When I was growing up, there were a lot of young families on my street and not that I ever did it, but I always had the feeling that I could walk into any of three or four hours and be mothered if necessary or if my bike broke and my Dad was at work, I could borrow a Dad for a few minutes to get it fixed (truth be told, my Mom is an adept fixer-of-things, but I'm working out an example of 1970s childhood here, bear with me).

A lot of people I know feel the absence of that sort of environment while they are raising their children today, but I have invested a lot of time in cultivating that fabled 'village' to help me raise my kids. Aside from our parents, and my sisters (The Man's brother is in Scotland, the village can't always extend that far :)) we also have a group of really close friends with and without kids that we hang out and have fun with, and we spread the childcare out among the group.

In particular, we have Jan, and, Hil and Chad, and, Derek, all of whom make my life easier on a regular basis. When we get together, the three kids (Hil and Chad have a daughter The Boy's age) play together and the adults take on whatever role necessary. Any given grownup could be cooking supper, running messages, wrangling the kids, picking up toys, calming a crying fit, talking to any other adult, figuring out our plans, helping get a kid into pajamas or off to sleep. I could easily, and with complete confidence, leave the kids with any of the adults and know that they would be well taken care of until I returned.

These people are some of what I refer to as my 4-in-the-morning friends - you know, the people you could call at 4am and they'd come running to the rescue. Lately, I have been looking at the group of us as we settle the kids into sleep on Friday night, with some of us doing dishes, some of us reading stories and some of us picking up kid debris, and setting up the intruments to play Rock Band (I ROCK Margaritaville, by the way) and I just feel so grateful, so lucky, to have these people in my life. I can't help but grin.

The village is not just good for the kids, it's good for the Mombie too.

the hectic-ee abandons her blog.

Part of the problem is my ambivalence to a lot of aspects of blogging. Many people see blogging as BLOGGING, and they are building an audience, trying to secure ads, and so on. And that's fine for them that likes it. But that's not what I'm here for. In fact the whole idea of building an audience, exposing my writing to trolls and the like, and then having advertisers that I am responsible to, just seems exhausting beyond measure.

I think of this blog as my own personal space, and like my house, I'm happy to have visitors, but I'm not inviting a ton of people over at once, and I'm not welcoming obnoxious people at all. This is a place I like to hang out, not a place that I want to feel judged all the time. I'm a harsh enough judge without creating a team to back me up on it.

But that's only one aspect of why I end up not blogging (the annoyance of doing my own html is another one - sometimes my time is just too limited for that stuff).

I've also noticed a pattern with me and my blog. Whenever things get out of hand in my schedule, I start paring down all the 'frivolous' stuff and leave myself with the essentials. That is I cut out stuff like exercise, watching Stargate, reading fiction, writing fiction, writing online etc, and I focus on whatever the WORK of the moment is. And that's not even necessarily paid work, just whatever is demanding the most attention.

You no doubt see the flaw in my thinking. I cut out all sorts of things that I find fun, that are restorative, and I leave in things are are demanding and draining. That in turn leaves my vulnerable to the sort of low grade depression that can follow me like Pigpen's dust cloud, waiting for the chance to overtake me.

I need to pay closer attention to when blogging seems like too much effort. Perhaps set off some sort of blog alarm that will start buzzing when I don't post for a week, and keep up that annoying noise until I dump some of the contents of my busybrain onto the screen.

Meanwhile, in the interest of being kinder to myself, I am planning to post here at least three times a week for the next month and see how that helps me.