comments!

This picture has nothing to do with the subject of this post. But it sure is a cute picture, isn't it?

 

There is a strange thing that happens in blog land. People write their hearts, their minds, their joys and sorrows and then they hit publish. And sometimes someone leaves a comment.

Oh a comment. A comment can sustain the blog author for weeks. It can get kind of quiet sometimes, posting pictures, writing stories, wondering if anyone out there is taking notice.

So when someone does...when someone says hello, I like this. Or, hello, your kid is cute. Or, hello, sometimes you're funny. Well, when this happens, somewhere out there a rainbow appears. A choir sings. A kitten purrs. A child laughs joyfully down a slide. (Aha! I worked the picture into my post. Brilliant!) And the blog author may just think to themselves weeks later, 'member when I got that comment in 2010. that was awesome.

So what I am about to tell you is terrible. Just terrible.

A while back I changed my settings for people to leave comments so that you wouldn't have to go through so many hoops just to leave a word or two. Mostly this was for my Aunt Louie who often tells me that my blog hates her. Well, she doesn't say that, but you can tell she feels dejected. So I took off all the safeguards. So it would be easier. As a result I get a lot of spam comments that blogger filters. They never go public, and mostly they are gibberish and go right in my gmail spam folder. But apparently it also means that the comments you have been leaving, the ones here, still on the blog, have been going into my spam folder in my email. This means nothing to you, and really isn't a huge deal. They still end up on my blog because blogger is smart like that. Except that it means I haven't seen the comments you've been leaving on this thing for months because I read all my comments in gmail... which has been marking them as spam. For months! Months! I just thought we all got real quiet.

Sometimes I'd check a post right on the blog, and then I could see them. And I'd respond. But just now I scrolled through and found a whole bunch of comments I never had read.

For shame. For shame.

So, blog readers. A couple things. Please comment! For the love, leave me some love. And second, I'm going to try to respond more. Blog books say this is key to good blogging etiquette. And thus far I've been a terrible host. Bad manners. Poor form. But I'm going to try to change all that and respond.

Deal? Deal.