The 7 Link Challenge

OMG, my friend Holly Jahangiri, the author and blogger, has nominated me for the 7 Link Challenge. Given how many blogger friends she has, I am humbled and amazed that she thinks I can do this. The least I can do is give it the ol' college try, as they say.

Here are the rules - you should especially pay attention if your name/blog are at the bottom!

So I went back and read all my blog posts. I started back in August, and here it's the end of November already. They have definitely become less tentative as time went on and the Lizard Brain got a little quieter. But let's see if I can find some for each of the categories.

My most beautiful post? I think it is probably the one I wrote about the first snow of the year. I just love that first snow - although, as Hawksley Workman said, by February our thoughts on snow will be contrary!

How do you gauge the most popular post? Looking at which post had the most comments, I ended up with this one on choosing a day of rest. Well, there's one with more comments but that's mostly a conversation with my sister ;-).

I don't know that I've written too many controversial posts. I think I may go with this one about the connection between type 2 diabetes and lack of self-care in women, specifically my mother.

Most helpful? Oy vey. I hope to be helpful one day, but so far I don't know that I have been, particularly. Of course, there's the post that I wrote to help my friend Holly win a blogging competition. Yeah, I'll go with that one ;-).

A post whose success surprised me was the one about Jack Layton. Not that it got read by many people, but my friends said such nice things about it.

A post that didn't get the attention it deserved was probably this one about treating young people with respect. Kind of ironic but there you go.

So far I am definitely most proud of the latest one, about G-d, the universe and everything.

There, that's done! Now to come up with 5 bloggers whom I dare bother with this ... I'm just going to put my favourites and hope for the best. These are mostly blogs I've come to know through Flylady, who has changed my life (for the better) beyond recognition. Marla herself has a blog but hasn't updated it since August, so I suspect she has given up on it. She does send wonderful essays out to her followers.

Jimmy Moore's Livin' La Vida Low Carb blog
Leanne Ely's Saving Dinner blog
Leslie Gonzalez's MissusSmartyPants blog
Sarah Fragoso's Everyday Paleo
And finally, the only blogger whose name I don't know, who writes the Comfy Tummy blog.

If you are reading this and you are a blogger whom I didn't name, I ask your forgiveness and ask you to consider yourself invited! Leave me a link in the comments and I promise to read your blog ;-).

So, any thoughts, friends?

Competition

Humans are funny creatures. Some of us just can't leave well alone, and feel a need to measure ourselves against others. Take my friend Holly Jahangiri. She's in the middle of an exhausting blogging competition that won't even let her do NaNoWriMo properly. This on top of her day job as a technical communicator and a wife and mother. Why do we do this to ourselves? This is pretty much a case of the pot calling the kettle black, though. While I'm not killing myself like Holly, I have entered a couple of writing competitions, just to see where I'm at and to give myself a deadline to work against. See, I'm a master procrastinator (this is apparently common to writers - it was even in the instructions for one of the competitions I entered). If I don't have to get something done by a certain date, it tends to fall off the edge of my world. Calendars and reminders help with this, but only somewhat. How about you, do you need competition to get you off your duff?

Team Pink Couch Potato Lizard Brain

I am the luckiest girl in the world. The writer Holly Jahangiri is my friend and soul sister. Holly recently underwent a radical mastectomy and DIEP reconstruction. She has not quite finished the process - she says she currently has Barbie boobs. She has more surgery scheduled in October to make her look like a human woman again. All of this while working full-time, writing children's books and raising a family.

Tonight on Facebook, Holly graciously invited her myriad followers to donate to my cause, and also gifted me with a name for my team - Team Pink Couch Potato Lizard Brain. While I cannot use this lovely name this year, as I am already a member of the somewhat more staidly named National Council of Jewish Women team, I am looking forward to printing pink business cards next year, with which I will undoubtedly lure thousands.

The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure uses as its logo the somewhat ungrammatical but highly poignant question: Who are You Running For? Suppressing the unworthy desire to vandalise the pretty picture I am currently using as my Facebook avatar, there are many people for whom I am running. First and foremost is my own mother, who went for a free mammogram on a whim at the age of fifty and discovered an encapsulated tumour in her left breast. She had a lumpectomy and radiation, and eventually died of the complications of diabetes instead. That is a whole 'nother blog post. There are quite a few young (thirties and forties) mothers in my community who are struggling with this disease, and a couple of them have lost the fight. Few experiences are more heartbreaking than watching children follow their mother's casket, and thinking of all the milestones she will not see. While many people have railed against the dominance of the pink ribbon among all the different cancer research foundations and the evils of pinkwashing, seeking a cure for breast cancer remains a worthy cause. Maybe my next run will be for diabetes or for ovarian cancer. But for now, this is my focus and my friend Holly is the undisputed queen of Team Pink Couch Potato Lizard Brain.

If you were running on October 2nd, for whom would you run?