The Weekend Eudemon
“You want a piece of me?” It seems everyone does.
My church held a living rosary last night. They wanted ten children from the parochial school to attend and, of course, only two volunteered, so I took over my four, leaving the three pre-schoolers with mom.
After that: Drive a stranded kid to her house, rush kids to the last home football game, settle down with sleeping Tess (six months) and challenging Meg (four). Tess wakes up at 8:30. I don't have the guns to pacify her, so I'm stuck with the fussy/crying baby for an hour.
Today won't be much better. Abbie's “away” soccer game at 2:00, Michael going to a friend's house at noon, Meg attending a birthday party at 2:00, Jack playing football at 4:30 (he has to be there at 3:30, even though they routinely start the games 30-45 minutes late). Marie will cover the soccer game. I'll cover the others with my bi-location powers. I normally use those powers to pull practical jokes, but they come in handy on weekends like this.
And come Monday, someone will ask why I didn't attend “X” on Friday night or “Y” on Saturday evening. “It was a lot of fun. You would've enjoyed it.” The community begins to think I'm a hermit. All I can tell 'em is, “I'm not exactly sitting around, watching Mannix re-runs.”
Things are going well at TDE. I've spent the last seven months concentrating on good content and publishing at other sites in order to drive traffic here. The results have been good, but not as good as I (perhaps immodestly) expected, and my results weren't as good as other blog sites that weren't very active. I then stumbled across a site that talked about blog marketing.
It turns out I hadn't been taking advantage of a lot of the technological blog-marketing toys. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been playing with these toys, and the results are ridiculously good.
In September, I averaged 400 daily “visitors” (a tricky term that I'll explain in a different posting). Very few, if any, of the new marketing toys were in place yet. This month, I'm averaging well over 600 visitors a day, with my first 1,000-day yesterday.
I use AWStats, which is supposed to be one of the most accurate site counters on the market. I have two versions of it, but the versions don't show the same stats. This is a concern, but my web administrator tells me to trust the higher stats since there are many ways that a counter can accidentally fail to track (“dump”) visits, but very few ways it can accidentally increase them.
Anyway, I appreciate your continuing patronage. As some of you know, I don't ask for PayPal donations. If you feel compelled to thank me, forward TDE's URL to friends and wink at a homely girl (a line from Mencken's epitaph). Before the end of the year, I'll accept ads (e-mail me if you're curious). But for now, this continues to be work of pure sado-masochism.
Malcolm's Messages (What's this?)
Chapter 4: Malcolm and the Children
It was the height of the growing time. Malcolm longed to be where the growing things grow, but he stayed in the Big City, for his hands were not yet clean. And he came to the lunch place every day at noontide and continued to speak to the assembled.
His fame spread beyond the Great Temple area and soon others besides the Temple Workers came: the manly men who wrestle with the ground, the gentle people without space, the domestic laborers with their children, servants of the people in their uniforms. The lunch place swelled. Even some of those who disdained Malcolm's words about the double agents came back.
The lunch place sparked with excitement every day as noontide approached. Then Malcolm would appear, and the people would grow silent, even the motor equines would cease their neighing; the lunch place would be still, except for the children, who shrieked and shook their arms when they saw Malcolm, for he loved them dearly and they knew it.
