The Beginning

 Yesterday, I participated in the Tuesday4 that was about reflections on blogging. One of the questions was how did you come up with the name. My very first blog post ten years ago was about the name, so I'm rerunning here to better answer the question. BTW, I had no idea what my first post was about until I looked it up.

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What's in a name?

I've been toying with writing a blog for a while now and decided it was time to put thoughts into actions. It all seemed so simple. Use one of the free blog sites and start writing. But wait, what was it going to be about and what would I call it? My kids advised me that I needed a subject or it would be nothing more than an online journal. Well, since I'm not that knowledgeable or passionate about any one subject, I decided that it would be personal reflections. My idea was to make comments about things I experience or see around me that other people may be able to relate to. Now what to name it. Not as easy as it would seem. With the millions of blogs out there, there's not much left to choose from.

My first idea was Observations of an everyday boring life. However, it was suggested that I don't need to tell people ahead of time that my life is often boring. Next I played with, Run of the mill, Matter of fact, and So on and so forth. All taken. Next was Watching paint Dry, but that was taken also with actual web cams set up to watch paint dry. How about Dull as Dishwater?  Maybe that was giving too much away ahead of time again. (BTW, the original phrase was supposedly, "Dull as Ditch Water.") 

I was going to have to get creative. The family started brainstorming. Running with safety scissors and Your guess is as good as mine. Taken. My personal favorite was one I thought up- Lend me your nose. A play on Lend me your ear but using nose indicating that you should Take time to stop and smell the roses. 

After several more hours of deep thought, I settled on Live and Learn-Toss and Turn. This title is supposed to indicate that no matter what happens to us, we can always learn from it and the unknown can still be a little scary and cause us to toss and turn. Or maybe the title just means, that I was really tired and the rhyming of the words seemed good enough. This morning my son asked me what name I came up with and after I told him, he replied, "Well, it's not as bad as I thought it would be." I don't think I will ever be able to live down, "Lend me your nose."

From the Files-My Name

 In the comments on my last post, Bless said she finally put two and two together and figured out my name was June. So I thought it was a good time to rerun a post from the files where I explain the names I use on my blog.

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Leave it to Beaver or the Family We're Based On

You may have noticed that my family has the names of Ward, June, Wally, and Theodore. Some of you may have thought that those were our real names. However, some of you may have realized that those are our aliases based on names from the TV show,  Leave It to Beaver. Leave It to Beaver was a situation comedy that aired from 1957 to 1963 and is still in reruns today. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_It_to_Beaver

The show revolved around the Cleaver Family--Ward and June, the parents, and Wally and Theodore, (also known as the Beaver), their sons. The premise of the show was that Beaver and Wally got themselves into scrapes that frustrated their parents but from which ultimately everyone learned a lesson.

When I chose these aliases for my blog world, I didn't think much about the significance except there were the right number and gender in the Cleaver family, and they were from a show that made me smile when I thought about it.

In this post I had planned to talk about the details of the Cleaver family and compare and contrast them with my family. However that's too much work, so I'm just going to tell you a couple of things I found interesting about the making of the show that resonates with me.

--The makers of the show wanted to get gentle laughs. If anything got a really big laugh, they changed the script to make it more of a chuckle or smile. While I love a good belly laugh, the gentle laugh fits with my basic philosophy of life: Everything in moderation.

--June often wore pearls and heels when she was cooking and cleaning around the house. This is often made fun of because it was so unrealistic. However once I heard an interview with the actress that played June, and she explained why those wardrobe choices were made. Apparently the hollow at the bottom of her neck looked strange on film, so they had her wear pearls to fix the problem. Also, as the actors grew that played Wally and Beaver, they wanted her to be taller than them to still look authoritative as a parent. Thus, they had her put on heels. While you'll never find me cooking and cleaning in either pearls or heals, this reminds me that snap judgments are often wrong. Many times you just don't know all of the facts.

