Moi? A stylish blogger?

Grazie mille to UK Blogger Gail Crane, host of The Writing Bug for nominating me as a A Stylish Blogger. Here is my badge of honor, which I will proudly display in my sidebar shortly. 

I take this award as a high compliment since I put a lot of time (too much) into creating the look of my blog. I came upon the precise look I wanted for my opera blog, Operatoonity, within a few tries. But not this one. I changed colors and formats and backgrounds upteen gazillion times trying to hit upon something that was a visual expression of my personality.

I also think the Stylish Blogger designation is acknowledging a writing and/or personal style. Again, I try to approach each post as an opportunity to help the world understand who I am and what's important to me.

In accepting this award, I must tell you seven things about myself and nominate fifteen other bloggers. Fifteen? Oy!

Anyway, here's seven things about me you might not know:

1. I write a different sort of holiday newsletter each year in defiance of the dreaded stereotypical Christmas letter.

2. I aspire to domestic goddesshood but am forever falling short because of my concave cheese soufflés and general slovenliness though I have a few housekeeping idiosyncrasies--I don't like my husband Bill to put his sweaty knitted cap on my embossed Lenox vase, even if it's without posies.
3. I got down on my hands and knees and cleaned the kitchen floor with a toothbrush a week before my daughter was born. Yes, it has been cleaned since.
4. My husband is nicknamed Dangerman because he hates to take any kind of risk--physically or otherwise--and is constantly admonishing me to be careful and not to do anything stupid like fall off a sidewalk, which I have done.
5. In the pet department, I have an indoor cat Frodo who is more fierce than Scylla the six-headed monster from The Odyssey, a parade of outdoor cats by my basement window regularly, and many unexterminated pests who call our happy domicile home.
6. I sang the Beer Barrel Polka version of the Apostles' Creed during Communion Service in church last week--word! 



Pennsylvania Dutch hex sign

7. I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the prevailing wisdom embraced by my people is the adage, “What’s the use of being Pennsylvania Dutch if you can’t be dumb?”  

I will announce the fifteen other bloggers deserving of this award in the next post. I will be looking for people who are up-to-date posters and who have a certain . . . how do the French say it? Ah, yes--je ne sais quoi.



"Mice Capades" -- my blog contest entry

I've entered a contest to win a one-year contract to be the blogger of record for a popular consumer magazine. The entry required you to submit a 200-word (tops) entry about a real-life, everyday event and a bio, to include mention of family members and pets.

Some of my friends in the blogsophere know I go back at least five years as a blogger. At one time, I hosted as many as five blogs concurrently. Why? You guessed it. I really love to blog. So to be paid to blog would be a dream come true.

What follows is my 200-word sample blog post called "Mice Capades" and  requisite author bio. Let me know what you think. Yes, I want the unvarnished truth.

Mice Capades

Walt Disney made them huggable. John Steinbeck made them heroic. In reality, mice are creatures of terror who carry parasites, gnaw through wiring, and make you feel like a crummy housekeeper.

Whenever I hear a house mouse scurrying across my spotless kitchen floor, I race to the cupboard, wrangle into latex gloves, and wait until said mouse ventures out from underneath the range. Then I pounce, grabbing it by its rubbery tail and flinging it off the deck of my two-story home, yelling, “Sayonara, sucker!” From my fingertips to a crash landing in the back forty. A landing from which no mus musculus ever returns.

Buy a cat, you say? I have a feline named Frodo. Like Scylla, the mythological she-devil, she’d tear out your liver just to amuse herself. And that’s what mice are to Frodo—amusement. She bats them between her paws like she’s having a game of pinball on the floor-you-could-eat-off-of. Once she actually managed to kill a mouse— when the rotten thing died of cardiac arrest before it was “Game Over.”

Heaven knows why I pay a pest control service $200 a year. Maybe I’d have better luck if the exterminator wasn’t named Mickey.

Author  Bio

I am mechanically challenged wife, mother of one, and full-time marketing director, fueled by endorphins from my Curves workouts. I aspire to domestic goddesshood but am forever falling short because of my concave cheese soufflés. My husband Bill, aka Dangerman, who may have consumed one too many failed soufflés, is constantly admonishing me to be careful and not to do anything stupid like fall off the recovery boards during my sessions as Curves. In the past, I have been known to fall off a sidewalk and hurt myself.

I have a college-age daughter, who lives in Vermont, who is brilliant and well-educated, both of which have nothing to do with economic self-sufficiency. In the pet department, I have an indoor cat Frodo, a herd of outdoor cats who parade by my basement window regularly whom I have cleverly dubbed, "The Cat Parade," and many unexterminated pests--mice, spiders, stink bugs, box elder bugs--who call 37 Briar Crest Manor home.

typical PA Dutch hex sign

My eighty-three-year-old mother is one of my best friends. I take her to church on Sundays because I’m worried she’s going to kill herself one day, fighting over the best spot on the communion rail.

 I live in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where the prevailing wisdom embraced by my people is the adage, “What’s the use of being Pennsylvania Dutch if you can’t be dumb?”

Thanks for stopping by. Wish me luck.