I have avoided talking too much about the upcoming BlogHer conference, because for the 99% of you who won’t be there, I realize the last thing you care to hear about is all the BlogHer preparations. And frankly, there haven’t really been any BlogHer preparations around here as yet. Which means that I have A LOT to do to be ready to go on Thursday.

Fortunately, my friend Melissa came to the rescue last Friday night and organized an event at the LOFT where a small group of local bloggers gathered to shop for the conference.  We had a blast.

I scored an adorable jacket in opal gray (for fall, NOT for BlogHer, as it’s likely to be 95 degrees in NYC next weekend) and this fun sparkly T in wild berry (you can see me modeling it in Sarah’s video) that’s for just about anything.  It should look great with jeans, either dressy or casual.  I also picked up a top on the clearance rack that I wore out of the store and over to my new favorite restaurant, Seasons 52, where we enjoyed a delectable late dinner.

Oh.  And I got these gorgeous earrings to wear them with the purple sparkly top.

In addition to the shopping spree (disclosure: we each received a gift card for $20 and a 20% off coupon to use that night, plus fashion consultations with their fabulous sales staff), Melissa rounded up some fabulous gift bags for us.  My favorite items were, hands down, the Ellington HandBag, and these earrings from Kendra Scott.

I expect both of those items to make their debut at BlogHer next week.  Then, among other things, there was the $25 gift card to ShopatHome.com and this fabulous body shaper from Kymaro.

But back to BlogHer Style.

As far as BlogHer Style is concerned, I’m struggling a bit with the current trends.  You see, it’s like this.  I do not do ruffles.  I do not do muted colors.  I do not do jersey, and I do not do thin, see-through shirts.  And if you live under a rock or haven’t been shopping lately, this season’s trends are all about the thin, ruffly tops in muted colors and jersey knit dresses.

So.

This basically leaves me with my existing wardrobe to shop from — a fact for which my husband is supremely grateful.

I’ve never been to BlogHer, but I’ve been to several blogging conferences, and I know the key is be comfortable, be yourself, but definitely put some effort into your wardrobe.  There are cameras EVERYWHERE.

The thing about BlogHer that is more stressful than other conferences I’ve attended is the plethora of parties.  I have no clue how to dress for the various evening events I’m going to; I’m assuming some are dressier than others.  So yesterday, I laid out all of my potential party outfits and played a little game of dress-up.

I was pleased to discover a couple of silky and sparkly tops in the back of my closet that I’d forgotten about, as well as a dress that I bought last summer and never wore.  SCORE!  And I think this is JUST the occasion to dust off my famous red patent leather shoes.

I guess it comes back to what they always tell you: Wear what you know you feel good in, put a little bit of effort into it, but don’t stress too much.  And most of all, have fun!  That’s exactly what I plan to do.

Big thanks to Melissa for organizing the BlogHer Style event, the LOFT in Paoli for opening their dressing rooms, and all of the companies who supplied our generous gift bags: Kendra Scott Jewelry, Ellington Handbags, Barista Bath and Body, Starbucks, ShopatHome.com, AquaNet, and Kymaro.

Check out my review of the Personal MicroDerm system on Chic Critique today!

The Pursuit of More — Simple Mom.  An oldie but a goodie.

Don’t Eat Real Food; It Will Kill You — Kathleen Flinn.

Natural Sunscreen Review — Kitchen Stewardship.  Everything you ever wanted to know and more about natural sunscreens and what to buy.

My friend Rachel over at A Southern Fairytale has a carnival going on right now called the Holiday Craft Along and she has a collection of THE MOST DELICIOUS LOOKING recipes for holiday gift giving.  I am drooling.  This is a great resource for the holidays.

This post is linked to Saturday Stumbles at It’s Come To This.

