MaK!MeJ!

As part of their marketing strategy, some companies include freebies to their product. For instance, milk companies. But I am the last one to complain with this strategy. Why would I? I’m such a sucker for freebies.

But really, the best things in life are given for free, so they say. And I so believe. Air. Water. Love.

Now, speaking of love, the Love Is contest poll is already up over at WriteFromKaren. I’ve joined this contest and you can see my entry photo down below. Can you spare Mama Meji a little love, a little time - all for free? Please vote for me by clicking here. Please, pretty please.

The Love Is contest poll is already up over at WriteFromKaren. If you’ve read this post, you’ll see that I hopped in that contest jeep. Down below is the photo in this post - the one which I submitted for this contest.

Now, please vote for Mama Meji by clicking here

Please drop by and humor this old hag by voting for my picture. Please, please, pretty please. I am down on my knees, groveling. Please vote here. Mwah- a million thanks in advance!

The past week, I noticed that I’ve been annoying someone to say “I have a problem.” Or “I need help.” Or “something must be wrong here…” So now I call him Houston. My husband.

Lately, Houston spent 3 glorious days (or make that 4, because of flight cancellation) at home and I couldn’t be more thankful. You see, it’s when he’s around that I could keep up with blogging the household chores because he keeps Matt entertained.

But really I’m thankful that I married someone who is generous with his love and patience. Someone who is faithful to the Lord (and to me). Someone who not only calls me “Bossing” but who lets me be the boss - well, most of the times. :-) Someone who thinks I’m crazy, silly, impatient yaddi, yadda but loves me all the same. I just couldn’t find the right word to say just how blessed I am to have him as a husband and father to my kid.

Happy Valentine’s everyone!For more of Thankful Thursday participants, please visit Iris.

Love is a strong yet peaceful feeling; overpowering yet calming. Love knows no depth. Nor height. Nor end. Nor period. Everything is always a beginning.

Taken during our island getaway to celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary.  This was 9 months or so before I learned the art of breastfeeding and changing poopy diapers (among other things). I really didn’t think I should post this again (as I have already posted this in my other blog, incidentally with the same title) but while I was browsing through my files and this was on the screen, my sister asked my son if who were in this picture. It’s his first time to see it but he quickly replied “Mama and Papa.” So there goes my “go” signal. And with that, I say love is knowing it’s true even when one doesn’t REALLY know.

I know I fall short in my definition but the Bible says it all.

1 Corinthians 13:4-13

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails…

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

“Matt, please don’t pick your nose.”

I’ve always heard myself say this. Plead, actually. But late last year, I observed something out of ordinary (well, to me) with his nose picking. I observed that dear son usually does more of the nose-picking right before he dozes off to sleep. Well, more often than not.

And after seeing him do it nth times, I was led into conclusion that picking his nose. is. making. good. old. Makiko. sleep. Ain’t that cute? Cool ey? Yikes! But no sooner had I formed the conclusion than I started noticing Matt’s been doing less of it already. So I thought - okay, I must be wrong then.

But last Friday, I was with him during his wanted-to-sleep-but-will-fight-sleep time. You know -kids! They are adorable little creatures who love to torture their mothers refuse to go to sleep even if their lids have dropped to the ground.

So I was having one of those moments with Matt. And then I noticed his cute little pointer slowly reaching for his nose. I wanted to tell him “Please don’t.” Half of me wanted to. But it’s almost noontime and to say that I was a little desperate then was an understatement.

I was thinking about our chocolate-stained floor, a stack of used plates on the sink, a huge mountain of soiled clothings in one corner of our house and piles of clothes to fold and stash, not to mention lunch to prepare. They were all there waiting for me. I couldn’t give Matt a sleeping pill so excuse me, I did what a mother should do. And that is to gently put dear son to sleep.

And what better and simpler way to do that than to pick his nose. Myself.

But there’s no more of that today. I have my dear Houston at home. And I trust that he has lots of tricks up his sleeve. So for now, I can chill and let him do all the works. But we’ll see what happens tomorrow (when he goes back to his workbase).

^^^0^^^

Carnival of Family Life is up and running at  AChildChosen.

