being a bit whimsical

It puts one at a distinct disadvantage when someone has been reading your blog and tells you so the very first time you meet them!

I remember my first blogs way back in 2003 or so. A bunch of friends and I were experimenting with the whole idea of weblogs / online diaries, mostly to share our days with each other as Home Educators. It was all very mundane back then, way less about recounting our innermost thoughts, toying with the idea of being writers with something of interest to say, or heaven forbid create some sort of income generating business opportunity. It was very much a school gates type exchange, a coming together of parents who had in common only the fact our children were NOT going to school.

As a teenage I wrote in my diary every day, I still have a collection of various notebooks, doodled with hearts, flowers, hopes and dreams, tearstained, written in with green ink, turquoise ink, in a variety of emerging handwriting, documenting my experiments with all sorts of cusp of adulthood type stuff. Reading them now (as I sometimes do) is like witnessing a caterpillar forming it's chrysallis and slowing emerging out - same basic DNA, totally different end result. My early blog posts are a similar sort  of thing - a fairly new parent, Home Educating still a very experimental idea, coming to terms with this new path I was walking along and learning alongside the children. I realised along the way that blogging is not quite like a diary once you put it 'out there' it becomes public property. You no longer have control over who reads, how they interpret it, what they do with your words. As such I do have a couple of private blogs but I did keep a public blog for Home Education on the basis that it was reading about other people raising their children in a different way to the norm that gave me the courage, inspiration, hope and strength to do what we do with Dragon and Star. I felt that I had some level of responsibility to provide similar for people walking along that path behind me. I have no idea if I lived up to it, but various lovely comments on those blogs assure me I reached out and touched people.

It's intetesting reading back over our journey on this blog as 'Wondering Wanderers'.I started it really keen to fully document the adventure, the highs and lows, the learning and growing. In some ways I have fallen short as I have not been here blogging every single step of the way as I'd hoped I would. There are times, both as WWOOFers and as brand new crofters on Rum when I have been aware of my potential readership and self-censored. Call it the Dooce Effect ;), call it politically astute, call it Pollyanna-itis or merely put it down to limited internet access and a care about what my family and friends are reading about us. But to be fair our adventure thus far has been amazing, soul-feeding, inspiring and everything we hoped for and more. Sure, the four of us have private memories and in jokes and things we have shared with people that never made it to the blog but in the main I think you certainly get the edited highlights here, if not the full low down.

In the last few weeks I have met a couple of people for the first time that have read this blog before meeting us. I have no idea if we live up to the blog in real life, I certainly talk enough to blast people with words if nothing else! I've been telling people that we are happy here, life is good, while not without challenges this beats sitting in traffic jams, worrying about fuel costs, watching crap TV and office politics any day of the week. I told a friend this week that I miss being in the van, on the road and I do. I think last year awakened within us a wanderlust that will perhaps never be satiated. I hope Dragon and Star allow it to consume them in a few years and it leads them off in search of adventure, experiences and wonderous sights, sounds and memory building. I hope it lies settled enough within Ady and I to inspire us to quirky risk taking and small scale adventures within the croft here on Rum.

Anyway. This was not what I came to blog about.... I was here for updating.

Julie, my sister in law, infact I think I am dropping the 'in law' and just calling her my sister from here on in. I've missed her so much this last year or so and a three week stay here reminded me just how much her lack of being in my life has left a big gaping hole. I have made some amazing friends here already and while I will never find replacements for the people I miss from my old life I feel very lucky that I am not friend-bereft here by any means. We are people who need people. So Julie left today after a lovely long stay and another planned for just two months away. We have now had visits from my parents, my 'sister' (who counts mostly as Ady's family) and just have our adopted 'parents' Lynda and Stuart to come and stay until we feel we have the full family seal of approval on our new life. Our first lots of friends all arrive together in a cluster in a couple of weeks which will be lovely.