So I want to know this.  Was there a full moon this week?  Because good golly miss molly, this week has been a DOOZIE.  It’s been a conglomeration of a bunch of stupid little things, and a couple of pretty big things, although for the most part I couldn’t even tell you half the things that have gone wrong in the last two days.  Except, of course, being without my blogs all day yesterday; I certainly can tell you about that.  Suffice it to say, if it could go wrong, it has gone wrong, and I am more than happy to bid adieu to this trying week and proclaim a hearty TGIF.

I already got a run in this morning, so that’s good.  Actually, it was more of a walk than a run on the account of me staying out until midnight last night and then sleeping later than usual and then wanting to get my exercise in before my husband leaves for work.  So I went out without my coffee.

But you know what?  It was nice.

The humidity broke last night, and the air was crisp.  The sky was blue, the birds were singing, and I actually turned off my iPod and just basked in the goodness of summer as I walked beside fields of late-summer corn shading me from the blinding early morning sun.  I think I might do a day of walking without the iPod every week, just to keep it fresh.

Hey Jo-Lynne, why were you out till midnight?

I knew you’d ask.  You’re so predictable.  Well, I’ll tell you.  Thanks to two good friends who jumped out of their pajamas and into their cars at the mere suggestion of a drink, I had a little nightcap at the Cheesecake Factory after a rather traumatic hair cut.

My hair is thinning; it has been for a long time, but one side was so bad that we decided to chop it all.  It’s cute and all, but I have this irrational fear that it will never grow back in and now I have less of it than ever.  (Yes, I have an appointment to see my doctor, I just have to wait 3 weeks, and try not to stress.  Yeah, riiiiiight.)

But I do want to say kudos to Cheesecake Factory for a smart addition to their menu — a page of “small plates and snacks” that are perfect portions for those of us who have small appetites or are watching our calories.  I highly recommend the Chicken Samosas and the mini crab cakes. Melissa and I split those, and they were heavenly.

So today I plan to take it easy, do some laundry, and take the kids to the pool.  And tonight I’m going to try to make homemade pizza for the first time ever.  It’s probably crazy to attempt something that new and potentially frustrating during a week where Murphy’s Law prevails, but I’m going to throw caution to the wind.  I like to live dangerously. And how bad can it be, really?

Wait.  Don’t answer that.

Jen writes: Other than participating in memes, what is the best way to increase blog traffic ?  I don’t have profound things to say, but I’d like to increase my traffic, increase my comments, and make more friends in bloggy land!

Me: Well, that’s the 10 million dollar question, isn’t it?

Actually, the answer is fairly simple.  “Bloggy land” is much like life.  As my mom told me when I was an awkward child in middle school, “If you want to have a friend, you have to be a friend.”  And you know what?  That sums it up quite nicely.

That’s nice, Jo-Lynne, but what do you mean?  How does that translate to the blogosphere?

I’m getting there.  Patience, grasshopper.

1.  Participating in carnivals (I believe that’s what you mean by meme – memes are those lists of questions on a particular topic that seem to circulate around cyberspace at an alarming rate – carnivals are when you link your post up to a carnival host’s site, such as Wordless Wednesday or Tasty Tuesday) is certainly a great way to be a part of the community and to get your name out there.

But simply linking up your post will not do you much good.

If you want to make the most of a carnival (assuming that your goal is to build traffic and make some friends) then you need to go through the list of carnival participants and visit their posts and leave thoughtful comments.  (And by thoughtful, I do not mean, “Great picture!”  Be specific.  What do you like about the picture, or how can you relate to that post?)

And don’t forget to leave a comment on the carnival host’s post. Sometimes I find myself linking up and leaving, and then I realize I never even read the original post or left a comment.  As someone who has once hosted a weekly carnival, I know how much those comments mean.  So don’t forget the hostess with the mostest.

2.  Other than carnivals, the very best way to gain readers and make friends is to simply spend time reading and commenting on other blogs. Sorry, I wish I could give you some advice that’s more original, but that’s really it.

