Day three’s assignment is to follow five new topics and five new blogs in WordPress Reader. The topics were straightforward enough – what do I want to read about at the moment? While I might be obsessed with finding new books to read at the moment, I am struggling with the temptation to step outside my Kindle Unlimited and Audible subscriptions, so I avoided fiction as a topic to follow… It’s just too much!

I picked Disney, Fashion, Parenting, Labrador and Wiltshire.

Disney, because I love so many things about the brand – even though it’s far from perfect. I love its origins out of the depression era, led by an art geek and a business geek. Geekery is contagious. I love the volume of material to explore and discuss with my babies. I love that they can find familiar, positive images all around them, even in a world that can be quite harsh. I love the memories of our trips to the theme parks. I love to snuggle up in front of a film, and sing child-friendly songs of outstanding quality in the car. I love to wear underwear with cartoon characters on it.

Fashion is a tricky one. I’m very pregnant right now, which takes me out of the running somewhat, but even when my usual size, I’m awkwardly in the world between standard and plus-size. This means that it’s hard to find clothes that are designed for my size and shape – standard clothes are designed for firm, rakish figures, while plus-size clothes are just too big. So I look, and I try to absorb information, and decide how I can make it work for me. Maybe I exist in a niche worth exploring – the mid-size mother.

Parenting. Well, duh. I have two sweet boys, and an alleged girl on the way. I am interested in hearing different perspectives, and coming up with ways to tire them out more than myself. For a long time, I found a number of parenting blogs to be triggers for negative thought patterns because I simply don’t belong to any particular camp, and parenting blogs sure like to form camps. I’m partly attachment-y, somewhat free range, home-ed-curious with a small dash of tiger. Learning about x while being subjected to a huge bashing for y can be unpleasant, but I’m developing rhino hide, and accepting that being a bit lazy is definitely an acceptable reason not to hand-crochet all my children’s clothing from foraged alpaca wool.

Labrador. As Ron Swanson says, “any dog under 50 pounds is a cat and cats are pointless.” I’ll make a few exceptions on the pointlessness front, but Meg is my perfect dog, even if she is trying to sleep on top of me these days.

Wiltshire. Attempting to follow blogs about Marlborough will take you to Massachusetts, which is lovely but rather impractical when you’ve got to be back to pick the kids up at 3.

Now, for blog follows – the last five posters on The Commons should do the trick. Looking forward to reading:

http://kingofstates.com/
https://keepexploringstuff.wordpress.com/
https://cherylmccullough21.wordpress.com/
https://morethanadashofsalt.wordpress.com/
http://linspiredliving.com/