a day in the life, Beagle, blogging, dogs, first world problems, mental health, momlife, pandemic, parenting, teenagers

Back to blogging

While taking a bit of a blogging break, I decided to teach myself how to create a website from an existing blog. Meaning, I wanted to have a home page that was fixed (static) and add pages that will guide you to other parts of my creative journey. One of those pages is my blog, but there are other pages as well.

There is a reason for this. And you will see what my plans are soon. (I’m slow with progress, mostly due to external interruptions that are beyond my control, but I will not let anyone stress me out. It will happen when I’m ready.)

Life has been a bit of a slog recently. The neck pain plus the endless lockdown measures have worn me down, not to mention the whole parenting teens thing; one kid is turning 16 on the weekend. I mean…what? How does this happen?

Things are difficult and the lack of freedom, social activities, and other opportunities beyond these four walls have impacted us all, the kids more so than anyone I think. AND, the vaccinations are continuously delayed or otherwise messed up – we are far, far behind many other industrial countries. Did you know unemployement in Canada is higher than America, the UK, even Italy? I try to stay off the news as much as I can because it’s depressing watching them screw up things even more, but occasionally I get sucked in. Every single measure that’s happening now should have happened last April, May. But never mind. I will sit here like a good little Canadian and wait. Nothing much else I can do.

One new thing is I started dog walking again. There are two puppies in the neighbourhood, one is Nessie who was introduced in this blog. I started her yesterday and it went very well, although she didn’t really trust me enough to actually go for a walk. We managed maybe four houses down the street before she changed her mind and wanted back to her house and backyard. I will try the same walk with her again today and see if she’ll come further. If not, that’s ok. She’s a baby (3 months) and it takes time to bond with babies, even furry ones.

The other dog is a prospect still, a 6 month old Shepherd. Unlike with Nessie’s family, whom I’ve known for a dozen years, these people found my advertising on facebook (which honestly I forgot about, I rarely go on there these days). They are interviewing other people as well so it may or may not happen. Either way, I’m ok with that. I have plenty of things to keep me busy.

There’s our own Tucker, as well, Mr. Barfy-Puke dog. Every day there’s a new pile of puke for us to clean up. Today, we found evidence of his red rubber ball, made by Kong no less, in the puke pile. He chews stuff (he’s still teething a bit at 8 months) and then proceeds to EAT it. Silly pooch. But we can’t keep our eye on him 24/7 – I sometimes put him in the back hallway behind the gate so I don’t have to pay as close attention to him, especially when I’m writing or editing, but one or the other family members always let him out. “I feel sorry for him all alone back there,” they tell me, then grab a snack and head back to wherever they came from, leaving me to watch Tucker by myself again. 🙄

Anyway, the family will be on their own as of this afternoon because I’m leaving on a short trip for a few days. I will be family-less, and single, for a glorious two and a half-ish days. 😀 Can’t wait.

I’ll be back to blogging more consistently again as of later today, or tomorrow. In the meantime, won’t you have a look at my minimalist home page on my site? I love it, but I am interested in feedback. For one thing, do you think I should add some pictures? I do like the clean, minimalist layout but should I add something a little more designer-ish to my page?

See you in the comments!

50 thoughts on “Back to blogging”

  1. I am also a ‘good’ Canadian (west coast) 🙂 and yes, the pandemic has been hard on my teens. One just graduated. It was a crummy last year of school 😦 Setting up my 18 year old’s second vaxx appointment- yay!

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  2. I think Canada is doing much better than Australia in getting the community vaccinated. They have had a lot of time to get this organized – both countries. I don’t know why the hold up continues….
    You also made me rethink having a home page….

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  3. Blogging breaks can be helpful when there’s a lot of everything going on in life. Lockdown Life certainly doesn’t help matters! At least you’re still feeding your creative side with the undertaking of a website featuring your blog. It’s good to keep that active. I hope your negatives soon become more positives!

