Guess What I Won!??!

​So I was nominated for a blogging award! (But don’t get too excited because it’s not that kind of award – no money, no fame, no limo ride or red carpet.)

The Liebster Award (and I have yet to get to the bottom of how it got its name) is basically a chainletter for bloggers.

Now, I’m gonna confess right here that I’m that person who never holds up her end of the deal on chain letters. Thankfully, their popularity has waned, but even in its hay day, I was a nonparticipant.

Some of the chain letters would say, “choose the five people you think are most likely to do X…” and for some crazy reason a perfectly reasonable friend of mine would think I was one of those five people. But I never added my recipe, sent the dollar, answered the question, etc., etc., etc. I hit delete (or in the dinosaur days – the recycling basket) and hoped the friend would never mention the letter. Sometimes I even avoided said friend for a while, just to be sure.

So what happens now with this award and why, pray tell, am I bothering with the requirements?

Here’s what I (and any of you poor schmucks I nominate) have to do:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and link to their blog in your post.
2. Copy and paste the Liebster Award badge into the post.
3. Answer the ten questions you were given when you were nominated.
4. List ten questions you want your nominees (suckers) to answer.
5. Nominate ten more newbie (relative term) bloggers. Inform them by commenting on their blog with the news that they’ve just been nominated and there’s no escape. Be sure to link to your Liebster award post.

But, will I do this? And why would I do this?

I suppose I’m doing this already, right? Gone this far, no turning back and such.

Basically, I’m only doing this to be polite. I don’t know the blogger who nominated me, but she’s new at this and I looked at her new blog and, well, she’s real. She’s an honest to goodness nice person and pretty good writer. And she has three kids. (I have three kids, so that makes her one of us moms who are outnumbered and overwhelmed more than we are not.) Elaine’s blog is called ThreePlusOneEqualsFive. It’s charming and funny and well done and it has nothing to do with math. Check it out.

Now, you have two options. One is to stop reading because now I’m going to attempt to follow through on my obligations – answer the questions, nominate the bloggers, assign them questions. You don’t have to get involved. You’re free to go.

Your second option is to keep reading this terribly long post and I’ll try to make it interesting.

So first off, thanks Elaine! (I think)

Ten Questions for me from Elaine:

1. Who/what gave you the nudge towards starting the blog?

 
I have a bit of a blogging fetish. While, this is a new blog for me, I’ve been at it for nearly a decade with Kid Friendly Organic Life which is in its twilight years and only gets occasional posts. Next, I started The Mama Load as a place to put my parenting essays because I’m so bad at backing up my files. (Really!) Another Good Dog is my most popular blog because, well, people like dogs more than organic food or children. I write that one to highlight the plight of so many dogs in the rescue system who need homes. And then there’s this blog, My Life in Paragraphs, which is my newest. This one got started because now that I’m a famous author (humor me), I needed a place to write about writing and drum up business, but mostly because of the aforementioned blogging fetish.

 2. Who is your favorite celebrity to follow on twitter and why? 

Twitter is my new guilty pleasure. I’m spending untold hours there. My favorite celebrity to follow is Anne Lamott because she is so crazy funny and poignant and makes me wish I’d written whatever she writes. Anne is my hero.

 3. What was the last thing you purchased outside of groceries? 

Chicken feed. True.

 4. How do you get rid of stress? 

I have many remedies. Being on this planet for almost (gasp) fifty years, raising three crazy-smart-creative-conniving kids, and trying to make it as a novelist, requires this. I run when possible, drink too much wine too often, take long baths (and fall asleep in the tub, hopefully this won’t be how I die), but mostly I write. And write. And write.

 5. What is your favorite quote? 

This one is hard. I’m a quote collecting person. Hmmm… I could easily waste WAY too much time on this one. Instead, I’ll go with the one in my email signature –
"The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that's wrong with the world."- Paul Farmer

 6. What is your earliest memory? 

I hate this question. I have so very few memories of my childhood. I don’t know what this is. I didn’t have a particularly difficult or traumatic childhood. I blame it on my brain pruning too many memories. When I think really hard about it, I do remember being at the ocean and being knocked down by a wave and the water covering my head. I thought I was going to die and then my dad scooped me up and laughed. I’m not sure why that one sticks in my memory but maybe it was my first near-death experience. So I guess I owe my dad a thank you for saving my life. Thanks, Dad.

 7. If you could rewind the last 24 hours is there anything you would change and why? 

I don’t think there’s anything I would change. Except maybe I wouldn’t have eaten that second chocolate chip cookie last night while watching Madam Secretary. I had no red wine, so there really wasn’t any point.

 8. You wake up, the sun is shining, you have no responsibilities for the day – what do you do? 

Oh boy, I might make a few enemies here.
 
In less than two weeks, I will be living this fantasy question! My husband and I are spending 7 days on Grand Cayman Island with my little brother and his beautiful wife to celebrate our landmark birthdays (this gets us out of throwing surprise parties for each other). So, my plan for these responsibility-free days is to get up, go for a run, snorkel RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY CONDO, lounge on the beach or visit some awesome spot on the island, read too many books, and then drink too many rum drinks and maybe do a little dancing and lots of laughing. Oh, and there will be no children, dogs, chickens, or horses to feed! I do plan to post pictures on Facebook while I’m there because for WAY too many years, I’ve had to endure the pictures other people post of their winter vacations while I was stuck breaking ice out of buckets and falling on my ass on the driveway. Like my Facebook writer page if you want to sign up for this torture.

 9. What do you love most about where you live? 

The lack of people. It’s pretty rural where we are and I like that. I also like the fall. That’s about it. I’m not planning on staying here forever.

 10. Do you have a nickname and how did you get it? 
​
I don’t have many nicknames. When I was in high school, a few people called me “Face” or “CaraFace” because my name means “face” in Spanish and we all took Spanish 1 our first year and it was in the vocabulary list that first week. I wish we’d taken Italian because then they’d all call me “Dear,” or Irish, because then they’d all call me, “Friend.” In elementary school, I also got, “Carrot Head” and “Freckle Face” because kids were much less sensitive back in the day. I’ve reverted back to my childhood name, Cara Sue as my pen name because I have no nickname and it seems much more interesting than Cara.

Okay so that was super fun. For me. Now it’s time to pick out the next bunch of suckers, er, Liebster Award Winners!

1. Funny Is Family Okay, so this isn’t a newbie blog, but Amy’s got some great recipes and funny posts. Worth taking a look.
2. Baron D Hall This is a new friend on twitter - an adorable orthodontist who tweets the word-of-the-day and writes!)  
3. JulieMMulligan  Julie’s a mom of three kids who is following her passion to be a writer!
4. MFKaelin  Melissa has quite the story and quite the talent. Check her out.
5. Karolyn Sherwood Karolyn is one of my favorite writing peeps, plus she’s an AMAZING book reviewer and a beautiful, brilliant, soon-to-be best-selling novelist. (She probably won’t be so thrilled that I’m nominating her and she isn’t a newbie blogger, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to spread the misery, and find out more of what’s happening in her world. Here’s hoping she takes the bait.)
6. Seeking Autumn – I discovered Autumn via twitter and think she is a beautiful soul and a gifted writer.
7. Dog Mom Days I’m adding this one in there because it’s kind of newish, plus it’s another dog blogger, so you know, tossing her a bone. (badubump!) And well, Amanda’s adorable (and newly engaged!).
8. Jena Books Jena is another friend on twitter and I picked her blog/website because she’s such a positive, happy, encouraging soul and I want to know more about her.
9. Patricia Flanigan I’ve been following this blog for quite a while. It’s almost always simply a beautiful photograph, so I know nearly nothing about Patricia. Perhaps this nomination will change that!
10. Silverlining This is a really special blog. It belongs to one of my besties and tells the story of her amazing mother’s courageous battle with cancer and Lisa’s quest to always find a silverlining. It’s beautifully written and will make you cry (you’ve been warned). I’m only giving Lisa this award because I want to force her to post something since so many of us love her writing.

 
Okay nominees! Here’s your questions:

1. Name three things you would buy if you had won the latest Powerball lottery that went to 1.5 billion?
2. Which Winnie-the-Pooh character are you?
3. Why do you blog?
4. What’s the best compliment someone can give your blog?
5. What was the last book you read/do you recommend it?
6. Are you a dog or cat person and why?
7. What’s your latest writing project beyond the blog?
8. Who would you most like to interview and blog about (besides me)?
9. What cool button do you wish your blog had? (I wish I had a button that smiled and winked at readers randomly or maybe one that readers could click on to leave me cash tips.)
10. What do you eat/serve for dinner WAY more often than you should?

Okay, that’s it. Done. I’d like to thank the academy, Elaine, and all my adoring fans for this wonderful award. I think.

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