Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #256 - The Girl With All The Gifts, a book review
and
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #257 - So many graphic novels; so little time.
But I am also very fond of this one, too,
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #428 - Seven Ways of Looking At Teachers, a poem
and I did not include any of the weekly poem entries, but I did try to restrict myself to ten, and then twelve (which is fourteen), so... that's that. :-)
Also, I just included the first of the blog series on writing persuasive essays, though there are several better entries than the first one.
Still, this is a good list.
Enjoy.
BEST BLOGS LIST 2016- TOP TWELVE
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #198 - Scheduling time to obsess
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #208 - More on obsessing
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #341 - GRAMMAR POLICE: THINGS THAT SUCK #3 - The sign at Burger King
The Daily Bowie #24 - "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide"
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #263 - Indigo Girls Concert
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #363 - Memorial Therapy part four - Bike Ride
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #371 - I am not afraid of the police; but maybe you should be
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #376 - Hypocrisy and self-realization
BEST BLOGS LIST 2016- complete list
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #198 - Scheduling time to obsess
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #194 - Plate of Shrimp
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #201 - Tower Birthday Cake Archive
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #208 - More on obsessing
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #216 - More on Bowie - a links collection
The Daily Bowie #24 - "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide"
The Daily Bowie #25 - "Lazarus"
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #223 - Dad's Deacon Installation
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #246 - Monica Byrne, Patreon, Activism
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #254 - My wife is amazing
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #255 - My wife is amazing, pt.2
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #256 - The Girl With All The Gifts, a book review
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #257 - So many graphic novels; so little time
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #263 - Indigo Girls Concert
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #267 - Lost Lovecraft Manuscript, Houdini, and Racism
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #268 - Geek Closet
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #271 - Winnie the Pooh, Jung, and Teaching revisited
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #274 - I still miss you, but it's easier (sometimes)
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #288 - Toilet Paper Hanging Direction
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #292 - Dreams - part Five - the flight speed of grief
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #301 - The Serendipity Letter
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #325 - Piper's Recital
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #330 - Memorial Day Cookout and Blog Thoughts
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #337 - Ivan's Graduation
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #341 - GRAMMAR POLICE: THINGS THAT SUCK #3 - The sign at Burger King
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #363 - Memorial Therapy part four - Bike Ride
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #366 - Last Year's Tributes - Throwback Thursday
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #371 - I am not afraid of the police; but maybe you should be
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #376 - Hypocrisy and self-realization
from -
https://sensedoubt.blogspot.com/2015/12/hey-mom-talking-to-my-mother-177-year.html
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #177 - Year end review and best blogs
Hi Mom,
Welcome to the last day of 2015. I wish you were here to see it.
Today, I create and publish the 177th blog entry in this series, inspired by wishing to continue my conversations with you. 177 is just five posts shy of the halfway mark for the year. And, like with the T-shirts project, I do plan to stop at 365 posts, which will come not on the day you died a year later but on the second day following the day you died in this coming 2016.
At this time, I felt it would be a good idea to reflect on this avocation, to share some statistics of readership, and to choose the twenty best entries of the year thus far. I tried to restrict myself to top ten and could not.
Like with T-shirts, that came from my struggle to understand having cancer and coping with recovery from having cancer, this blog series originates with your death, Mom, but becomes more than a journal about grieving; it has become a journal about living. My intent is that by writing about the things I want to write about, I will show that I have moved on, or at least how I am trying to move on.
So far, it has been easier than I thought it would be. Liesel, especially, thought I would be completely broken by your death, despite my assurances that I was more prepared than she believed given all that we had been through with you, Mom, in the last fifteen years, but especially the original situation, the bacterial meningitis that changed all of our lives forever.
But by saying that the moving on, the continuing, the living has been "easier" than I thought it would be, this does not imply that it has been easy. I feel the loss of you every day, Mom. I find new ways to cope with that loss every day. My choices are not the choices that others would make, but this difference does not make my choices wrong. They are my choices. This is my grief.
And yet, this is also my life. As I noted, I did not want this blog to be a daily cant on how much I miss you and how I am struggling to move on with life that does not include you in it as a living person (because I do feel you strongly in my daily life as a spiritual entity). I could simply post 365 variations on the theme of "I miss you," but that's not what I am trying to do. The blog theme comes from the idea of continuing my daily conversations with you as I called you nearly every day over the last six years. And I think I have done very well with a variety of content. Yes, some of it is specifically about grief, some of it consists of memories of our life together, but some of it really has nothing to do with you at all, Mom, it's just something I want to write about, such as yesterday's book reviews and Tuesday's review of book one of the
Dark Knight III - The Master Race comic book. I have spent a great deal of time and energy on keeping my content varied and not only of interest to you, Mom (more or less). but also to others who graciously share some of their time by peeking in on what I am doing with mine (my time, that is).
I have 188 of these entries left to write, and I am confident that I can keep up my standards and achieve some new things. Not all of the entries will be verbose or complex, many will be short comments on a picture, my continuing reports on our Scotland trip (Liesel's and mine), or reprinted content from my T-shirt series (which is the greatest cheat but in a way one of my chief joys), but I will continue to post content daily (except when I get behind) and think of you daily, Mom, whether I am writing about something that would interest you or something that interests me and you have to listen politely.
