Last Friday in her weekly Friday Faves series, Missy (It's Almost Naptime) asked about favorite websites.
Clearly the ship has done sailed on me participating on time like a normal, healthy, non-feverish person, but because I am in desperate need of talking about anything besides this stupid sickness (uh-uh! We do not say "stupid" in this house, Mommy!), I thought I might take a minute to share some places on the web I've been known to frequent (or stalk, I suppose, depending on how you look at it).
Like Miss, almost all of my time online is spent in one of three ways - checking/responding to email, Facebook, and blog reading.
However.
I have been known to venture out and spend precious time when I could be treating stains or wiping down the "little potty" (again) (blech) at
Pandora - love, love, love this free internet radio site. If you aren't familiar with Pandora, here's how it works - you create your own radio stations based on a song or an artist you like. It picks and plays music based on your preferences. I have stations that range from Patty Griffin (of course) to George Strait to The Doors to They Might Be Giants. I think you can create up to 100 stations; I have fourteen and that's more than enough to keep me happy. Love it.
Amazon - I can spend hours reading about books at Amazon, just like I used to spend hours ogling and caressing books in the brick-and-mortar bookstore of olde. I have over $800 in books in my cart, books that I would love to welcome in to our home library, if only I had $800 and time to read them all.
Message Boards - this is where the majority of my non-email, non-bloggy, non-Facebook time is spent, and as you can imagine, it's not nearly as much as it used to be. Not nearly. But I love message boards for the information and sense of community they provide. My first ever message board was the discussion board at Weight Watchers.com, and a few years later when I got pregnant with Dacey, I discovered the Babycenter birth club boards. These days my message boards are limited to
- private mommy board - a spin-off of our Babycenter birth club. Love, love, love these mamas and their little ones. If it weren't for them, there would be no SortaCrunchy!
- MotheringDotCommunity - the message boards affiliated with Mothering magazine. True, the culture there can, at times, be a little . . . oh . . . what's the word? Superior? Maybe. But it's also extremely helpful, supportive, helpful, informative, helpful, challenging, and helpful. I've learned a lot from the women at MDC who are far, far more advanced in crunchiness than I will ever be.
- Gentle Christian Mothers - last month, I was thrilled to finally get an actual membership at GCM. Board registration is only open every few months, and I kept missing registration periods. This message board is a beautiful blend of the alternative living approaches that I love about MDC and Christian love and encouragement. Long before I had an official membership there, I've read the public forums for information on a variety of topics. Love this place.
photo by scottfeldstein