I’ve been sitting here for the better part of a half hour trying to decide how to start this last post. It’s very hard to say goodbye to something you’ve cared for and nurtured for years, especially something that has brought such wonderful people into my life I never would have known had I not started this site in the first place.
Before you start hyperventilating and fanning yourselves, I want to reassure you I’m not retiring from blogging altogether. I am simply boarding the place up and moving on. I started this site six and a half years ago when I was pregnant and that little girl who was yet to be born is now reading books and getting her own food from the Chinese buffet, thank you very much. How the hell did THAT happen, I ask you?
That being said, since I decided to stop writing about Autumn, there’s been very little to bring me back to the blog I named after her. I also got so very busy at work doing, um, the job they pay me to do that I found very little time to sneak in the occasional blog post. Also, the business of blogging has changed so much since I first started writing online and a random lady in Michigan with nothing to offer but her wit and charm has to fight very hard to be heard amongst the brand ambassadors and social media gurus populating the web these days.
It seems “regular gal” is not what some consider a marketable attribute. Oh well.
So here’s what’s going to happen: I can’t deny this blog has been on life support for many months, unfortunately I did not sign the DNR until after the domain had been renewed for another year. So Autumn At Oak Hollow will live on for at least another 51 weeks. Those of you who self-host a blog know what a pain in the ass it is to keep it secure and updated (“Wordpress 3.4.5.6.7.1.1.1 update? Are you effing kidding me? I just updated last week!”), so at some point within the next few weeks I will be moving the entire site over to a WordPress-hosted site and point my domain there.
The move is completely self-serving because a) I’m lazy and don’t want to maintain the site anymore b) I’m a pack rat who can’t get rid of anything and c) I can’t remember anything and the blog is a fantastic point of reference for the past six years of my life. Some things I’ll never forget, but if I ever want to recall the exact month Molly buried the bagels in the couch, I only need to search for it on my blog.
Speaking of which, we had to put Molly down a couple of weeks ago. I know! I thought that dog would outlive us all, but she unfortunately developed a bad case of pancreatitis that she was unable to come back from. Nathan and I were in the room with her until the end. I was surprised at how much I cried over that dog considering the amount of grief she’d caused us over the years, but cry I did and mourned her over a very large pancake breakfast at Cracker Barrel afterwards.
Now I did mention I wasn’t quitting blogging altogether, but I have yet to hang my shingle anywhere else. I have two blogs in the works, one that will sit where this one used to at heathernoah.com (don’t look-there’s nothing there yet) and another unnamed site I hope to develop with a friend of mine.
Your guess is as good as mine as to when these sites will actually be rolled out. I’ve been talking about developing a new blog for well over a year now. My guess is they will happen sometime after we paint the kitchen and sometime before we get new carpet for Autumn’s room. Everything in my life seems to revolve around home improvement projects these days.
Anyway, if you are at all interested in following me on to the next chapter, I will be posting the links to the new sites on my Facebook page when they’re ready to go.
Thank you all so much for reading my personal, passionate, sarcastic and silly posts throughout the years. I enjoyed writing them for you.
Autumn At Oak Hollow 