STATISTICS
In an overall glimpse, I have 266 posts on this blog, of which 177 are devoted to this enterprise of "Hey, Mom!" I have been blessed with 24, 847 page views, which is decent for a modest blog such as this one, but still trails the T-shirt blogs whopping 36,956 page views, though I suspect that come Hey Mom #365, I will match or exceed the T-shirts total.
My average seems to be around 30 some pages views a day with spikes of 100-150 on some days with some posts.
Current stats show page views today at 55, page views yesterday at 96, and page views for the month of December at 1,972. Granted, I generate a fair number of these views myself but I would say that subtracting 5-10% for my activity, the rest resemble mostly readers and not robots, from what I can tell.
My peak month since starting Hey Mom was August with 3053 page views followed by July with 2880 and October with 2240
The most popular recent post was the one from December 26th on Christmases from 2009-2015, which is a very special post indeed and will probably make the top ten. This post also ranks as number one for the last month.
In terms of all time ranks, my top ten most page views are mostly dominated by non-Hey Mom content. My number one post with 1024 page views is this one
KEEPING MISOGYNY ALIVE AND WELL FOR GEEKS NATIONWIDE, which is about the
Heroes TV show and its depiction of women in its first season. My second most popular post with 642 page views is this one:
THINGS THAT SUCK #2: PLEASE PREPAY IN ADVANCE, of which I am inordinately proud.
The next two with 213 views and 154 views respectively are also from the pre-Hey Mom period:
BURGERS OR BOOTY and
THE “New and Improved” INVISIBLE WOMAN: Does she look like she needs protecting?, which happens to be the first post I ever made on this blog (and the one about
Heroes was number two).
Following this top four, number five with 102 page views and number six with 82 page views are two of my weekly comics posts:
WEEKLY COMICS FOR 1404.16 -- which shared content on the
Batman comic during the Riddler Year One saga, the conclusion of the
Superior Spider-Man series, The
Justice League featuring the Metal Men, "Who Shot Bruce Banner?" from 2014 issues of
the Hulk, the
Ms. Marvel reboot, and a few other comics -- and
WEEKLY COMICS FOR 1405.21, which described recent TV shows and movies of comic book themes, along with reviews of Marvel's
Original Sin #2, the conclusion of DC's
Forever Evil, Image's
Velvet #5,
Daredevil #005, and Image's
Saga #19 among a few others.
Finally, the first Hey Mom post --
New feature: Hey, Mom! Talking to my mother #1 - the explanation -- takes seventh place with 79 page views. I have added to this entry a few times and will probably add to it again, thus increasing the page views somewhat, but I think people are finding it from the top of the blog to better understand what I am doing.
One other pre-Hey Mom entry comes in at eighth before two Hey Moms close out the top ten.
With 74 page views, my
Return of Doubt: Things that Suck scores eighth followed by
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #89 - Sixth wedding anniversary (65 page views) and
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #88 - 90 days and 88 blog entries (63 page views).
I am blessed to have readers. Thank you. And thank you, Mom, for inspiring it all and sitting patiently and listening when I go on about stuff you do not care all that much about.
MY TOP TWENTY HEY MOM POSTS SO FAR (thru 177)
There's actually twenty-one entries here because I had to include the first one, but it doesn't count towards the top twenty. I tried to avoid listing so many posts that deal with grieving, but a fair share of them deal with it because its been a constant issue for half a year now. I wanted to include one of the dreams posts and the second one is probably the best of three, despite Liesel's dream as feature of
the third part. Post #83 may not be the best in terms of writing, but I love the picture from the post and have included it above. I tried to be choosy, and so I included only one post from the Memorial Service, and probably, my favorite story. But I did not include any posts from other series' I wrote, such as the seven songs sequence and the Traverse City trip group of posts. Early posts were all especially poignant, such as #s two, three, and fourteen. I like the pair #25 and #50 make between counting days and disbelief. But then, the majority of the posts in the second ten are about other subjects than my grief and the loss you, Mom, at least, that is, until Christmas. Still, this is a good list, and this post could serve as a good introduction to what I am doing. I am especially proud of the blog as a whole, but I am especially proud of these twenty entries.
New feature: Hey, Mom! Talking to my mother #1 - the explanation
Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mother #2 - last breath
Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mother #3 - "Don't be scared."
Hey, Mom! Talking to my Mother #14 - Meijer
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #20 - Memorial Service pt. 7 - Mints story
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #25 - Counting Days
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #50 - Disbelief
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #73 - Dreams part two
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #82 - Your Stuff
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #83 - LOL - not Laughing Out Loud
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #88 - 90 days and 88 blog entries
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #89 - Sixth wedding anniversary
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #92 - Gender Performance
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #93 - Happy 79th Birthday, Mom
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #97 - present tense
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #106 - Star Wars Boycott
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #119 - All life is precious - Aikido
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #124 - Gloria Steinem
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #153 - Warren Ellis & new year's resolutions
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #170 - Box of comics on Christmas Eve
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #172 - Christmases 2009-2015
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 179 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1512.31 - 15:27
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1274 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1812.30
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.