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1.1.
I have two years before Miss C. will be in any kind of mandatory school setting. I do not know if her parents will allow me to homeschool her or if they will put her into a regular school. I also have at least 5 more years with Rosie in my homeschool, although that girl is pretty self-motivated. So that means I can’t really look for any kind of regular work outside of the home for at least two years. With all that in mind, I’m going to use this time to try and become a “better blogger.”
Part of the inspiration for that was a recent experience I had trying to submit a guest post for a homeschool blog carnival. I submitted three posts. The first one was rejected because it messed up SEOs somehow. The second one didn’t “fit the niche” and the third one was accepted but was never published. I’ve been participating in blog carnivals and link jups for years now and have only had one post rejected. That one was rejected on a Catholic website because I mentioned owning a gun. Anyway…
So I started to look more deeply into that particular blog. This was a blogger who had only been blogging for 5 years, had only been married for around 10 and only had two little kids that she was homeschooling. Yet she had over 100,000 monthly blog hits. Clearly there’s something that blogger is doing right that I’m not and I’m going to try to figure out what all of that is.
2. It would be nice to make some of the money this blogger says she is making on her blog.
This week, Rosie and I were reading Laura Ingals Wilder’s Little Town on the Prairie (Little House)
3. So one of the things I have learned in my goal to become a better blogger, is to look at my e-mail list. I had one through Feedburner. I never looked at it. Feedburner was just in my side bar and people just clicked on it get this blog through their e-mail. But what I was finding from my new blogging mentors was that it was very important to have and maintain an e-mail list. They also discouraged using Feedburner because you couldn’t just send an e-mail directly to everyone on your list – you could only post something on your blog and publish it and then it went out to the world and your e-mail list.
Interesting!
So I dug into Feedburner to find my e-mail list and was thrilled to see that I had over 1000 subscribers! But then I looked at it more closely and I noticed entries like this:
| acedoaer@outlook.com |
| acedocklj@outlook.com |
| acedocnro@outlook.com |
| acedocqen@outlook.com |
| acedodetn@outlook.com |
| acedodsh@outlook.com |
Hundreds of them. Sure looked like a lot of spam to me. I cleared that up and an hour laterI had a solid 30 subscribers – sigh!
So I took my solid 30 and went over to Mad Mimi and set up a new e-mail account.
If you’d like to be one of em just put your e-mail in this and subscribe. I don’t send out an e-mail for every post but only once or twice a week.
4. I found myself in a Twitter debate about Masterpiece Bakery vs. the State of Colorado. The irony of debating that on the Feast of St. Nicholas (patron of unmarried women and smiter of heretics) was not lost on me! One of my worthy opponants mentioned that Jesus served meals to all and it didn’t matter if they were sinners or not.
I don’t recall Jesus serving any meals. He shared meals. When did he serve one?— Elena LaVictoire (@mrsL) December 6, 2017
That’s when it hit me – when did Jesus ever serve a meal? He caused meals to be served and even arranged for that to be done. But Jesus in the scriptures never prepared a big spread and had everyone over! The one example we do have of Jesus and a prepared spread is of poor Martha being chastized for overdoing it! Jesus the Good Shepherd, the Living Water, the Bridegroom, but never really the dinner host.
5. Izzy has been on her job now since October. Of course, it has gotten crazy busy with the upcoming holidays. Last week, she got called into the manager’s office. She was afraid she had done sonething wrong! She hadn’t.
They made her Employee of the Month!! They also increased her hours.
6. So I’ve been dealing with knee pain for over a month now. We just changed health insurance and I am trying to avoid a trip to the doctor. It is probably just arthritis, although it could be tendonitis. Anyway, I found these physical therapy guys on Youtube and started their knee stretching program and I gotta say it helps! They’re funny and enjoyable and have a lot of good tips. If you’re having any issues, their videos might help you too!
7. If you still have some online holiday shopping to do help me match Laura Ingals!
Shopping through my affiliate link helps to supply my homeschool with school and art supplies,
pay for piano lessons,
and helps me pay for shoes for my distance runners.
Comes in handy for my college student as well!
Thanks for your generosity in this past year. I truly appreciate it.