I’m a Grannie in blog years.  That’s not to say there aren’t dinosaurs out there who have been blogging a lot longer than I have, but I’m in my 5th year of blogging, and when I discovered this community, ad networks and product review blogs were the exception, not the rule.  Back in the day, before companies discovered what a great mouthpiece blogs could be, mom bloggers blogged simply for the love of writing and for the community.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with blogs who are out to be a business.

I’m just saying that in the beginning, when this community was formed, it was purely social.  And socialize, we did.  That’s how we grew our blogs.  We didn’t realize that’s what we were doing; it just happened naturally.

That is, after all, why it’s called social media.

Socializing is still what grows most blogs. If you’re a deal blogger or offering a service of some kind, this advice may not be as applicable.  But for those of us who are “life bloggers” or “memoir bloggers” or “diarists” or whatever you want to call it, the best way to grow an audience is to get out there and leave your foot prints around the blogosphere.

Find bloggers who have similar interests, whose posts inspire you or make you laugh, and visit them regularly and leave kind words.  Read their posts thoroughly; don’t skim and miss the point.  And then take the time to craft a thoughtful comment.  For How To Write Blog Comments That Get You Noticed, you can see the guest post that Stephanie wrote for me some time ago.  Stephanie is a master at doing this.  She takes time each week to read through my latest posts and leave relevant, insightful comments or ask questions.  I remember when she started leaving comments on my blog.  I remember clicking over to see who she was.  Eventually I added her to my Google Reader, and even though we’ve never met in real life, I consider her a trusted friend.

3.  The other piece of advice I would offer is to be yourself. Again, it sounds obvious, I know.  The more I think about it, blogging is a lot like junior high.

Seriously, though, sometimes newer bloggers struggle to find their voice and end up copying what other bloggers sound like.  Or, they try to portray their lives they way they want them to be, rather than the way they really are.

Resist the urge.

Really, it is so obvious when people do this, and it’s a huge turn off.  It’s easy to fall into that trap; I’m sure I’ve been guilty of it more than once, but the sooner you get in the habit of being authentic and even a bit vulnerable, the sooner you will find your traffic and comments growing.

4.  I hope it’s not necessary to say this, but I will.  Play nice. Be a positive force in the blogosphere. No one likes a complainer.

5.  Finally, I couldn’t write a post on growing blog traffic and making friends in cyberspace without extolling the virtues of Twitter.  Twitter is the hub of social media, in my opinion. I do more socializing on Twitter, I read more posts from clicking on links from Twitter, and I get more blog traffic from Twitter than any other platform.

I love Twitter.

We get it.  We get it.  Enough about Twitter.

No, really.  You HAVE to be on Twitter.  Twitter enables me to keep a pulse on the community during those weeks (months?) when I haven’t got time to go through my feed reader.  It’s a great way to promote my own posts.  And best of all, it helps nurture the relationships that I form on my blog.

But I don’t have TIME for Twitter.

I didn’t say it wouldn’t be a time suck. But it doesn’t HAVE to be. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Twhirl is an awesome Twitter app. It’s just a pop-up browser on the side of my computer screen, and I can see it at all times. I don’t “go to Twitter” and spend hours there. It’s just there, on the side of my screen, and I hop in and out of conversations as I have time and interest.

See? It looks like this.

I love it. Everyone else talks about TweetDeck, but I find that way overwhelming. Twhirl works just fine for me.

For more about using Twitter, see my Twitter for Dummies Beginners post and also How To Use Twitter.

I thought you said this was going to be a simple answer.

Yeah, well. I thought it was gonna be. I think I’m what they call wordy.

Oh, and one more thing.  If you want to encourage commenting on your blog, turn off the horrid CAPTCHA spam filter thingamabob.  I often think I’ve left a comment on someone’s site, only to go back to their tab on my browser and realize that one of those CAPTCHA things had popped up and I never even saw it.  Or worse, I see it, and it takes me three tries to get the right key combination because they’re so hard to read.  I’m willing to bet, if you have one of those on your blog, that you aren’t getting half the comments people try to leave for you.

So there you go, six tips for the price of five.

So how about you, dear reader? Do you have any additional advice for Jen? Is there anything I didn’t cover?  What do you think is the best way to increase blog traffic?

I haven’t forgotten about this series, I promise.  I have several more books to review.  It’s just like everything else, finding the time is the issue.

Today I want to tell you about the highly acclaimed and often recommended Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  I’ve been hearing about this book for years, long before I discovered my passion for whole foods and locally sourced ingredients, and I finally got around to reading it while in Maine a few weeks ago.

If you don’t know about it, this is the story of a family who decided to spend an entire year of their lives eating only fresh, local food.

In their words:

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, this book (released May 2007) tells the story of how our family was changed by one year of deliberately eating food produced in the place where we live. Barbara wrote the central narrative; Steven’s sidebars dig deeper into various aspects of food-production science and industry; Camille’s brief essays offer a nineteen-year-old’s perspective on the local-food project, plus nutritional information, meal plans and recipes.

I love how each member of the family contributed to the book. This was definitely a group effort.  They also include meal plans and recipes for each season of the year, which I will be referring to often, I’m sure.

I’ve been convicted about the importance of buying local as much as is possible for some time, thus my newest blog baby Eat Local Philly, which I’m still building.  My reasons for buying local are largely based on my desire to support our local economy and to eat better quality and tasting foods.  But Kingsolver goes into great detail explaining the harmful effects of industrial farming on the environment, citing water and air pollution, global warming and other disturbing trends.  I know there is some debate about the urgency of those issues, and I don’t care to get into that, but she made me think about eating local in a whole new way.

I had an epiphany while reading this book.  (Well I had several, but here is the first one.)  I never considered that perhaps the reason vegetables get such a bad rap is because we don’t eat them fresh! I thought I hated vegetables until I started buying only fresh, local ones.  And I could go weeks (and I did) without eating a single piece of fruit before I started buying local.  Now, I can’t get enough of them.  You just can’t believe the difference until you start paying attention.

My kids literally fight over the last of the peas and green beans these days.  Last night one of my children ate three helpings of collard greens. I KNOW! And they eat fruit like it’s going out of style.  One day last week, after stopping at the farm stand and stocking up on fresh peaches and blueberries, my middle child proclaimed passionately, in anticipation of the feast to come, “Mom. I like fruit better than candy!”  Now that’s a testimony to the goodness of fresh, local produce if there ever was one.

Kingsolver explains it like this:

Storage and transport take predictable tolls on the volatile plant compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value.  Breeding to increase shelf life has also tended to decrease palatability.  Bizarre as it seems, we’ve accepted the trade-off that amounts to: “Give me every vegetable in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self.”

From Camille, Kingsolver’s 19-year-old daughter, who writes a few chapters of the book:

Parents won’t have to work so hard at bribing their kids with desserts if they don’t serve slimy greens.  When fresh and not overcooked, spinach, chard, kale, bok choy, and other greens are some of my favorite things.

Kingsolver tackles a lot of myths about whole foods throughout the book, one being that good food is only available to the wealthy.  It constantly bothers me how people assume that eating real food is an elitist endeavor. Think about how expensive it is to eat out, and then think about the amount of money you spend on boxes of cereals and snack foods. Yes, if you compare pound for pound the price of foodlot beef versus the price of pasture-raised beef, it seems extravagant to buy the meat raised humanely. But if you take your overall food bill (including fast food and dining out) and compare it to the food bill of one who makes most of their food from scratch with wholesome ingredients, you won’t find such a disparity.

Kingsolver sums it up nicely with this:

I am not sure how so many Americans came to believe only our wealthy are capable of honoring a food aesthetic.  Anyone who thinks so should have a gander at the kitchens of working-class immigrants from India, Mexico, anywhere really.  Cooking at home is cheaper than buying packaged foods or restaurant meals of comparable quality.  Cooking good food is mostly a matter of having the palate and the skill.

The main barrier standing between ourselves and a local-food culture is not price, but attitude.  The most difficult requirements are patience and a pinch of restraint – virtues that are hardly the property of the wealthy.

Reading this book also brought to my attention how skewed our perspective has become from having all foods available at all times. We’ve lost that innate sense of what is in season and what foods are actually grown in our own regions. And of course, the nutritional and taste value declines dramatically with imported foods.

Kingsolver made me rethink my buying habits when she explains that she refuses to purchase bananas on the basis that it is wasteful to use that much fuel to transport fruit over hundreds of miles when we have an abundance of fresh locally grown fruit available almost year round.

My practice till now has been to purchase locally grown produce when it is available and in season, but beyond that, I’m happy to take advantage of our modern transportation and enjoy citrus and bananas and other produce that we can’t grow here. And I have been known to buy apples from New Zealand when ours are not in season. What can I say, it’s a fruit my whole family loves.

Let’s just say I haven’t stopped buying bananas yet, but it’s definitely food for thought. Ha! Aren’t I punny?

After reading AVM, I am more inspired than ever to buy local and make the most of what is fresh and in season, and I was reminded that it doesn’t have to be costly. Her menu plans and recipes are all simple and down to earth. There are no exotic ingredients (relegating yourself to only locally sourced foods will do that for you) or pricey cuts of meat.  Of course, the fact that she grew much of their food herself (including their meat) enabled her to keep costs down, but even so, eliminating processed foods leaves a lot of room in the budget for real food.

I had gotten into the bad habit of buying organic processed foods because my kids enjoy having snack food, and it’s easy to package up for the pool and whatnot. (If I’m going to buy processed foods, I do buy organic or at least Trader Joes brands because they have fewer preservatives and they don’t use GMOs and trans fats and HFCS. BUT. They are not nutritious, and they wreck havoc on the food bill.) Since reading AVM, I have gone back to basics — fresh fruits and vegetables and cheese are our snack foods. Ironically, no one has even noticed.  Or if they have, they haven’t complained.

Lastly, I was inspired by the way cooking in the Kingsolver home is a family event. Everyone took part, and they bonded over preparing and eating their own food. I find that all too often, I shoo my kids out of the kitchen because I’d rather do it myself. But I realize that this is short-changing them, so I’ve been trying to incorporate them more into the food preparation around here.

It’s a bit trying on my patience, but they love to help out, and I want them to remember fondly our times cooking together. I want them to think of the kitchen as a warm, happy place. I figure, if I want my kids to grow up to appreciate and prioritize good food, I need to cultivate a positive food culture within our home. America is criticized as having no food culture as other countries do, and it is suggested that perhaps that is why we have so readily accepted fast food and industrial convenience foods and the havoc they wreck on our bodies. I’m doing all I can to counter balance that influence in our home.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is exactly the kind of book I love — a true story, and one that inspires me to action and makes me think in new ways.  If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it.  (As if you couldn’t tell that already.)

Disclosure: All links to Amazon.com are affiliate links.

(Well, that’s not entirely true.  I’m going to BlogHer next week.  WOOT!)

Hey, if you’re reading from a feed reader, be sure to click over and see my new digs.

I’ve been dying to redesign for a while now, but I wasn’t quite ready to rebrand the whole site so I came up with this.  I’ve been tweaking and nit-picking till my eyes are crossed but I think I’m done.  For the moment, anyway.

Now it’s time to take my Kindle and my glass of blueberry wine to the front porch and enjoy my book and the low humidity while it lasts.

Inspired by Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I decided that I would try to preserve some of our favorite seasonal veggies to enjoy next winter. The whole canning process terrifies me, but I discovered that for those who have the freezer space, freezing vegetables is fairly painless. Well, compared to canning anyway.

So.  Armed with instructions from my friend Kellyn, I spent yesterday afternoon peeling, seeding, and bagging up fresh tomatoes to use for sauces and stews come winter. I have a few pounds of green beans I’m going to try to do today. Next year we hope to have a vegetable garden, and I expect to be “putting up” a lot of produce for winter, so I thought I should get my feet wet this year, while I don’t have the extra responsibilities of gardening to go along with it.

I spent the rest of the weekend indoors, reading and working and trying to avoid the oppressive heat and humidity that’s been smothering the East coast. Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I attended two very fun events this weekend, so I wasn’t a total hermit.

Fortunately a storm blew through yesterday and cooled it down a bit. Today is supposed to be gorgeous, and it looks like most of the week will be less hot and humid. So with that in mind, here’s my menu plan for this week. (Lots of grilling and fresh veggies. Yahoo!)

MONDAY: Ina-Burgers on the grill, sliced tomatoes w/ olive oil and salt, fresh green beans lightly steamed

TUESDAY: Onion Quiche, rainbow chard (for me!), peas in cream (for the kids; they love ‘em)

WEDNESDAY: Tuscan Lemon Chicken, corn on the cob, fresh green veggie (whatever looks good at the farm stand)

THURSDAY: Tomato, Basil, and Mozzarella Salad (I really, REALLY want to make my own mozzarella. There are directions in AVM, but I’m a bit intimated by the prospect, even though she swears it’s easy-peasy.) And probably some corn on the cob.  We can always have some of that leftover chicken if the salad doesn’t fill us up.

FRIDAY: Friday Night Pizza with caramelized onions, fresh tomatoes, and mozzarella slices (and a traditional cheese pizza for the kiddos).  I might try grilling the crust, per Kathleen Flinn’s book that I read over the weekend. I can’t find the recipe online. 

SATURDAY:  Leftovers

Drooling yet?  I am!

I mentioned on Twitter earlier today that I was drinking a homemade iced mocha, and I’ve had tweets ever since asking for the recipe.

I don’t have any pictures or anything, but in the interest of having a quick link I can post, here you go.  It’s highly scientific.  None but the most accomplished chefs should dare attempt it. 

(Yes, I’m joking. It’s painless, I promise.)

Are you ready?

Step 1:
Take your handy dandy blender.  Dump in a cup of sugar and a cup of cocoa powder (use more sugar if you like it sweeter) (it really can be any amount in a 1:1 ratio) and blend.  Now, store that in a plastic container in your pantry for whenever you want an iced mocha (or a hot chocolate, for that matter.)

Step 2:
Brew a half a pot (or however much you want to drink) of coffee.  Make it strong.  Refrigerate till cool.  (Or.  If you have a french press, cold brew some coffee in the fridge.  That’s is what I do. Unless I have coffee left over from breakfast, and then I just refrigerate that for later.) 

As you can see, you have to plan ahead a bit.  That’s the only downside of this procedure.

Step 3:
Whenever you want to enjoy a crisp, ice-cold mocha beverage, go back to the blender, dump in a heaping teaspoon (not a measuring teaspoon; use a cereal spoon) of the cocoa mixture into the blender with about 8 oz or thereabouts of the cold coffee.  Double or triple depending on how many you’re serving (or how rough of a day you’ve had.)  Blend.  Pour over ice.  Serve.

You’ll never pay $4 at Starbucks again.

No, this is not a deal blog, but I just thought you might wanna know…

KEEN shoes are up to 60% off this weekend at 6pm.com.

I’m ordering these for my daughter. They’ll be perfect for preschool this fall.

As I was busily typing away yesterday morning, my son appeared at my arm and announced, entirely out of the blue:

“Mom.  I want a pet lizard.”

Huh? Yeah, okay…

WAHHH???  COME AGAIN?

“Yeah, I think a lizard would be a good pet for me,” he informed me.

Now, let me pause and set the scene.  I am not a pet person.  My husband is not a pet person.  When I was a little girl, I had gerbils.  And when we were a young married couple without kids, we had a cat.  He made me so ill that we had to give him away.  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, so I can only imagine the state I’ll be in when I send my kids off to college.  But I digress.

