Grandma's Briefs named top site for grandparents by GRAND Magazine

Great news: Grandma's Briefs has been named one of 11 top websites for grandparents in GRAND Magazine's 2015 Top Blogs/Websites Awards!

I'm honored and humbled to be included in the same category as many of the grandparent bloggers and websites I've adored for years and hoped to emulate—as a grandparent and as a provider of content highlighting the diversity and vibrancy of today's grandparents.

Congratulations to all my fellow grandparent writers, bloggers, and website publishers named in the article, which you can find here.

Though Grandma's Briefs won the designation, you—the Grandma's Briefs readers—reap the reward by way of a free subscription to GRAND Magazine (a $19.95 value)!

How to get your free subscription to GRAND Magazine: Simply click on this link to sign up for your free 12-month subscription. I look forward to reading it along with you, hearing your thoughts on the grandparenting features we both will learn from, be inspired by.

A sincere thanks to the editors of GRAND Magazine for the honor and the gift. Even bigger thanks go out to all of you—those who visit my site, read my ramblings, comment on my musings.

Thank you for making Grandma's Briefs part of your grandparent experience!

Life is GRAND

You may have noticed the header I've posted above for the past few days noting my good news. If you did notice that header (which no longer touts my good news) you will already know most of what I'm about to tell you.

The good news is ...

Grandma's Briefs was named one of the Top 12 GRANDparent Blogs in GRAND Magazine's Best of the Web 2010!

I'm honored to be included among some of the sweetest, brightest, most interesting and talented grandmas in the blogosphere. I'm even more honored that six of the Top 12 are grandmas I've featured as Grilled Grandmas right here on Grandma's Briefs! (Heads up: I hope to soon grill those in the Top 12 that haven't yet been subjected to my grilling.)

But the badges and glories go not only to me. (And this is the part you don't know about, even if you did read the header I ran for the past few days.) For all my readers, I have, courtesy of GRAND Magazine in recognition of my fancy pants designation, a one-year complimentary subscription to GRAND Magazine! That's 12 issues -- a $19.95 value -- for FREE just because you read this little blog o' mine. How to claim it? Well, all you gotta do is click right here: http://bit.ly/GRANDMAG.

Before you click away, though, I have one more thing to say: I'm very honored to have been named one of GRAND Magazine's Top 12. But I'm even more honored that each and every one of you come back here again and again to read, comment, and become part of my home on the Internet. Without you, there certainly would not be a Grandma's Briefs. So thank you!

Now go get your free subscription!

An award? For me?

It's award season here in the blogosphere, or so it seems, with all the warm fuzzies packed in cute little boxes being traded between bloggers here and there. Or maybe it's always award season and I'm just now noticing.

Either way, I'm the lucky recipient of another award, this one from my Canadian friend Michele at Finding Trinity. Check out her blog. She's super kind, slightly kooky and one of the nicest people I've met through blogging. Plus, she's got some mysterious secret I've yet to hear the whole story on, related to spending a day with Brad Pitt. Maybe she'll share with all of us!

The award from Michele is the Honest Scrap Award. It looks like this:

And it comes with these rules I must follow in order to be a worthy recipient:

1) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content
and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.
2) Tell those 7 people they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and
inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.
3) Share "10 Honest Things" about myself.

I'll start with the 10 Honest Things about myself. Please note that despite blabbing all over this blog about this and that, I'm not much into the self-revelation movement. Ask Jim ... he says that after nearly 30 years together, he still doesn't really know me. (Must be the protective shell of the Cancer.)

But here goes ... (honest to God, this is actually making it slightly difficult for me to breathe, I'm so not into sharing truths about myself!):

10 Honest Things About Myself

1. I drool when I sleep. When I was a pre-teen, I asked my mom what I'm supposed to do if I still drool once I get married. "You won't be drooling by the time you're that age," she told me, in a tone that made drooling as an adult sound like the silliest thing in the world. Welp, Mom, I still drool. But Jim loves me anyway.

2. Sometimes when I'm reading a book that has lost my attention but I feel obligated to finish, I scan-read through big chunks of it.

3. I never wanted sons. Fortunately, I had all daughters. I would have made a wimp out of a boy, with my overprotective inclinations. The girls fought back and they finally (now that they're adults, really) have come to accept that they need to make a lot of phone calls to me to assure me that they're okay. A male would be a wuss if he were to call his mother so much, and I didn't want to be responsible for that. (Funny thing is, I find little boys -- especially Bubby -- to be the most adorable kiddos!)

4. I do shots daily ... I can't get through the day without them. Okay, they're the kind you inject not slam and they're of copaxone for my MS not Jameson just for the hell of it.

5. I love the way Kevin Martin of Candlebox sings the eff word. I don't say the eff word and I sometimes even cringe when certain people say it or it's said in business situations. But Kevin pulls it off in a way that I can't even describe why I find it appealing. I'm not crazy. Jim understands ... and agrees.

