The Favorite Aunt

It’s almost been a year since I last posted. I didn’t mean to take a year off, but the next thing you know it’s October and you haven’t posted since last November.

I have a few ideas about what happened in the meantime:

1) I had to recuperate from the Geek cruise I went on in November 2008. I had land sickness for nearly 2 weeks. At the time, I swore I would never go on another cruise, but I’ve already signed up for MacMania 10 in 2010.

2) I hosted my first ever Thanksgiving dinner. The Aunt House turns out to be a good place for having 15 people, if you can wrangle the tables and chairs. I just agreed to host it again.

(I highly recommend Take Control of Thanksgiving Dinner, an ebook in a series of otherwise Mac-related topics. The geek guide to getting ready for Thanksgiving…)

3) In April, I adopted a dog. I’ve wanted to for a long time. My wish list in life has been “a dog, a cat and a piano.” So now I can check one thing off.

My sister Peg (she of the Incredible family) encouraged me with the promise of dog-sitting readily available. “I don’t want to get a dog right now,” she said. “I want to be the aunt of a dog.” Everyone wants to be an aunt.

I found Dixie at a small animal adoption center in Portland called The Pixie Project. Before agreeing to adopt her, I took Violet and Dash over to meet her. My number one requirement in a dog was that it had to like children. Dixie stepped right up to the plate. We took her for a walk and we were all in love with her.

The kids helped to name her as well. Jack-Jack repeatedly suggested “Underdog,” but Dash suggested “Winn-Dixie,” inspired by the popular children’s book. Because I actually worked at a Winn-Dixie Kwik-Chek as a teenager, there was no way I could name her that, but just “Dixie” seemed like the perfect name for her.

I could start a whole nother blog devoted to the ups and downs of bringing a dog into your life. I might still do that. But suffice to say, having Dixie has taken a big chunk of my free time.

4) I had a car accident in June. A woman slammed into the rear of my car while I was stopped at a light. I really think she must have been texting. According to the doctor, she had to be going at least 30 mph. to cause the bruises I had.

(This woman caused damage to 4 other cars. I was the first to be hit, and that pushed me into the Mercedes in front of me. See photo.)

Nothing was broken, except the car–my poor VW bug–which was totaled. But everything was out of whack. I’ve had to do a lot of chiropractic and massage and other treatments just to get back to normal. I’m almost there.

I could hardly sit at the computer for the first month, and have been gradually more able to work. Fewer hours of work + many hours of medical appointments = low motivation for blogging.

5) The kids are growing up. It feels more complicated to blog about being the aunt. They have more activities, so I spend less time with them.

6) The Favorite Aunt competition (no, it’s not really a competition) is heating up. Uncle Bob, secure in his lifetime favorite uncle status, got married last month. My new sister-in-law is wonderful. The kids love her. A lot. She better watch her back. Now she is fair game for the blog. More about Aunt Natasha later.

7) It takes a lot of time to blog! I’m attending the Blogworld & New Media Expo in Las Vegas (not as The Favorite Aunt, but for my real job). I just thought I’d do a quick update in case I mentioned this blog to anyone here. Now it’s an hour later. I could go on… but not right now!