Three Little Chickies is 2!

Today is my "blog-o-versary," and I'm celebrating!  Yea!  

So silly, but I love my little blog.  This past year, I've made new connections through it, started telling people about it, made good on commitments to make things, and found a sort of rhythm in almost daily! writing.  All of these are unexpected bounties from a venture I started on a bit of a whim two years ago.  

I stumbled into blogging by accident.  In fact, until January 2007, I knew of one blog--Dooce.  And when I remembered to read it, I loved it, her sharp wit and fierce stance.  But it didn't feel like something I could do.  If it had dawned on me that I could write a blog, I would have said right away that I didn't want to write like that myself, actually.

In January 2007, we were readying for Ada's homeschooling, which was to begin that summer.  We were dealing with sleepless nights, as Esme was only a few months old, and I was hoping I could find a little time to get back to making stuff in the studio.  I had crafts on my mind, and I wanted advice...

On a Google search for ways to use chalkboard paint, I found a link to a mom who had painted entire walls of her home in chalkboard paint, and written a lovely post on it, called "Cover the World in Chalkboard Paint."  On closer inspection, I realized that this woman, Blair, was writing a blog called Wise Craft.  Not a commercial and herculean blog like Dooce's, but a little blog, a blog in the sense that it was less about who read it, and more about the she who was writing it...does that make sense?  It felt like something I could do.  As I looked through the photos of things she'd made, I saw that these photos homey and personal, not unlike the ones I took.  

And I started looking at the links there.  Exploring blogs.   Discovering a new bloggy language.  I was hooked.  

And so emerged 3littlechickies, on February 5th, 2007.   Here is my first post. Almost 200 posts later, it is a different thing from what I imagined it to be.  As am I.   

I'm so glad I started this journey.  I like what I'm creating here.  I like it even more that you're reading it, and therefore creating it, with me.  

On the blog, part 1

It's the week of my "Blog-o-versary," and I've got blogging on my mind. Okay, I've frequently got blogging on my mind anyway. Just ask my family. Ada routinely points out when something would be "good on the blog." And now I have people actually asking when I'm going to post, which I find oddly thrilling--as though someone has ordered a subscription to my "magazine."

Except this isn't a magazine. Or a diary. Or a gallery. Or a conventional conversation. Or an essay. I would like it to be all of those things, and it has shadows of each playing behind it.

What is this blog, anyway, and why am I so heady for writing it?

The first thing I can say for sure about it is that I am writing almost every day now, and that is the biggest boon of this blog. There were many periods of my life in which I wrote on a daily basis: As an undergraduate, I majored in English (quelle surprise!) and wrote papers constantly. For various other jobs I've had: I wrote ad copy for a publishing copy, and promotional materials and procedure for a university, and a human resources manual for a private company. In graduate school, I wrote countless papers on rhetoric, composition, education, and all sorts of topics related to these. And I started writing poetry. In earnest.
In between these times, I've written overly long letters to friends and intimidated them unintentionally by the length of my notes--a few people been apologetic that they can't write back at such length.
Even when I was teaching English, I wrote the assignments with my students--that is to say, I assigned myself the task of writing the same topics the students did--a very worthwhile exercise for determining if an assignment "worked" or "flopped." In the same vein, I wrote daily "feedback" for myself to recap the day's discussions, and to figure out if I was taking the class in the right direction. I also wrote massive letters of feedback for each student, and my assignments were written with the detail of a novella (quelle surprise, you say).

During that time, we also started the process for adoption Ada, and as part of it, I was asked to write a brief history of myself. You can imagine how shocked the social worker was to receive my 26-page, single-spaced piece. Brief it was not, but important for me to write, yes. And important that Ada have it one day for herself, to see me at that moment, on the brink of parenthood. The real audience for that history, as I pointed out to the social worker, was me. And future Ada.

I am verbose.

But for a few years, I was silent, at least in writing. My letters dwindled to postcards, my poems dried up. My essays and pontifications in writings....gone.


Some of my energy went to making art--sewing, painting, etc--but much of it went to folding clothes, cleaning bathrooms, morning sickness, and just life. I wasn't able to blend the writing and the doing.

Enter the blog.


As you know from this post alone, I continue to pour my heart out. From a rhetorical perspective, the blog is a perfect space for this type of writing. My friend La Belette Rouge wrote an amazing post today on writing her way through something without knowing her destination, and that is what my blog posts are so much of the time: writing through and creating a space.

Having a blog has allowed me to literally create a space (with images, spacing, color, photos, etc) in which I can pour my heart out and find out where I am in the world. In that regard, it's like a diary. But because of the audience of you, dear reader who has made it through this meandering, this writing has more of a shape. It is shaped like the space between me and you.


I am a generous and more selfless in real life. But on paper, I am a selfish writer, going on and on. I have never meant to intimidate with the length of the letters or the posts I write. I write and write to capture the play of words that run through my mind all the time, like insects beating against the night window. Like a lepidopterist, I pin the thoughts to the wall of the blog and examine them to see if they are light and lovely like butterflies or dark and insidious like moths. They are, invariably, both. And some fly away. And as with all collectors, it is really only me who is most pleased by my collection of words... I look back at what I've captured and I see myself.


If you have made it this far through this post, I thank you for sharing this odd and sometimes disturbing or tiresome collection. ...

My first negative comment arrives

I have long been wishing for comments on this blog.  In the past few months, I've finally received some, and along with them, I've made treasured connections with other bloggers whom I respect and admire.  Yea for the comment feature!

But until this weekend, I hadn't personally experienced the bad side of putting oneself out there--the negative comments.   On Sunday morning, I found my first bad comment, posted on my post "Thoughts on the Inauguration, part 3."   Boo for the comment feature!

Clearly, this is not the kind of comment I've been wishing for.  I figured so few people see my blog that I wasn't really at risk for such a thing.  And, truth be told, it's not the most evil of comments. It's just self-serving and insulting, which I suppose are two qualities that make for a "negative comment."  

I read it with surprise and a bit of dismay--why target me?  Especially when this person found my blog on a quest to find out how to make a chipmunk costume, of all things! My second reaction, which followed quickly (and I admit to my childishness here) was "Bring it!"   I love a good debate.  Ask any of my former students about how I love to play with argument.    But, after a minute's thought, I abandoned the idea that a "debate" with anonymous would be a good or productive thing.  

I have, in my life, experienced more than my fair share of angry, judgmental, abusive language.  I know how hurtful words can be.   It took a great deal of work for me to distance myself from people who practice this kind of verbal abuse, and I guard this distance carefully.   Seeing that nasty comment brought back some icky memories for me, reminding me that "Yes, Kirie, there are still mean people in the world, despite the little bubble you've created for yourself.  And yes, mean people still suck."

I can't have it both ways, I know.  If I write about my thoughts, and I enable the comments (and wish for them!), then I am bound to get friendly ones and rude ones.  Thank goodness I've not experienced rude comments until now.   I think that if I receive comments like this in the future (and I'm bound to, right?), I'll be taking my actions on a case-by-case basis.  In this case, I did respond, if only to say my piece. You can see what I said here.  For the next nasty remark--perhaps just a delete.  Silence is a forceful weapon.

Now, my dear readers, how do you deal with the negative commenters on your blogs?  Or if you don't have a blog, how do you deal with the negative commenters in your life?