“Hello world!” That’s the title of the generic first placeholder post when you create a new blog, so I thought it pretty fitting to use here. The first post on my new, redesigned blog. And, being the editor I am, I couldn’t help but add that dialogue comma in there for accuracy.
So, whaddya think? ScooterMarie has become Jocelyn Rau. Plain and simple, just how I like things. I actually wanted an easy name like that from the start, but when I first set this blog up back in 2011, Ryan said I should go with something more unique. Hence, ScooterMarie was born. And it worked great. But I was never 100% in love with the name, so now that I’ve decided to redo the blog design, I figured now was as good a time as any to change the name. Plus, jocelyrau.com was available, so it worked perfectly.
Hopefully you like the change as much as I do. Those pictures up in the header are all ones we’ve taken over the years, and I love how they change randomly. Bits of my life coming to life on here.
If you had subscribed to my RSS feed on ScooterMarie to get notified every time there was a new post, I think you’ll have to subscribe to the new site address to keep getting them. Just click on this little orange square, and it’ll take you right to Feedburner:
So thanks for sticking with Jocelyn Rau – me and my blog.
I’ll be going through some tweaking and redesign here on the ol’ blog for a minute, so please just sit tight if things look screwy or don’t work quite right or are just generally off.
I hope to get you back to our regularly scheduled programming soon…
Na na na na na-na na… Yeah, guess it’s pretty hard to type out song lyrics when they only consist of 2 letters, but sing that to the tune of the refrain in “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” and I think you’ll get the idea.
Aaanyway… Yesterday I bit the bullet and created a Google+ page for this here blog. Anyone want to come play? It’s great! We’ve got circles and +s and streams and… well just come see for yourself. Here’s the jump off: ScooterMarie
Um, SM, why have you jumped on the Google+ train, yet you haven’t even created a Facebook page for your blog yet? Good question, my friend. See here’s the sitch… When I first started blogging, I was doing it fairly anonymously, and didn’t want to link up my blog with my Facebook profile. Yeah, I didn’t realize I could just create a separate FB page specifically for the blog without linking it to my personal page. Stop laughing, I’m still new to all this social media jazz.
So are you going to create a FB page for ScooterMarie? Well, I don’t know. I guess it depends on if I can cajole y’all into putting my Google+ page into your fantastically awesome circles or not. (don’t have any circles yet? well just let me know and i’ll send out some Google+ invites. it’ll be a party!) I know FB is still the big medium of choice, but word on the street is Google+ is out to be #1. Numero uno. The big cheese.
So please, come on over and play! You can also click on that g+ button up in my header to find me. I’ll be over there waiting for you! Did I mention I brought a couple 6-packs and snacks? Who doesn’t like beer and snacks in the morning? Gheesh.
Ever since I started this blog, the little dream I’ve had rattling around in the back of my head is to someday get big enough to make this an actual living. So I could stay home with D and any potential future siblings. So I could take care of the house during the days again instead of cramming every chore in after work and having zero free time between the minute I walk in the door and the minute I get into bed. Maybe I’d even get a chance to enjoy living in our house instead of viewing it as one constant project and workload.
But how? How do I make that happen? How do I get SM out there? How do I attract more readers? Does anyone else even care what I have to say enough to read here? I love writing this blog, but do the little snippets and tidbits from my life really entertain people enough to garner traffic? I’m always in awe of some of the blogs I read and their hundreds, if not thousands, of followers and how widely syndicated they’ve become. Granted, I’ve only been writing for a few months compared to years, but still.
I’ve also never considered myself a “writer” by any means. Does that make me less of a blogger? Does it show in my entries and turn people away? Or never even entice them to begin with?
How will I ever be able to compete with the already well-established blogs and their faithful? Not that I’m trying to compete in the sense that I want their readers to come to me, but compete in the sense that I’d like to carve out my own dedicated slice of this great wide internet too. How do they do it? Is there a magic blog fairy that’s sprinkled them with her popularity dust? Is there a list on which I need to get that says, “Hey! Read me!”? Is there that certain je ne sais quoi that all those other blogs have that I’m missing? Or is that just it – there’s “all those other blogs” so I don’t really stand a chance anyway?
