Thinking Blogger

So both Bells and Melissa were gracious enough to include me in their lists of blogs that make them think. I am honored. Both of them have very interesting and fun to read blogs as well, and if you aren't familiar with them, I suggest you click on over (after you are finished reading this as-of-late-very-rare post.)



The rules of the award are as follows:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (silver version, gold version).

Like Bells, I read (or have read until my energy level dropped to next to nothing) a lot of blogs, 69 of them specifically, per my bloglines list. Most, but not all of them can be found on my sidebar, which updates as my bloglines list updates. Bloglines has this handy dandy widget that updates you blogroll in real time as you update it. My blogs are all nicely organized into folders, and you can select the folders that you want included on your blogroll. Much easier than manually updating your blog roll.

I purge and add blogs regularly. My time is precious and I will not spend it reading something that I don't enjoy or care about, so getting down to 5 that make me think will be a chore, but I am up to the challenge. Some of the blogs I most enjoy have been found through recommendations.

1. Magically Mama- Heather is one of my "real people." I have known her for nearly 15 years (we aren't getting old, are we?) Her blog is not a knitting blog, although may be converted soon, if we can just get some needles in her hands. (They work great as magic wands, Heather.)
She is mother extraordinaire to 4. She is doula, poet, and women's advocate. In a post she entitled "I'm giving June Cleaver the Bird" (you know you have to go read it!) She said:

(I) introduced my children to real music -- jazz, emo/punk, rock, country, classical, celtic, show-tunes. And I refused to insert the “Down on Grandpa’s Farm” tape into the car radio EVER AGAIN.

Reading Heather's blog gives me hope that I can be a mother without giving up my own person.

2. What Life Is: K-Good-Row is a knitter and Deputy Public Defender in California. Even if she didn't knit a single stitch I would love her blog. Her job leads to the most interesting posts and dilemmas. I could never do what she does (and in fact, as some of you may know, I was very much considering law school- thus the history degree and logic minor- but luckily took a law culture class and realized that I would never make it in that world.) I admire her greatly, and her posts are always though provoking. Here she is discussing a particularly poor specimen of womankind that she happened across:

She then managed to stick her foot in her mouth talking about how she
thinks it's so great we represent all those "guilty" people and best of all, she asked if we had to go to college or was an AA enough to be a PD. Ummm Law School. She was stunned to hear that PDs are lawyers! As the conversation went on, we soon learned that this young woman didn't know who the president was and had never voted in her life. It's not her fault that she's ignorant and stupid,
I guess.

In addition, you should check out this girl's stash, seriously impressive.

3. Kelly at Seattle Yogini is a knitter and yoga instructor. She is also a small business owner (she owns her own yoga studio.) While I don't know Kelly well, I have had a couple of opportunities to meet her, and she is as delightful in person as she is in print. I hope that when I stop wishing I were dead I will be able to become one of her lucky students. She often posts on topics most interesting in nature about things that I would have otherwise never thought about or even known to think about.

Check out her post here about Samskaras. Don't know what a samskara is? Oh, you know you must find out.

4. Lucy at The Doctor is In is a another non-knitter (but she is a quilter so you know we embrace her anyway) as well as another of my "real people." She and hubby Daddy Shark are two of my very favorite people. Lucy always has something thought provoking to write about and many of her posts end with a question. I'll let you explore some of her more deep questions, and instead leave you with one that just made me laugh.

Seriously, what do you think a sugar-free Peep could possibly be coated with? I don't think I even want to know.

5. Last, I want to add a well read and well known blog that doesn't need any acknowledgment from me, but it certainly makes me think more than probably any other blog. It isn't nice or neat or PC or even clean, but it reveals a part of human nature that we might otherwise never see. If you aren't familiar with Post Secret, you will be shocked and horrified, you will likely laugh and you might cry, but you WILL think.

Have fun clicking about, and be you might want to check out a few others in my sidebar, there is additional excellent thinking potential over there.