--Leave it to Beaver was the first TV show in which the kids were the main focus and not the parents. I don't have anything meaningful to say about this except that I find it interesting.

Another time, I may go into individual episodes, but for now, you know where our blog names came from.

But Wait There's More:

 If you read here very often and you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that several other major and minor Leave It to Beaver characters show up in my posts.

Live and Learn-Toss and Turn: The beginning

It's been two years since I started to blog. Most of you (all of you) were not with me in the beginning, so I'm going to go back and look at a few things from then. Today is my very first post in which I talked about how I came up with the name for my blog.
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What's in a Name?

I've been toying with writing a blog for a while now and decided it was time to put thoughts into actions. It all seemed so simple. Use one of the free blog sites and start writing. But wait, what was it going to be about and what would I call it? My kids advised me that I needed a subject or it would be nothing more than an online journal. Well, since I'm not that knowledgeable or passionate about any one subject, I decided that it would be personal reflections. My idea was to make comments about things I experience or see around me that other people may be able to relate to. Now what to name it. Not as easy as it would seem. With the millions of blogs out there, there's not much left to choose from.
 
My first idea was Observations of an everyday boring life. However, it was suggested that I don't need to tell people ahead of time that my life is often boring. Next I played with, Run of the mill, Matter of fact, and So on and so forth. All taken. Next was Watching paint Dry, but that was taken also with actual web cams set up to watch paint dry. How about Dull as Dishwater?  Maybe that was giving too much away ahead of time again. (BTW, the original phrase was supposedly, "Dull as Ditch Water.") 
 
I was going to have to get creative. The family started brainstorming. Running with safety scissors and Your guess is as good as mine. Taken. My personal favorite was one I thought up- Lend me your nose. A play on Lend me your ear but using nose indicating that you should Take time to stop and smell the roses. 
 
After several more hours of deep thought, I settled on Live and Learn-Toss and Turn. This title is supposed to indicate that no matter what happens to us, we can always learn from it and the unknown can still be a little scary and cause us to toss and turn. Or maybe the title just means, that I was really tired and the rhyming of the words seemed good enough. This morning my son asked me what name I came up with and after I told him, he replied, "Well, it's not as bad as I thought it would be." I don't think I will ever be able to live down, "Lend me your nose."

What's in a name?

I've been toying with writing a blog for a while now and decided it was time to put thoughts into actions. It all seemed so simple. Use one of the free blog sites and start writing. But wait, what was it going to be about and what would I call it? My kids advised me that I needed a subject or it would be nothing more than an online journal. Well, since I'm not that knowledgeable or passionate about any one subject, I decided that it would be personal reflections. My idea was to make comments about things I experience or see around me that other people may be able to relate to. Now what to name it. Not as easy as it would seem. With the millions of blogs out there, there's not much left to choose from.

My first idea was Observations of an everyday boring life. However, it was suggested that I don't need to tell people ahead of time that my life is often boring. Next I played with, Run of the mill, Matter of fact, and So on and so forth. All taken. Next was Watching paint Dry, but that was taken also with actual web cams set up to watch paint dry. How about Dull as Dishwater?  Maybe that was giving too much away ahead of time again. (BTW, the original phrase was supposedly, "Dull as Ditch Water.") 

I was going to have to get creative. The family started brainstorming. Running with safety scissors and Your guess is as good as mine. Taken. My personal favorite was one I thought up- Lend me your nose. A play on Lend me your ear but using nose indicating that you should Take time to stop and smell the roses. 


After several more hours of deep thought, I settled on Live and Learn-Toss and Turn. This title is supposed to indicate that no matter what happens to us, we can always learn from it and the unknown can still be a little scary and cause us to toss and turn. Or maybe the title just means, that I was really tired and the rhyming of the words seemed good enough. This morning my son asked me what name I came up with and after I told him, he replied, "Well, it's not as bad as I thought it would be." I don't think I will ever be able to live down, "Lend me your nose."