partiplog (participation blog)

Blogs. They’re pretty cool. A fun way to keep people up-to-date on your life or just a way to say whatever the heck you want and then tell your friends to read it. But some blogs have become so much more. For example there are vlogs (video blogs), qlogs (question blogs), artlogs (art blogs), photoblogs (photo blogs), and sketchblogs (if you aren’t catching on to how this works by now, it’s time to walk away from your computer and go read some books.) Discovering these other types of blogs got me thinking, I wonder if they have advicelogs or supglogs (support group blogs). Or maybe, huplogs (hook up blogs… they would be like the personals section in the newspaper… oh wait… we’ve already got facebook.) The point is that we’ve had this blog going (on and off… and by that I mean mostly off) for over a year now and there is so much we haven’t done. There is so much untapped potential… sportlogs, techlogs, weathlogs, fashiologs, polilogs, scielogs, cerealogs, disnelogs, hotlogs… the list goes on.

We’ve decided it is time to branch out. Stretch our limbs. Peel back the rind and find the bittersweet juice that makes this citrus fruit so much better than grapefruit and way worse than oranges.

I’ve stumbled across qlogs in the past, usually when I’m looking up something really important, like the song in that cool sprite commercial when the guy dives into the basketball court. I love that song. I love the way mom gasped when she first saw the commercial. Anyway, I came across about a thousand qlogs that had postings from people that restated my question, “where can I find that song that plays in that cool sprite commercial?” And then there would be like four responses that said: “I don’t know, but I love that song.” “I don’t think it is a real song.” “Yeah, I don’t know either.” “I hate sprite and your grandma.” I still don’t know what song it was and I love my grandma.

My favorite kind of qlogs are the those in the medical genre. It always has some name like DrMDlog. I know because I had a freaky rash a couple months ago and I was scouring these sites looking for possible diagnoses for my symptoms. I ended up reading questions like the following:

“My son came home with a red rash on his forearms and has been complaining of an upset stomach. The rash has persisted beyond a week now and I am unsure what it is or what to do. -Deliriously Unaware Mother”

The first answer is always by a “real” doctor:
“Dear DUM,
From what you have told me, your son is experiencing a mild case of uradermatolopolio. Soak forearm in cool water. Apply moisturizer every twenty minutes to affected area for the next seven months. If symptoms persist see your local doctor. –Dr. Watergate”

The next few comments are by just about anyone:
“Do you have any witchatock spiders in your house? Because the same thing happened to me two years ago. I thought I had some rash, but it ended up being these spider bites. I tried everything and eventually had to move out of my house. I would start looking for a good real estate agent now.”
“My good friend had a similar experience and she didn’t do anything about it and it just went away in about four weeks.”
“Have you tried peanut butter?”
“My uncle died from something like this. Turns out his spleen exploded and he died.”

In my case, and probably in DUM’s case too, despite the sound advice gained from my research on the internet, I ended up going to my doctor to get a real diagnosis. And I gained a valuable lesson: qlogs are good for absolutely nothing. Which is precisely why we would like to try it out here on our blog for a little while. Sound fun? Yes. It does.
So, here’s how it’s going to work… you submit a question, any question, to us and we, using our vast library of knowledge and life experiences (and maybe the internet), will answer your questions right here on our blog. This is the chance of a lifetime, people. The chance of a lifetime. (Repeated for emphasis.)

Just post your questions here on the blog. If it’s a medical question… might I suggest DrMDlog.

NYT (notyourtypical) lemmon peel

I realized today that pain is a relative term when I smacked my own face with my hairbrush. I won’t even try to explain how this took place. Let it be known that I am hazardous to my own health and occasionally the health of the nation. Or at least my apartment. I should be required by law to come with a warning label. The point is that I ended up with a fat lip and enough blood to make me woozy. It hurt a little, but it wasn’t what I would really call painful. At least not compared to the hip/I. T. band injury that is currently plaguing my life. The injury itself is less painful than the pain of being unable to run. Still greater is the pain of feeling out of shape and being left behind while the team travels around the country to race. It’s all relative. I’d rather smack my face with a brush twelve times a day for the rest of my life than miss another race. But fortunately we can’t pick and choose pain. Or else I would always choose that sick stomach pain that comes after eating a pint of ice cream. Because that is always a worth-it kind of hurt. Or maybe the pain of guilt that would come after running over the bike gang that constantly sits in the middle of the street in front of our apartment, because I hate them with “every fiber of my being”. But they do some pretty awesome stunts on those baby bikes. No, wait, they don’t.

The worst kind of pain is the type that you can’t just stick some ice or a band-aid on. Like this morning when our friend got the call that her grandma had passed away. When it comes to pain like that we use euphemisms like “grief “or “sorrow”. But dumb it down and it’s all just pain. Raw, yawning, gaping, open-wound kind of pain. Tears like that sting a whole lot worse than any fat lip.

But whether it’s a leg injury, a death, or just a stupid fat lip, it’s nice to know that there isn’t any kind of pain that we have to bear alone, because there isn’t any pain that hasn’t been felt before by a loving Savior. I know we don’t usually do serious topics, because rarely can a couple of Disney-channel watching, cereal eating, wanna-be 12 year olds be serious, but in a world of unavoidable hurt it is important to remember the one we can always rely on. Because although pain is relative, God isn’t. He is constant. I am grateful for a loving and attentive Father in Heaven, and His perfect son Jesus Christ. I’m grateful for prayer, for the scriptures, and for a Mere who is a pretty dang good example to me because she understands all this and is pulling through like a champ.

In addition to heavenly help there are usually friends and family in your corner when things get bumpy. In that back-stretch of the track where the crowds aren’t cheering and the race starts to hurt, there are always those few that you can count on to be there pulling for you. This is just a little shout out to those still there in my corner. And to you, Mere, I’d take a fat lip for you any day, I’m on your backstretch, and you are running one heck of a race.