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Dear Friends and Readers,

Here's hoping this day is treating you especially superfantastic and you're having a good hair day, you found five bucks in your pocket you forgot about and you did that cool look you give to the mirror when you know you're looking cute (oh come on, you know you do it too).  Why?  Because you're my interwebs friend and we spend a couple of minutes together a few times a week and I want you to know that I appreciate you coming here.  You could be off reading the news (bor-ring, kidding, y'all know I'm a news junkie) or looking at lolcats  (love me some lolcats), but you're here and that's great. 

So, why am I all mushy and thankful?  Because it's a special post day in The Kerry Blog world.   I suddenly feel the urge to write "tonight on a very special Blossom."  Girls my age will get that.  Anyway, this post makes 350 posts on The Kerry Blog, Scraps & Lagniappe.  That number comes from the WordPress entries I migrated over to Typepad, combined with the Typepad posts.  That's not counting the first two versions of the blog (I'll go into that shortly).  Y'all know I can't do math, Typepad shows how many posts there are on the dashboard, I didn't count anything, don't worry — my head isn't going to explode. 

35o. 

That's a lot of words, pictures, random musings, lists, rants, music, letters, videos, and a whole lot of TMI.  I'm not fond of the acronym TMI.  I tend not to like anything in all caps, plus it makes me think I'm trying to spell Tim, but I got dyslexic for a second.  I'm not dyslexic, but my brain is faster than my typing (and I type pretty fast), which explains all the mistakes and ommitted words you've seen in this blog.  ADHD is something else, obviously I can't stay with one thought for more than two sentences.  See, I did it again.  Back to the subject of too much information — in "real life" I'm not one to over share, save for a few close friends and the hubs, but for some reason on the blog, I tell you people semi-personal things that in a day or so after I write, I've forgotten about.  Then someone stops me in Target and says "that was funny about your bra sticking up past your shirt."  And I'm all, "yeah, that was funny,"  trying to think of why this person knows about my bra issues (of which there are many) and wondering if I have multiple personalities, one being a stripper.  Then as I walk away, I realize it's from the blog.  I'm guessing this kind of thing doesn't happen to most of you. 

The funny thing about this blogging thing is you may start out blogging about one thing, and end up with something very different. 

I started my first blog on Homestead back in in 2002 when the hubs' job brought us to Ft. McMurray, Alberta, Canada as a way to easily have one place for our family back in Louisiana to see what we were up to, pictures of Molly (and later, Katie), pretty normal mom stuff.  In October of 2004, I found myself bored.  We'd moved to Mandeville, where the hubs grew up, and his job once again sent him out of the country.  This time it was Afghanistan.  It was the first time our little fam was living apart and I found myself pretty depressed and emotional, which wasn't fun.  I'd joined the MOPS group at our church and started scrapbooking again with some friends I'd made in MOPS, but I was missing the hubs terribly.  Then two weeks after he'd left for the Middle East, I started thinking maybe I wasn't just a little emotional and lo and behold, the EPT test didn't lie.  I was put on light bedrest and grew very addicted to the computer, since I couldn't do many of the things I was used to doing, and so, being bored out of my mind, I started a blog on Blogspot.  It was a very family-oriented blog, lots of pics of the kids, a few funny stories, and for the most part, short entries, nothing big.  The pic is from the era of the Blogspot blog taken at the Audubon Aquarium.  Molly's running out of frame and Katie is attached to my hip.  I was rockin' the twinsets as you can see (y'all know I don't post many pics of myself — goodness, and full length at that, so enjoy).

As moms do, I got busy with the things of life, neglected my blog and pretty much abandoned it.  When I attempted to start blogging again, I found the Blogger platform a little limiting (this was two years ago before the new Blogger rolled out) and switched to WordPress, deciding I would focus on having a scrapbooking blog.  Scrap & Lagniappe was born.  The name meaning it would be scrapbooking and a little something extra. That lasted a whole 8 posts before I read about a woman who was suing Victoria Secret because a rhinestone or something popped off her thong and hit her in the eye — this was clearly something I needed to contribute my thoughts to.  That was the day I found my blogger voice, so to speak.  Sure, it was to expose the tackiness/ridiculous in the world (and make fun of it mercilessly), but someone had to do it.  Occasionally I post scrapbook layouts, but it turned out this blog became more about the lagniappe.  And that's fine with me. 

Apparently it's fine with you too, because I have more readers than ever.  Last week's Grey's Anatomy Finale post was a record night, with over 870 hits in two hours — that's something I never expected when I started this little blog.  And it's still my little blog.  As you may have noticed, there is no sponsor of this blog, no advertising, no PayPal tip jar — this is my outlet for sharing (and over-sharing) part of my day with you.  Many of you are friends from childhood, high school, college, and so on.  I think most of the family stopped reading long ago (irony, man).  Many of you are friends of friends.  Many of you I've never met, will probably never meet, and that's okay, I appreciate you stopping by just as much as my bestest friends.  What's still not okay with me is that the comments aren't working, but I've gone on about that enough in other posts, I suppose. 

I thought that since this is a post about you, I'd share some things I find interesting about you.  This week there have been as many of you in Melbourne, Australia reading as in Shreveport/Bossier, LA where I grew up.  You have no idea how much that makes me laugh.  The hometown is almost getting beat by the Aussies.  Somehow, I always knew I'd be big in Australia (that's a joke, yo).   I've been visited this week by people all over the interwebs: from Modena, Italy to Mountain View, CA from Tokyo to Murfreesboro, TN and everywhere in between. 

This week's top keyword searches that brought some of you to this blog were:

Brandon Flowers INXS
TJ Maxx co
mmercial redhead
Skymall happy feet
why does hank williams jr always wear sunglasses (yes, I mentioned this once)
vampire scraps (I don't even understand that one)
"i miss you i miss you i miss you" 80's song (that would be "Cut Here" by the Cure)
what not to wear dr appointment
Anna Bess Simmons (shout out to AB!  woot-woot)
and
sky scrap for ceiling (I don't get that one either)

So, that's the ins and outs of The Kerry Blog.  That's the past and the present.  So, what's for the future?  Your guess is as good as mine as life goes on this long and winding road.  I can tell you that as long as wacky things happen to me, I'll write about them; and as long as there are wacky things happening in the world, I'll write about those too.  After all, someone has to be here to tell you about her crush on Anderson Cooper and the stuff that passes for news.  Someone has to ask the hard questions and live-blog award shows.  Someone has to tell you what tunes you need on Tuesdays and give you a Sunday rewind to the 80's.  But, for the immediate future, here's a heads up: the blog will get a complete make-over at the end of June.  That's right, people, I'm taking it bigtime.  Or something like that, since I've commissioned a real blog designer to do it.  And in July, the month of my birth, I'm predicting high anxiety as I turn the numero 35.  I am not happy about this, because I don't feel 35, whatever that feels like, and I'm pretty sure that's officially thirtysomething.  Last year on my birthday, I wrote the 34 things I know, this year it will be 35 things.  I'm hoping I've learned a few things so I'll have something to write about, 'cause at this moment, I got nothing. 

Once again, thank you for reading.  I'll see you back here tomorrow or the day after with something new.  Be good. 

xxxooo,
Kerry