One Lovely Blog Award

Posted on by under Blogging

one-lovely-blog-award-e1445237307741 (2)

I have fallen horribly behind on responding to a few blog awards I’ve been nominated for, and I apologize!  I enjoy writing the replies themselves.  The tricky part, as I’m sure most of you know, is finding people to nominate time after time.  Many of my blogger friends do not participate in these awards, and I have three more awards to nominate people for after this one. So I am going to cheat and not nominate quite so many people for each award as they list.   (Can you see me blushing and cringing at the idea of cheating? Ugh!  Don’t look!)

For this first one, the One Lovely Blog Award, I want to heartily thank J. A. Prentice for nominating me and for saying such nice things about my blog. Thank you Joshua! He is one of the fine people who post flash fiction and write about writing over at Living Authors Society, which I would definitely recommend you all go check out right now!

That said, here are the (drum roll, please) rules!

The Rules

  1. Thank the person who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
  2. List the rules and display the award.
  3. Add 7 facts about yourself.
  4. Nominate 10-15 (mumble, mumble, ahem) some number of bloggers for the award, and comment on one of their posts to let them know.

 

All righty then, on to those seven facts!

7 Facts

1. My middle name is Elizabeth but for some reason my summer camp nickname was “J.C.” and it stuck for a while during childhood. I honestly have no idea why. Whenever someone would ask me what the C stood for, I said, “For Elizabeth.”

2. I was born and raised in Michigan, deep in the rural Midwest.  As a result, I find it hard to be mean to folks even when they deserve it, and my answer to every crisis or happy event is to bring over a casserole. That’s why my people do.

3. I’m one of those people who liked Star Trek and Star Wars and Tolkien before they were popular (not that I begrudge my old favorites their new fans). I have not only read the Silmarillion, I took turns reading the whole thing out loud with my then-partner, followed by The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings books, complete with doing the voices. Hey, he knew the way to my heart.

4. My cat’s kidney disease means she has no appetite and needs to be hand fed 8-12 times a day, which she often resists. I stave off the frustration by making up new lyrics to songs to sing to her during feedings. For example: “Baby come back / any kind of fool could see / it’s your dinner and it’s just no good without you / Baby come back / you can blame it all on me / I was wrong, this is not your favorite food.” Or “I can’t make you eat this,” sung to the tune of Bonnie Raitt’s “I can’t make you love me.” Or “It’s dinnertime” sung to the theme song for Adventure Time. You get the idea.

5. I like to cook. A lot. I probably cook more as a single person than most of my partnered friends do. Although I mostly cook new dishes. So much so that there are fairly few dishes I’m reliably good at, because that requires making them more than twice.

6. Unlike many people, apparently, I honestly like turkey. An example that ties this to the previous fact: I spent last Thanksgiving with a friend’s family. Her turkey was delicious, making me even more disappointed that, having not cooked it myself, I had no leftovers. So once NaNoWriMo was done, I roasted a turkey. A fifteen-pound bird. Just for me. Well, not quite: at the last minute a friend came over to help me eat the first serving, so I made a huge pan of stuffing, gravy, homemade cranberry sauce, and garlic Brussels sprouts too. Then I got to make a huge series of follow-up dishes to use up the leftover ingredients, like turkey pot pie (with gravy as the sauce), turkey tetrazzini (with stuffing as the breading on top), turkey noodle soup, orecchiette with garlic Brussels sprouts and gravy sauce, turkey-cranberry quesadillas, Mexican turkey tortilla casserole, cranberry muffins, eggs baked in stuffing beds, and I think a couple others. It was so much fun and so ridiculously delicious that now that all the frozen leftovers are gone, I’m tempted to do it again…

7. I never thought I’d write a novel. Songs, yes. Poems, yes. Dissertation, yes. Novel, no. Last year at this time I was still resisting the fact that this “short story” I was working on was clearly going to be too long to even call a novella. Last October, I’d only barely heard of National Novel Writing Month, and never considered I’d do it. Yet decide to do it, I did: on October 30. A very pantsy move for such a committed plotter. And as I posted on this very page at the time, I made it!  Over 60,000 words by the end of the month. I was so proud of myself I even bought the t-shirt. Now, if only I can finish those last few chapters, and all those revisions. Whew.