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  4. That’s a nice theme, I like it. I host my own WordPress sites so I get a lot more choice of themes, but finding the right one and customizing it is a nightmare. The one good thing is that content and themes are separate entities, so if you change theme your content is still intact. You can alway stweak themes as well.

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  7. The minimal look has a nice clean feel to it and is very functional as well. Many people gravitate towards imagery though. Like a hook, it can grab attention. May be something to consider, though I realize you are all about the written word. I like the look and feel.

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      2. I tried to leave a comment on your About page but it wasn’t activated…might have a look at that. I was going to tell you I’m living in Toronto’s west end, and my dad used to be a tour guide and was licensed to do the Niagara Tours. 😉

        Liked by 1 person

      3. Thank you for noticing that. I will check into that and fix it.
        Oh what a great coincidence. I bet your dad knows a lot about the ins and outs of the Niagara region. Thanks again for the comment tip.

        Liked by 1 person

      5. I just looked at mine, and it wasn’t active either. Are you using Block Editor? I found where you can activate it – Go to your About page. Click the star thingy that opens up the right margin. Choose Page (not Block). Scroll down to Discussion, then click the Allow Comments.

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    1. My mom’s. Since my dad died in May she’s been all alone. She’s part of our covid bubble and has been all along. The drive is about 30 minutes from my house. I know it sounds exotic, “going on a trip”, but trust me for a mom of teens in a year-long lockdown pandemic this IS a trip for me. 🙃

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  10. Clean. Nice. I think the ‘About’ section should come first, before the blog–as an introduction of sorts. And, I’d like photos–maybe one for each section, and (it’s a tall order) something that provides differences but withing a common visual theme. For example, The pics could have a common color scheme, or could be all pics of the same or similar common items or scenes–with the variations tied to the different headings. I am specifically a word person–but I get more than twice the hits on those blogs that have pictures. People are visual–and those visual cues become landmarks for easy access. Since you’d like people to return, and browse, let pictures help to be their roadmap.

    And thank you. I’ve been leaning in this direction for awhile. With the bulk of the homesteading underway, I anticipate a return to writing and publishing in the next year. I need to convert my aging blog into something more dynamic–and useful. I envision keeping the blog as the core (so as to keep my existing follows) and to have multi-layers and even a tab for book purchases. You’ve got me thinking.

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    1. I switched it back, the About and Blog. I had it like that before and then changed it for some reason.

      I also discovered a block that has the image incorporated into a square with a heading and text. I’ll fool around with it to see if I can make it work, maybe tomorrow when I have more time.

      I hope to publish books on here too at some point. Getting closer.

      Thanks for the feedback!

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  13. I’m going to be perfectly honest because you asked for feedback…. I think your home page needs a little pop of something. It doesn’t have to be flooded with pictures but if I was cruising by for the first time I’m not sure the text would be enough incentive to stop. As for the dog walking, glad to hear you’re back at it. Great exercise and good company.
    👍

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  14. I like the clean and simple look. In the footer, the meta widget and the Akismet widget might just be adding extra clutter. It looks like your theme has 3 footer widget areas, and it might not be a bad idea to shift the My Community and Recent Posts widgets over to the other widget areas.

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  17. I like minimal, and I like the color scheme, but a pop of something might help to draw people in. I am a one stop shop sort of person so having everything in one place appeals to me. Double check your spelling on Instagram in various places. I see an extra “r” in there

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    1. Yes. Because if I do an actual, link-able email address the spam grows exponentially. Ashley did some investigating on a previous blog post I wrote and she discovered that’s the reason (or one of the reasons). This is what she said:

      I like detectiving, so I hunted this down. You left your email address in the comments on the page two-rock-chronicles [dot] com [slash] about. Probably a bot picked that up and treated it as the email for that site. I always leave my email in comments in the format me [at] me [dot] me. I think more sophisticated bots can still pick that up, but I think it cuts down at least somewhat on the automated spam.

      That’s in reference to this blog post:
      https://writerofwordsetc.ca/2021/03/03/unsolicited-irksome-blogging-advice/

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