I do read the comments. Really, truly. I appreciate comments, and mull them over in my head, and, when I've got an immediate response I'll write it. But that over-thinking thang does kick in (Josette understands completely), and mulling takes time, and then life (in the form of, say, teaching English fuddy-duddy candidates about databases, or dotters that suddenly have become tearfully fearful of the dark) sweeps me along its path, and I forget. (Hangs head in shame.) It's like Christmas cards. OmegaMom will not mention how long it's been since she has sent out Christmas cards. This year's plan--originally to get friends' and relatives' addresses into a database, print out labels, get the letter written up and printed in late November, and then have a free-for-all night of card stuffing--fell by the wayside when OmegaMom woke up one Friday morning and realized Christmas was in two days. Eeep. So it slid to New Year's Day cards. Then to "Mid-January" cards. Then to the grand idea to send out Chinese New Year cards. Now I'm thinking of sending out mass Valentine's Day cards, but have little hope of actually accomplishing the task. Procrastination, thy name is OmegaMom. Anyways, back to blogs and comments and stuff like that. Blogging is an odd endeavor. One sits down at the keyboard with An Idea (hopefully). A rant, a screed, something that seems somewhat humorous or topical. On a good day, the words flow, it's fun to look up links to this-n-that to lure your (oodles, of course) of readers onwards into the incredibly fun maze of the internets. But you're writing, and you have no idea whether the people who read think it's worthwhile, or maybe you've hit a dull streak, or you've concentrated too much on topics that are esoteric or limited in scope, and you hit the "Publish Post" button and wonder...Do they like it? Are they interested? Am I boring them? Should I care? Is blogging essentially casting your voice out into the great wide world with nary a ripple, or is it supposed to be a conversation? At times, it does turn into a conversation, spread out across multiple blogs, a looping discussion that starts there, stops here for a tangential response, then moves on to yet another blog, with yet another facet being explored. The Adoption commentary post was of that type, inspired by a post on Karen's blog, which was inspired by a post (and the associated commentary) on Julie's blog. OmegaMom reads a ton o' blogs, mostly parenting and adoption blogs, with an occasional foray into other spheres (A List Apart, for instance, which is devoted solely to website design, or The Assimilated Negro, which is really quite grand). Some of the bloggers she has followed for many months (OmegaMom hangs her head, again, because she was so late to the blogging party and had never visited a blog before 2005), and come to know the personalities behind the blogs, followed their ups and downs, and feels, in a way, that they are friends (though these friends may not even know her!). Other bloggers she has known for quite a while before they took fingers to keyboard in the blogging universe. A very few blogs she discovered by hitting the "Next Blog" button, but most of the ones she's hit that way are just crappy. It's a very interesting world, the blogoverse. The other day, OmegaMom clicked on the Sitemeter link to the stats for A Big Well-Known Blog, and she was absolutely blown away. This dude gets 4500 hits per day. Holy shit. 'Scuse the language, but there's just no other possible response. Holy shit. And then she went on a tangent to BlogAds (from a link on This Woman's Work), and discovered there are blogs out there that get hundreds of thousands of hits per week. Holy shit. The thought of waking up in the morning realizing that tens of thousands of people are hanging on their RSS feed subscriptions for notice of one of your posts makes OmegaMom shiver. Anyway, I do read the comments. And may respond sooner or later. Maybe by Valentine's Day. With that, a few gratuitous shots of the dotter. The Evil Mocha cake, mentioned in Wired:

OmegaDotter protecting herself from alien thought control:

The response to a helpful suggestion from OmegaMom or OmegaDad, and obvious signs of adolescent attitude to come: