stretching boundaries

I don't know if it comes across here or not; but I'm a bit of a homebody.

Sure, I like to get out, have a little excitement , see people, do things, but overall I also like to hunker down and stay close to home. Of course this can lead to a severe case of being a Hermit and that's really no way to raise a child.

The Peanut has been showing some signs that she's got good rhythm and some other very clear signs that she loves music. She danced almost all night when we went to watch the Husband and his band practice one night. So the only thing to do was to get her into a dance class. This of course meant that I had to venture out from our little neighborhood and into other parts of town.

So we get ready for her first dance class today and we're waiting for the bus to come and it's there at the top of the hill just sitting there and it sitting there and it's the only bus that can get us there and it's still sitting there and ten minutes after the scheduled departure time at our stop it pulls away from the stop at the top of the hill and I am officially starting to panic because the community center is a few block away from our stop and even though I told myself that we'd do a dry run trip there before the class started; one thing and another happened, and we just didn't get around to it, and I have only a vague idea of where I'm headed and the 20 minutes I thought I'd have to get there from our stop turned into a lot less and we walked into the class a few moments late.

And on the way to the class there are a bunch of little shops here and there that I'd like to poke into and a specialty shop across the street that carries different types of flour that I'd like to go to; what with my quest to bake the perfect loaf of bread this year. So the point I was trying to make? Getting out of my neighborhood to get the Peanut dancing is looking like a good thing...

This and That

What with one thing and another things are happening around here. My list of Blogs to follow is growing at an almost alarming rate. Keeping up is getting a little rough and yet whenever I think I'm going to go through the list and cull I just can't do it.

I'll be honest, I don't religiously follow all of the blogs on my list, I'm loyal to about a dozen or so and I drop into the others on a semi regular basis. They all have something to offer be it a laugh out loud comment or a heart rending description of a perfect moment. I try not to be a lurker, but in the case of some of the more popular Blogs I notice that I'm a little more shy and less likely to comment.

It's funny how personality traits tend to cross over into the digital realm. I'm painfully shy in person. I don't know where the shyness comes from but I'm sure that my emotional state of mind has a heavy hand in it, I tend to stand back in social situations, I become unable to gauge how to act, and interact in groups of people I do not know well so parties are painful for me and the first year or so in a new school was always uncomfortable for me growing up. Moving anywhere is a sure way to get me to crawl back into my shell. I'm reading Sense and Sensibility right now and one of the characters makes a comment about how shyness is an indicator of self worth (at least I think that's where I read it) and I have to say that it makes sense.

It's the same for me in any sort of web based community. I tend to do more lurking than interacting at first. I'm working on that though. The hurdle of stepping forward is a little less daunting when it's in the virtual as opposed to the day to day. And watching how my daughter easily welcomes new people into her life each day is a pretty good example to follow. So I'm putting myself out there.

And so we come to the part of the post where I tell you what's been happening around here .

Last Friday was Etsy Day, I revisited some of my favourite artists and then went on to read some of the posts about Etsy Day that were on my dashboard. One of these posts had a contest in honour of the big media blitz. This particular blog; Stacey Winters is full of the most glowing photographic entries. My hands itch to pick up the camera and go out and shoot when I visit and I covet the quality of light she manages to capture. the prize for her Etsy Day draw was a package of goodies from her shop and I was one of the winners.

I'm so excited to have won and I can't wait to see what's in my package. I'll be posting pictures here when it gets here.

I've been toying with the idea of doing a give-away myself. I've held off on the idea (see reasons above) and think it's time to give a little too. I'll keep you updated on how things are progressing on the giveaway front.