I've been really lucky with
my blog. My four best friends here in town - my little mama group that holds my chin up out of the water somedays - all found me through my blog,and made the jump into my real life.
I have been blogging for 10 years now (7 at LJ and 3 on the trivial blog) and sometimes it feels like absolute drivel to write out, but then i go back and read it years later and am amazed that
that was my life. Just the every day details that you forget are pretty amazing. Anymore it is a sort of digital babybook, recording the mundane things about my kids' childhoods that i hope they will appreciate later (I loved hearing stories about when i was a baby). So my advice is just to write, even when it feels inane.
What you DON'T want to do is start thinking about an audience, or readers, or comments or hits. I guess if you want a 'promotion blog' that is a different story, but if you want a place to be honest with yourself, turn off the 'stats' tab. It can be A) really discouraging not to have readers at first, and B) really scary when you realize 200 people are reading it daily but only 5 are commenting, so WHO ELSE is out there?! I kind of wish i had had the common sense to keep our names/city out of it, BUT, then again, I wouldn't have my little circle of friends, so... I don't know.
Anyway, grandparents: My mom died when i was 18, and would have been an awesome grandma. She lived apart from us for the last few years of her life (ugly divorce/custody issues/dad had more money in the bank) but was constantly sending us little packages, letters, calling, etc. I was a snotty teenager, so i took it for granted, but I know she would have been the same way with my kids, even if she still lived far away (she used to joke that she was just waiting for one of us to have kids so she's have an excuse to move down the block). Mourning that relationship is hard.
My dad is.. my dad. We have a tense relationship, and I think if i were able to let the past be the past he'd be more of a part of my kids' life, but I'm just not there yet. He doesn't reach out to us, but is affectionate when i do put forward the effort to reach out to him, so I don't know. He lives on CO, so it's not like we run into each other in the supermarket, so it's easy to just let it be. Maybe someday I'll grow up enough to deal with it all.
DH's parents are great, though they are in the middle of a divorce and it makes things weird. They both live here in town, and having them here has been one of our reasons for staying here despite better job opportunities in major metro areas, but it sucks not being able to invite them both to a potluck in our backyard. They are wonderful with the kids though, so we are really lucky there.
Today kind of sucks. I met up with friends at the park this morning and I'm still in a funk. We're trying to have a garage sale this weekend, and I think going through boxes is making me anxious - I am a hoarder by nature, but try to ascribe to a simplistic life, so it's a constant battle, and not one I feel up to today. *sigh*