It’s been so long since my last post, I feel as though we ought to get reacquainted.

Let me introduce myself, my name is Linda and once upon a time I wrote an expat blog in which I posted regularly. You might have heard of it – Adventures in Expat Land?

Seriously, I can’t blame you if the answer is ‘uh, no, the name doesn’t ring a bell…’.

Long time no write, right?

Yes indeed. I’d say a month between posts surpasses ‘irregularly’ and goes straight into ‘downright neglectful’.

Okay, okay. I’ll take my lumps. Will it make it any better if I say I missed you?

It’s true. Perhaps not believable, but true nonetheless.

At first I was going to explain why I haven’t been blogging lately, but as time went on the tale become longer and more convoluted. Then I thought ‘Oh, why bother going on about it, no one cares. They may not have even noticed.’

But then I started thinking about how much pressure we put on ourselves to do, act, or be in a certain manner, and how we give ourselves such a hard time when we don’t measure up to our self-imposed standards.

My intention was to post at least twice a week, and I didn’t do that. It wasn’t for lack of interest, because most of the past thirty days has been spent wishing I could sit down – uninterrupted – and pound out a post. I even found myself scrawling post ideas and particular phrasing on napkins and scraps of paper to keep from forgetting.

That’s not to say I haven’t been writing, as I have, but I’ll save that update for the next post.

So here’s the short version of why I’ve been out of the blogging picture:

• Prepping and hosting a weekend house party of longtime friends
• A loathsome head cold given to me by Daughter and then dutifully passed on to Husband
• A family member’s illness requiring time, concentrated attention and a fair amount of stress and worry, and despite my best efforts, sorely trying my emotional resilience
• A particularly pernicious malware infestation which resulted in my having to replace the laptop – already on its last legs with a rapidly dwindling battery and dying hard drive – at precisely the point I neither wished to encounter such an expense nor had time to deal with learning a new system and getting used to a different keyboard
• Prepping for and hosting family for a several days’ celebration over Thanksgiving, which included getting half my Christmas shopping done beforehand so gifts could be wrapped, distributed and sent off with their intended recipients
• Collapsing in a near-exhausted puddle while still enjoying a few days until Son had to return to university
• Myriad other little things I managed to cram in and then immediately forgot – have I mentioned my memory’s going?

So there you have it: the good, the bad and the ugly. Nothing earth-shattering or catastrophic, and plenty of highs mixed in with the lows. Just a list, not unlike anyone else’s.

In a nutshell, life.

That’s why I haven’t blogged lately. It isn’t that the dog ate my homework – although Oli did manage to run off with a hefty piece of roasted turkey.

It’s because life intervened.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program…