Since then I’ve happily joined the ranks of the pet-free.  I like having no fur to clean up.  I like having no litter box to scoop.  I like having no poop or puke to clean up aside from that which my generous children decide to share.  I like having nobody to find care for when I leave on vacation.  I like having no vet bills.  I like having no pets.

But the kids.

They would very much like pets.  They would like a dog, but they know THAT ain’t happening.  They would settle for gerbils, but I’m not even interested in gerbils.  I had them growing up.  Been there, done that.

We’ve done the hermit crab thing.  That didn’t go so well.

I could be persuaded to consider a fish.  But a lizard?  That’s a pet that was never on my radar.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about welcoming a reptile into our family, but I’m a sucker enough that my son easily talked me into a trip to the pet store to “check into it.”  After perusing the various and sundry cold-blooded creatures for sale, my son decided that the leopard spotted gecko was JUST the thing he was looking for.

I admit, compared to the other scaly creatures, he WAS rather cute.

I am happy to say that I did NOT come home with a lizard and a glass-walled home for him.

(Did you know that aquariums with the appropriate lamp and other reptile-friendly paraphernalia cost upwards of $150??)

(And did you also know that geckos eat LIVE CRICKETS?)

But we are “checking into it.”

I’ve done a bit of research, which basically means googling “gecko pets” and reading the first hit.  It seems that a gecko is a fairly good pet.  If you’re in the market for a pet.  Which I am not sure that I am.

A leopard gecko makes an excellent pet. They are small, have minimal care requirements, and can be left alone for severals days {SCORE!}. They are quiet, don’t smell {that’s positive, at least}, and don’t need attention. Leopard geckos are inexpensive and easily available from pet stores and breeders {but have you priced their habitats?} They do not require a large amount of space. They have a wide variety of color and pattern variations. Leopard geckos are the perfect lizard pet. [source]

The part about the crickets throws me a bit, I have to admit.

Crickets are a good source of food and nutrition in your leopard gecko’s diet. You can feed the crickets commercial cricket food and liquid or just use a piece of potato and some oats.

Now hold on just a minute.  I have to feed the gecko AND the crickets?  This is getting a wee bit out of hand.  Although my son SWEARS he will do EVERYTHING.  Yeah, riiiiiiiiiight.

It goes on…

Crickets are very resourceful and are sometimes difficult for the gecko to catch. If this is the case, you may have to remove the rear jumping legs of the cricket.

Did that just say REMOVE THE REAR JUMPING LEGS ?????

HOLD EVERYTHING.

I appeal to you, dear readers.  Have you ever had a lizard pet?  Would you recommend it?  What am I getting myself into?  Is a 10-year-old going to be able to care for it?  Because I can tell you right here and now.  I am NOT touching that thing.  OR its crickets.

My son has been told if he wants a gecko, he has to save up for it.  Admittedly, that was BEFORE I read the bit about the crickets.  That buys me some time, right?

Thoughts?  Advice?  Admonitions?  Valium?

Thanks, I knew I could count on you.

* * *

In other exciting news, and this has absolutely NOTHING to do with geckos or crickets.  (Or valium.)  We had some sort of tornado/straight wind thing come through our neighborhood last week and take out my precious crepe myrtle.  Yeah, that one.

So sad.

We’ve planted a crepe myrtle in each house that we’ve owned, and this one was my pride and joy.

It was always a willing subject for my amateur photography experiments.

And it also enabled me to sit on my front porch and read a book and hide from people walking by if I didn’t feel like being sociable.

We had a burial last night, and I said a few words.

But as my daughter so wisely reminded me as I mourned its loss, “Mom, things don’t matter.  Only people.”

And it is so.

* * *

Finally, I will leave you with this.  Tomorrow night I get to go to a BlogHerStyle event at the LOFT in Paoli, PA.  My good friend girlymama has organized an event for Philly mom bloggers to get an exclusive sneak peek of the LOFT’s fall line as well as style advice for the upcoming BlogHer conference.

Which means, Fashion Friday will now be Fashion Saturday: BlogHer Style.  Stay tuned!