Hikaru Dorodango

It is the last day of November.  It is the last day of my challenge to myself to write a post for every day of the month.  I was joking with Dan today that I feel like something happens to the internet tomorrow, that I was supposed to have gotten everything written, it was my last chance.  This of course segued into "what was I doing in the nineties, before the internet?" and devolved into remembering trashy television (I mean the worst. When I was pregnant with Eliza I used to eat thai food and ice cream and watch episodes of Temptation Island. Please don't judge me too harshly) and fonder memories of drinking wine and writing letters by candlelight.  I still drink wine, but I sure as heck can't see well enough by candlelight to write a letter.  (Ah, forget the wine. I just spilled an entire glass with my computer. I still have candlelight...)

I suppose I could be reflecting on how this experiment went...I have for the most part enjoyed the push to post something - it has forced a few of the posts from my drafts folder out into the light of day.  There were also the days when the post was little more than a facebook status update, which is funny. I don't have facebook, but I do lurk like a lunatic, and I find myself once in a while thinking, "oooh, if I had facebook, I would totally put this on there".  I have also been tempted more than once to repost something I saw there, here on the blog (Doors to Europe? Anyone? It's the very best of facebook, in my opinion, made me so very happy), but I have this feeling that if it's on facebook, everyone has seen it, like...oh, like the newspaper, like everyone sees the same thing.  I know that's not true, but it's too mind-boggling for me to imagine elsewise.

I wish the blogging world was still active.  I sometimes feel like a lone island out in cyber space, when just a couple of years ago I felt like I had a whole community, as thought it really were a web. I'd mention someone who was doing something, and Dan would ask "is that Stephanie in Utah?" like we actually knew her in person, not just here in the box. I know I should just Do Facebook - I'm assuming that's where all the cool kids have gone - but I really feel like it wouldn't be as good for me. I guess it just brings me back to this mostly being a way of threading the experiences of my life together so I can find my way back when life gets too big.

So, for today I will end the month with a post I started many many years ago.  It's not the first I've mined from the drafts folder this month, but it is maybe the most random.  This is my brother-in-law, the guy we call Spoons, making like a dung beetle and rolling dirt balls. He is curious, tenacious and meticulous, and his activity of choice this particular visit was teaching himself the Japanese art of hikaru dorodango.

Thank you for sticking with me through November!! It has inspired me to post more often and dig a little deeper for what I want to say.  That has to be a good thing.