That is called a straw man argument. I agree with most of those quotes because I believe they make valid points. That is why I linked to Secular Earth through their quote generator...I thought it would make a great addition to my blog and I could also link to a great website. If you disagree with any of the quotes, feel free to explain why. Hey, I might agree with you if you make some valid points of your own. Also, I don't always read every quote that goes through the generator, so there may be some that I already do not agree with. To those people who are so worried about my quote generator: ask yourself why these quotes bother you so much and let me know. Sometimes we have to go beyond our first impression to understand exactly what is bothering us.

Those were the main points I wanted to address. I'm going to post a link to my e-mail address in case there are any more concerns. Many people have already discovered that there is an e-mail link on my blogspot profile. I'm always open to honest questions or critiques of anything I've written.