"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

Earlier in the week, Susan at Chicken Spaghetti had a great Wish List post, a round-up of fun books, movies, and CDs from other blogs. I'm pleased that Susan likes the sound (no pun intended) of the audio CD of The Little History of the World and the Building Big DVD I wrote about recently, and I think that she and Junior would be pretty pleased with them, too.

And then wisteria at Twice Bloomed Wisteria took the Wish List idea and ran with it, "without limiting myself to books" to include "resources and personalities" from the blogging community, as she wrote. I was surprised this morning, not to mention honored and embarrassed, to find myself included on wisteria's Wish List, especially because she cited my "calm assuredness in schooling, farm, and life choices." To which I say "Ha!" a heartfelt thank you, wisteria, while simultaneously looking over my shoulder to see if you might really be talking about someone else.

In part because what might sometimes come across this here blog as "calm assuredness" is mostly good lighting, smoke, and some well-placed mirrors. In other words, if you haven't yet noticed, I'm a pretty cautious and private blogger. Part of it is is just in the genes, part of it is concern about this whole public internets bidness, and then too I remember those reruns of the old PBS series "An American Family," where I got an eyeful of what happens when people like the Loud family let it all hang out for the rest of the world to see. Not pretty, and edifying only as a sociological experiment.

The other reason is that when things aren't all that calm or assured around here -- when we're too busy running around like chickens with our heads cut off after chickens with their heads cut off; tracking down the neighbors before breakfast because their bull, snorting and stamping in a rather alarming manner, is my garden, to which I sent a small unarmed unaware child for strawberries; or spending an extra hour I didn't have at music lessons rather than at the supermarket -- I'm usually too busy to blog about it, and by tomorrow I'll have moved on to being busy with something else. So the more exciting, moving target things don't tend to make it to the blog.

I also have to give some credit to being 42 -- old enough to know better about some things and to know what I don't know about others; as well as my husband, whose stability, hard work, creativity, and reassurance allows me to concentrate on the kids, the schooling, and the house; and life on a farm, where it tends to be Mother Nature and not me who calls the shots, which has been rather freeing. Besides which, between three kids under age 10 and the farm, I've learned that life is short, the days are even shorter, and I need to have my priorities straight to get through them. Thanks again, wisteria, for the kind words and vote of confidence.