Saturday, March 17, 2007

The glass is. . .


Nero Wolfe says (roughly), "Pessimists have only pleasant surprises, optimists only unpleasant ones." This was one of my mottoes even before I read that the seventh-of-a-ton detective himself believed it. It makes sense, really. My loving spouse accuses me frequently of being a pessimist. I deny it with the all too common response of, "It's not pessimism, it's realism" but he's probably right. Which is why I was surprised this week to be unpleasantly surprised not once, but twice!

First, I didn't think it would take as long as it has for Zaya to recover from his surgery. He's still in a lot of pain as soon as his Tylenol starts to wear off (which is always before I can give him another dose) and we haven't all had a good nights sleep since the surgery. This is day eight. I thought for sure we'd all be better by now. I didn't remember hurting this long, and I was 14 when I had my surgery. My dad had a good point, though. He said, "Well, he's still young enough that he's got nothing to prove, so he's going to cry at a 4 on the pain scale just like he would a 7 or 8." True, true, so I'm trying to adjust my expectations a bit.(Dad's a nurse, hence the numbers.)

My second surprise is my poor little blog. I was so excited when Kilikina told me about bloglines, and I now read about 45 different blogs, some more faithfully than others. I was excited to see that I had 6 subscribers of my own. Now, I see that I've lost a subscriber! I only have 5! It's ridiculous that I should care about that, but I do. It hurts. Of course, I've dropped blogs before when I decided they weren't what I thought they would be, but being the (apparently) arrogant optimist that I am, I was cruelly smitten by that dropped subscriber. The wound is still raw. I have to remind myself that I am writing this blog to let family and friends know about my little family. If other's are bored by that. . .so be it. I have to keep telling myself that. Grandma P, one of my favorite lurkers, is much more important than whoever dropped that line, and faithful Grandma C, who doesn't have a computer, but requests hard copies sent through the snail mail of my posts, is also infinitely more important than my nebulous former subscriber. So there. Everything's fine.

This optimism is hard stuff, though. Whew.

7 comments:

Robin Green said...

So glad you discovered bloglines--I'm one of your five and I won't cancel!!! It does make blog-reading easier!

Johanna said...

So, where does one find out how many people have subscribed?

Janeva said...

Okay, Cari, since you told me about subscribing, I decided to subscribe instead of just lurk. Now you have six again. :-)

carmilevy said...

It's been almost three years since I started blogging, and I've noticed that regular readers tend to evolve over time. The folks who read me and commented regularly at first seem to have drifted away. New folks have come on board in waves, and the numbers have grown gradually all along.

It bugs me when folks leave, but this isn't a job and I'm not making money from it. Yet, anyway. So I try to not take it personally. It works the other way, too: when I get really busy with life (which happens often, as work has been insane for the past couple of years) I drastically cut my blog reading.

Either way, as long as I've got some sense of community going on my blog, I'll keep writing. And if I lose some folks along the way, I'm confident new ones will find me soon enough.

With that in mind, I'm so very glad I've found your site!

Anonymous said...

Since your mom told me about your blog, I've read it a few times. I don't have my own blog so I don't know if I can subscribe but I will say I enjoy reading yours! I love your humor :)
Michelle :)

Qtpies7 said...

I hope it wasn't me! I subscribed, but I hated bloglines and the popups on my screen and not being able to see the whole post. I don't remember how many blogs I read that I had added before I got disgusted and uninstalled it. Not sure if uninstalling it gets rid of the blogs you've subscribed to though. hehe, I don't know if I should be allowed on the computer with my lack of knowledge.
I find it way easier to just have you on my blog and just go down the list and read each person's blog. Daily, usually, sometimes only twice a week.

Crissybug said...

I have been meaning to post on this for awhile, but have gotten busy.

I am one of your subscribers. I have loved reading about you and your family.

I know how it can feel. I don't have many subscribers either. I didn't really start my blog with hopes that I would get a huge audience, but to find that some people find me interesting was quite a surprise. It is hard to understand why one would stop, and in some ways even though you may not know who it is it is a bummer!

Don't worry, I won't be unsubscribing anytime soon! Keep up the good work, and I am sure people will come along!