Life, my life anyway, has really changed these last ten or so years. I seldom get out other than a food/drink run, pick up/drop off the kids, or yard/home related tasks. I need to make some new, local friends. My closest buddies have moved or live far enough away that it’s impractical to just swing by and hang for an hour. Seems like just hanging out with the fellahs takes a massive amount of planning. The planets have to be aligned just so. And there can’t be any pending events involving family, or home.

I was looking through my site’s set of stats.  Truthfully, I’ve never been one to stress or obsess with how many or how few visits this blog gets.  Originally, the whole thing was restricted to those who registered and I only let family and close friends do that.  It was my way of keeping everyone up to date with what ever was happening with me.  In other words is was a place to share what my kids were doing and the latest pictures of them.  Then some friends asked why didn’t I just use FaceBook so I did and the blog collected cyberdust.  Then stuff happened to me or I saw something in the real world or online that I wanted to say something about and I thought why not put it on that space GoDaddy was auto-renewing as a favor to me every year.  Then my good friend Tee Morris practically dragged me kicking and screaming to Twitter.  And then I found neat plug-ins that could tie it all together if I were so inclined.  Then a Twitter friend, Odin1eye, who I’ve come to trust and admire talked about the increase of visits his little corner was getting and I went looking for another plug-in for that and here we are.  I can see how many visits the place of mine gets.

It’s right there on my Dashboard whenever I happen to stop by myself to create a new post from a PC (not often.  Go ahead and check for yourself), whenever a new comment is waiting my approval (that happens even less) or when I check for updates to WordPress or one of the plug-ins installed.  But I was looking at the stats and say it tracked what searches led people here. Nearly all of them had to do with the game Word with Friends which speaks more to the popularity of the game than my blog but that’s cool anyway.  What caught my attention where some really odd ones.

Well the day is almost over. Only real adventure was Saturday Mass at 5:00pm. Interesting event to hold in a church which has lost power. The kids really enjoyed the change from the normal church setting.

Here’s another aspect of the storm the kids really loved.

So I just wanted to say a quick thanks to Irene. Unless something really cool happens overnight I may not have another post overnight. Perhaps she’ll still be with us in the morning.

If she’s left I’ll fancy a drive around town and see how the rest fared through this “historical” storm.

Oh, and apologies to Firefox users. Seems the browser doesn’t like HTML5 videos but will play them if you choose to view them in a separate tab/window. If anyone knows why this is and how to correct it please let me know.

Personally, I think the slip of YA into more adult themes stems from today’s adults putting into stories topics *They* themselves wish they were allowed access to when they were kids. The same is happening in music and television. It’s a classic case of “Slippery Slope”.

At the risk of sounding old fashioned. Scratch that. I want to sound old fashioned. When did that become a negative thing? I’m glad I was given a chance to be a kid and enjoy kid things. Sex wasn’t a topic or interest because it was totally unknown. Girls had cooties and boys were gross and so simple a set of thoughts as those kept the two far enough apart that no one explored possibilities. Kids were teased, there existed bullies, not everyone got a Valentine’s card and life was an ABC afterschool special.

The excuse that it’s ok to be part of the “exposure” because kids are seeing already anyway misses the point that they are seeing it anyway in part because others before decided to expose them.

A real life example happened to me while treating my girls (5,7) to lunch at Friendly’s. Over at a nearby table an adult couple and some kids were eating when she dropped an F bomb. My head shot up and over to them. He apologized while she seemed lost as to why he apologized. To her it was just another word kids hear all the time anyway (her words, not mine).

So by that argument it’s suddenly ok, acceptable, if I start swearing or now let them read books, and watch movies containing the same?

My answer is no but what’s yours?