If you are or if you are starting on Wordpress just like me, you might want want to read this. Or really you might not because why would you want to read me now?

But anyway, had I known that it would be this T-O-U-G-H, I wouldn’t have moved out from where I was. I wouldn’t have missed some sleep. I wouldn’t have unnecessarily caused my nose to bleed.

But if I had stuck it with Blogger, I wouldn’t have learned WP. Sucker me. But really, I am learning WP at snail’s pace. And boy, wasn’t I a trying hard Missus Nobody who loves to learn, even if it’s just a little thing like knowing what a slug is. A slug, what’s that? There’s nothing like that in Blogger. And my God, I will not lie that it has taken me days to figure out what a slug really is. And I don’t fancy a nosebleed in the process.

When I switched from from Blogger to WP, I really didn’t really know what I’d be getting into. What I knew was WP looks so cool -just look at their comment page. But I didn’t realize I’d get lost. But now, there’s no turning back. Good thing I have a good tech support but I couldn’t always ask for her help for fear of exposing my true dumdumdumbdumb-o self. I don’t want that. Smirk.

I was deciding: Should I import my contents from VERB or not? But nosebleed and all, that was taken cared of, thanks to an article I read somewhere, but which I couldn’t find now so I can give the author some credit.

So everything was new to me. Wordpress is new to me. The codes. The plugins (and I have some that are not functioning at the moment). The version updates (It’s asking now. Ugh!). And then webhosting is new. Everything is nosebleedingly new that I am an ever suki to online help for more of nosebleed-causing readings. I am making things from scratch. I am grappling. And this makes me want to call Houston (a.k.a dear husband) for help everytime.

Even justifying my paragraphs –which I’m twitsy, cutesy, bitsy OCD about - is causing me a headache. And a nosebleed. I really didn’t have this prob with Blogger. Why do I need to Alt-Shift-V just so I can see the hidden buttons? (Have I corrected my very first post already?)

Few days ago, I was reading about permalinks- actually it’s prettifying permalinks. Nosebleeding and all, I was arguing with myself with this need. Because truth of the matter is, I.wanted.to.be.pretty. God, I wanted to be pretty. Definitely. And I.make.every.effort.to.be.pretty but worrying about permalinks is NOT.making.me.pretty. A bleeding is nose is so not pwetty at all. So help me, but I had to ask online nosebleeding help again.

So it was during one of my searches that I stumbled upon this site. Mani K was talking about the very things that can make my nose bleed. But masochist that I am, I keep on reading and reading some more, torturing myself. And he said something about making a site/blog Giiiggle-friendly. But really, why will I make my blog Giii-friendly? Will Giiiggle give me a gift on my birthday? Or will Giii do this old hag a favor by paying me a visit often and commenting on every post I make? He was suggesting about themes, sitemaps, permalink structures, traffic….TRAFFIC! And do I have traffic in here? Or in here? It seems that the traffic I know is what I experience everyday when I go to work! That’s traffic. But of course, he’s talking about site traffic which I may lack here or here.

And then what about a sitemap? Goodness, I just wanted to blog, to write. Why do I need a sitemap? Am I going anywhere? Sitemeter, I have. But sitemaps? I haven’t heard of that. I was imagining all sorts of road in a sitemap – perhaps streets leading from CDO to Manila to Cambodia to Germany – only to find out that there are really no roads or streets in a sitemap! (Thanks to Dagondesign and Arne Brachhold.)

Ahhh when did blogging become so complicated? Maybe you’d argue with that. But I am just saying that it gets to be complicated, when someone becomes too impatient to make the big move, to self host and all without first looking at what she’s jumping into. Planning, I really should do more. Patience, I do not have I should work on that too. So pray for me and pass me some water and aspirin, puhlease. And don’t forget some wet tissue for my nosebleed.

But there’s this advice from SEOblog that I followed. Could even be a couple. And yes, after some nosebleeding sessions online. To find out what these are, dig through the site. Somewhere in the middle of all these headache and nosebleed causing SEO talks, you might just pick up a thing or two.

BTW, this is NOT a paid post. I wish it were. ;-)