 

Nominations

I’m happy to nominate these lovely blogs for the One Lovely Blog award. I think I’ve checked everyone’s blog to check for “award free” signs, but if I missed it and you don’t accept award nominations, that’s fine with me. Please just accept my congratulations and thanks for sharing your LOVELY blog with me!

  1. Millie Thom
  2. Ali at draliman 
  3. Nonnaci at Snapshot Vignettes
  4. Gahlearner at Flights of Fancy
  5. Sammi Cox at sammicoxwriter 
  6. Graham at grahamisjustmyname

I’m looking forward to learning seven new facts about you and your blogs!

 

 

17 thoughts on “One Lovely Blog Award”

    • I agree, Ali. With the usual format of my blog I don’t get much chance to do that, so these periodic awards are a little treat. And like I said, I’m behind on responding to these nominations, so there will be a few more in upcoming weeks….

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  4. Congrats, Joy, and thank you for nominating me. The more I read about you (this, and your about page), the more I find that you must be a lost twin of mine. Star Trek. Check. Tolkien. Check. D&D in a group, live, not digital. Check. Game master and writing your own adventures. Check. And so on… 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  6. Many congratulations on receiving this award – and many, many thanks for nominating me! This was definitely a ‘lovely’ award post.
    It’s great to read so much more about you! I love the facts you’ve given about yourself – and I was right when I guessed you’d write interesting facts/answers. I love the sense of humour, too. I now have images of you and your ex reading out loud for weeks on end – not to mention visions of you singing to your cat. I’m sorry to hear about her kidney disease, though. It must be difficult to cope with. Great post! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Thanks, Millie! It was a fun post to write. I’m normally a very social person, so there’s something a bit distancing for me about the format of this blog, where I’m only posting stories. Overall I still prefer that format, but a blog award once in a while is fun. And I’ve got a few more to do, so stay tuned for more (hopefully) interesting facts about me.

      And yes, Nyx’s kidney disease is a real bummer. But I was told last year at this time that she’d probably only have another few months to live. I felt very angry at fate about that, that this would happen when she was only 2 1/2 and I’d just barely gotten this little feral panicky shelter rescue socialized to live with a human. But a year of hand feeding and getting her weight back up and she’s doing relatively fine — jumping around like a kitten most days — so it’s all extra bonus lovey time from here on in. ❤

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

      • That is good news about your cat. Nyx is very young to have kidney disease, but if she’d been neglected and half-starved, I suppose that explains it. Glad to hear sh’e doing so well now – I’m a cat lover myself. Our last two both lived for 23 years!
        I enjoy doing these awards, too, but they can be time comsuming – especially when they ask for facts as well as answers to questions! But passing them on it’s such a nice way of recognising blogs you like and admire. Thank you again for the nomination! 😀

        Liked by 1 person

      • Wow, 23 years is a really long life for a cat! Nyx is very young for kidney disease — it took the vet a while to diagnose it, because it seemed so unlikely. But the ultrasound confirmed it. She didn’t seem to have it when I first adopted her, although she was small for her age; I had her for almost two years before the symptoms started. It still might have been something that happened to her when she was living on the streets as a kitten, or a genetic defect that didn’t get bad enough to be detected until later. Or she might have had an infection or eaten something poisonous, although I didn’t notice any signs of that. So we just don’t know.

        And yes, the awards can be time consuming! Which helps explain why I haven’t been doing as many flash fiction challenges lately. But fun, and as you say, a great way of recognizing great blogs — like yours!

        Like

    • Thanks Jenny, the post was fun to write! It’s nice to take a break from the stories and talk more personally to my blogging friends. And I wish my kitty felt the same — she seems to think this is very annoying, that I keep MAKING her eat a little more, and a little more after that, and yes just one more bite… when she doesn’t feel like it. “But mooooooom!” And you might not say I had patience if you heard me mouth off when she walks away after the first bite and won’t come back. Whew, rated R comments not suitable for the neighbor kids to hear!

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.