Unfortunately I don’t really know how to answer any of those questions. So I’ll just keep typing away, emptying my brain and all its fabulous contents onto these little pages. And for those of you out there reading, thank you! I really do appreciate your stopping by and hopefully hanging out. You’re the ones for whom I like to tell these little stories, even if I have no idea who you are. 🙂
Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta. No, not really. But I was going to put “Ahh, it feels good to be back” to start this post, and then the Geto Boys lyrics popped into my head instead. 🙂
It does feel good, though, to have my new theme all sorted out. Kind of like being *home*. My old one just felt too sparse and blah, so I love the splashes of color and little extras I can do with this one. I am pretty proud of myself for figuring out how to manipulate the website code to change things, too. Last night when I was showing R the header I created and how I’d taught myself to change icons and stuff, he kept saying, “Oh that’s easy.” Well, yeah, duh, when you’re a web/computer genius, but to us laypeople looking at code is like looking at Mandarin Chinese – a whole bunch of random letters and symbols that don’t make any sense whatsoever. So I’ll just continue to pat myself on the back thankyouverymuch. 🙂
So this post is just gonna be about a whole bunch of random things, because all the stuff I have floating around in my head this morning doesn’t really have much connection. (see, that sentence right there didn’t even make a whole lot of sense) For starters, I feel like I look like a total frump. Since Winter has decided to come back, I have on a gray sweater, black pants (which would be great if they were a little truer black. they’re more like a black khaki, so i keep worrying that people are thinking they look too much like faded black jeans, which are disgusting), and a pair of hiking sneakers. Blech. These pants are new, and are the exact same style as a couple other pairs I have for work and absolutely love, but like I said the color is just a little meh. And since I’ve never worn them before, I realized this morning that I don’t really have any shoes to go with them. They’re not dressy enough to wear my cute black faux-patent leather flats, and I apparently have no other casual black shoes. So sneakers it was. Gross. *I’m open to all suggestions for good casual black shoes. The comfier and cuter the better.*
And since we’re back in the 40s today from the gorgeous sun and 60s yesterday, I had to get another jog in last night to take advantage. I decided my new rule is I’m not running unless it’s at least 50 degrees outside, because I hate running in cold weather. And I don’t see 50s in the forecast again until next week, so I made my butt get in gear last night. I changed up my route again – went 2.11 miles in 18:56, which is 8:57 pace. Woo wee! I’m very surprised I broke the 9:00 pace, because it certainly felt like my slowest run yet. I was expecting to get slower from when I started before I get faster though, seeing as my body has to get back into shape after the weirdest, probably most traumatic thing it’s ever been through. So that’s pretty encouraging. I could feel it in my left knee and ankle by the time I got done, though, so a couple days off may be a good thing right now.
D has decided to be a little stinker lately and not take her afternoon naps at daycare. Hence, she’s tired and cranky when we get home and has to take an evening nap, which I was hoping she was starting to drop. Tuesday we were supposed to go to swimming, but she was so tired she fell asleep when I fed her when we got home and I didn’t have the heart to wake her – she ended up sleeping for an hour and a half. I figured she needed that more than being dunked by Mommy. 😉 When she doesn’t nap well she doesn’t sleep as well at night either. She’s awoken a couple nights this week, with last night’s wake up coming at 4:00. Fabulous. And since she ate then, I had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t going to be hungry when she woke up for good this morning. I was right. I tried to feed her anyway, and paid the price. She bit me! Numerous times in a row! I know she obviously doesn’t do it on purpose – she’s not hungry but has something in her mouth, so it becomes a chew toy instead – but goddamn, does that hurt! And I’m afraid I scared her this morning too, because when she did it for like the 4th time in a row I pulled back and said, “Stop biting!” She looked up at me with these huge eyes and a tiny little frowny face and almost instantly started crying, big tears and all. I felt so terrible. I should have learned from the first nibble that she wasn’t hungry, but I kept trying. Poor little thing. Why is Mommy shouting at me? I’m just lying here looking up at her with my gorgeous gray eyes. 🙁 Oh man, I felt so mean. That beautiful little face was so sad; I don’t think I’ve seen her cry from fear before. Needless to say, she got lots more hugs before we left for daycare. Unfortunately, her lack of eating leaves me in the ever-so-lovely lopsided state. Bleh.
She loves playing in her playpen now too. How adorable is this??
