A New World

I was sitting at my computer working out the intricacies of blogging. New to the art of expressing myself to an unscheduled, undefined audience, I was tiptoeing through the pastures (not to say minefields) of what to say outside my family circle.

I only told a few people about having a blog.

Then my brother came to dinner at my house, read my blog and gave me a boost into the unknown by putting my blog address on my Facebook account. Yesterday I threw out what little caution I had left and changed the blogs I read from “Follow anonymously” to “Follow publicly.” I am so out there now.

So, I am sitting at my computer a couple weeks ago and Poof! alongside the blue stripe where it says “Hollace the Mopsy” and “Blogger Dashboard” it suddenly said CAKE AND CAPPUCCINO. “Mmm, that sounds tasty,” I thought, and clicked on it.

“No, no,” my computer savvy sis-in-law says at this point in the story, “You don't open those.”

Where did it come from? I don't know. It fell from the sky. The truth be told, a few weeks earlier I clicked on something on my dashboard and found a graduation-garbed Indian-looking fellow, but the words were in Arabic or Hindi or some kind of calligraphy I didn't even know my computer knew, so I begged his pardon and deleted him.

But I did open the door to Cake and Cappuccino and I fell through it just like Alice into a world of delights! She was talking about the very things I had spent the weekend doing and then writing about! Gardening. Thrilling in the first sunshine after the interminable winter. Cleaning up the yard and seeing signs of spring. Wow, me too! And she was halfway around the world!

Then I saw the blogs she follows and I looked at them all. Yes, I did. Suddenly, I was surrounded by kindred spirits: artists who blog, lovers of shabby-chic, gardeners anticipating Spring, people who like to stroll with their dog (“Bilbo Baggins”) on a Sunday afternoon, women who go to boot sales (not Wellingtons; car trunks), women who walk up the hill to the tea shop or the dearest vintage cottage. There actually are other people who find clotheslines charming. (I took pictures of clotheslines all the way through Nova Scotia and the Gaspe peninsula). And these girlfriends make things. Buntings (which I knew as a baby's wrapping, but in current usage is what I would call gas station flags, only much cuter—you'd be surprised how many people are doing buntings.) Pillows. Slipcovers. And then they talk about them, and show photos of what they are making and heaven help me, they show pictures of their china cabinets filled with mismatched vintage china. Oh, be still my heart. When my husband heard me cry out and came to look over my shoulder he knew instantly he was in trouble: there was an open shelf of mix-and-matched plates, just what I am doing now after years spent coordinating everything! And just like I do, they love old watering cans and chairs with things displayed on them—oh, it's another world of people like me, people who like to enjoy things and stage them and photo them and share them and walk around enjoying their lives.

The most amazing thing is that one of the blogs I fell in love with came out of my hometown, Portland, Oregon, USA. Who knew? Right here there is a kindred spirit that I never would have known about if I hadn't gone to The Netherlands, somehow, and been tossed back. That's Posie Gets Cozy. I tried to tell her by leaving a comment but I still don't have some of the knack of it...I think that was when I was suffering from “Password Confusion”. See my previous blog, “Facebooking”

Yesterday it happened again. I was pursuing reading lists of other bloggers and, low and behold, found another Portlander, Michelle.

I'm just feeling like there's a lot of people out there who could be my friends.

Hi, there!