The Good and the Bad about Blog Awards -- The Versatile Blogger Award

Blog Awards are great, and blog awards are terrible. 

They are great because when someone sends me an award, I (momentarily) feel thrilled.  Oh, wow, someone reads my blog.  This is great!  They think I am worthy of receiving these pretty little electronic pixels. ('Cause we humor bloggers really thrive on the attention, ya know?) 

Another reason that Blog Awards are great is that they give me something to write about other than my usual stuff.  Of course, Blog Awards often come with a lot of rules, but as far as I'm concerned, rules about what I am supposed to write about are great because then the topic is not my fault. 

Now, however, we get to the "bad" stuff about Blog Awards.  First of all, most of the rules are not about what to write -- they involve finding some huge number of other "worthy" bloggers to whom we will grant the award.  The higher the number, the worse I feel.  I read lots of blogs, for sure, but I honestly don't sit around all day reading blogs.  (I know you thought I did.)  Plus, lots of the blogs I read are by people who don't know me and wouldn't respond to any award I might choose to give them.  (Or, they are by some super busy moms who might flip off the deep end if I try to lay one more hair of work on their plate.)

Of course, the higher the number of recipients from each gifter, the closer we are to a ponzi scheme, I think, and the more devalued I feel.  Did they give me the award because they love me, or because they know me and desperately needed one more name?  Ya gotta wonder ... ya know?

But, back to basking in the glory.  I am the recipient of this:



Isn't it so pretty and green?  And the name "versatile blogger" -- how flattering! (I'm going with flattering.  Don't spoil it for me.)

The rules for this award are as follows: 


1. Thank the person who gave you this award.
2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!
4. Contact the bloggers you've picked and let them know about the award.

I will start by saying, "THANK YOU" in big letters to Dazee Dreamer for sending this on to me.  The rules do not specifically say no "tag backs," but as part of my thanking procedures, I will also refrain from sending the award back to you.

So, next, I will share 7 things about myself.  I will also refrain from merely copying my post A Few Random Things to Know About Me (although, again, I see nothing in the rules that would prohibit this approach).

Here goes:

- I like the color green.  You might have inferred that from my remark above about the award being "pretty and green," but I have repeated it in case you weren't paying attention.

- I'm actually starting to appreciate the show Wizards of Waverly Place, and the movie wasn't half bad.  Of course, I watched it while out of town at a funeral, so possibly my standards weren't very high that day.

- I love Disney, but I'm mad at them for cancelling Bunnytown, and I think Special Agent Oso is the world's dumbest bear.  He even makes Pooh look smart.  (Sorry, Pooh.  You are loveable, but no one ever said, "smart" in reference to you.)

- Toddler's first ever amusement park ride was at Epcot, in Norway.  Yes, I took my son on a semi-scary boat ride.  Why?  Darling Husband and I might have ... possibly ... if you want to consider it that ... taste-tested a few too many wines at the Food and Wine Festival when we made that choice.  The good news is that Toddler loved it.

- I am an excellent cook when forced to be.  In general, I really hate cooking.  This fact has bothered my oldest sister for many years now.

- I never wanted three cats.  Nope.  Never.  Houdini didn't give a crap what I wanted.

- I never really thought I would be a stay at home mom, or a blogger, but look at me now.

Now, here is the hard part.  How do I find 15 other bloggers to give this award to?  Of course, I know plenty of worthy recipients.  (I'm not that unpopular, thank you very much!)  Yet, I can't give an award to the same 15 people all the time.  First of all, most of them haven't posted their entries on my last award, and second, they might start blocking my emails and tweets and stop speaking to me.

So ... here goes.  I'm fairly sure none of these people will stop speaking to me or send me (too much) hate mail.  Some of them have never even heard of me, so if they get mad ... eh.  And one of them, at least, has a whole heck of a lot more to bother to get mad at me about over the last 20 years than this:

@kailexmummy (Turnabout is fair play, my dear.)  Allaboutus and Suchlike

@BustedKate from Busted Plumbing because you crack me up about something that I never knew I could laugh about. I guess that's only fair because until now, you probably didn't even know I existed.

@kadiera for Our Little Acorn

Adrian for his fledging blog Now Once, because the award is green, and he used to always show up wherever we were going wearing this green sweathshirt....

@jterzieff from her blog JulietteTerzieff.com because she was so darn thrilled the last time I tagged her (honest, no sarcasm intended!) that I can't help doing it again

And ... that's it.  It ain't 15, but seriously, this is the third "tag" I've had to do in a short period of time.  I reserve the right to send this out to future bloggers at a later time, just as I did with my Beautiful Blogger award.  It's always good to have something in the backburner for the future, right?