6. I'm a sweepstaker. I once won a year's worth of pasta and sauce. Luckily it was in the form of coupons for the goods, not cases I had to store in the pantry.

7. I'm pretty sure I'm going to die in a car accident, which Jim and the girls don't take seriously enough so they have a little trouble (okay, sometimes a LOT of trouble) forgiving the way I grab door handles and slam imaginary brakes when anyone other than myself is driving.

8. I don't post a photo of myself on my blog because I honestly get tired of people telling me I don't look old enough to have adult daughters much less a grandchild. I worked hard parenting three daughters to adulthood (which can be hell at times, believe me!) and I earned the title of Grandma by raising smart, kind and beautiful kids who have smart, beautiful and kind kids of their own. I don't like that looking younger (thanks to alphahydroxy and Clairol!) takes away some of my grandma cred.

9. When I was laid off, I kept two of the books that I had in my office that were sent to me for review, not for stealing. But how could I resist keeping "Bunny Suicides" and "The Gilded Tongue: Overly Eloquent Words for Everyday Things"?

10. I journaled regularly from junior high up until about four years ago. I put all my journals in a big luggage-type box and attached a lock so no one could sneak into my thoughts (again). I lost the key soon after ... and don't really want to break the box to get at the journals. In a way, I think it's a sign that all those old thoughts (some not so nice) should stay locked away.

Shew ... I did it!!

Now for the other part of the rules -- passing along the Honest Scrap Award to seven others. Here are the blogs to which I bestow it. Please visit them all; they're all nice people who deserve a click or two.

The first couple of blogs are written by fellow grandmas, the type of grandma I feel like I should be: Grandma Lizzie's House, Grandma Ideas and Grandma Nina. They all seem so sweet and kind and what every kid thinks of when they hear the word grandma.

Then there's The Sharon Blog. Sharon's the kind of grandma I really aspire to be. She's kind and thoughtful and loves her grandkids and her kids and her husband and does all the things good grandmas do. But she also jumps out of airplanes and pole dances. That's the inner grandma I'm itching to release.

That's it for the grandmas.

Next up is Mrs. Blogalot. She's always honest, always hilarious. I love reading her stuff and you will, too. One of the coolest things about her is that she also has a site called Grandma's Underwear! How close to Grandma's Briefs can you get! I love her just for that.

Another spot I love to lurk and read is Pajamas and Coffee. How can you resist a tagline like "Where mediocrity kicks perfection's ass"?

Last but not least is a joint award that goes out to my real-world friends who convinced me to blog in the first place. They may not be into awards but they get this anyway (and they have to follow the rules, even if they don't post the award on their sites!). First is Jackadillo Princess, where the monthly letters to Kaylee make my heart sing. Then there's Won't You Be My Cubemate by a friend who continually surprises me because I never thought I would like so much someone who is so different from me (I love ya, Kate!). And there's Rambling Pam, who visits my site every single day and comments and enters the Friday Haiku Contest! Plus, her sweet-yet-snarky posts are always fun to read.

There ya have it. And yeah, I'm later than usual in posting this, but repaying an award takes a lot of time and effort!

Kind stranger

A few days ago, I received a kind e-mail from a stranger. Well, she wasn't a complete stranger, as she had commented on one of my posts. But it surprised me just the same to get an actual e-mail from someone I didn't know rather than just a notification that I had a comment to approve.

This is what her e-mail said:

Dear Lisa,
I recently discovered your blog and have thoroughly enjoyed reading through your recent and not so recent posts. You are funny, witty, charming, and obviously have a huge heart!

I decided to give you this One Lovely Blog award for your delightful blog, Grandma's Briefs. I hope you will accept it.
The rules of this award are as follows:


Rules of the Award:

Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of
the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link.
Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you have newly discovered.
Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been
chosen for this award.

I wish you the best and look forward to reading more from you!

Best,
Jacque

As I've not been a blogger very long, I didn't know that bestowing awards upon fellow bloggers was a common practice. I felt pretty darn special getting the award from Jacque and e-mailed her back to let her know.

I've posted the award to the right, as the "rules" state recipients are supposed to do. I've included the link to Jacque's blog, My BIGlittle World -- which I encourage you to check out. I don't know much about Jacque because she has nothing on her "About" page, but whoever she is, her words make my heart swell.

The second part of the rules is a little more difficult for me to comply with. Recipients are supposed to pass the One Lovely Blog award along to exceptional, newly discovered blogs. I have to admit, I'm not much of a blog reader. I read the blogs of my friends plus a few others (thanks to RSS!), but I've always got a to-do list with too few things crossed off so I spend precious little time in front of the computer reading the daily or close-to-daily words of others.

But now I'm on a mission. I feel obligated to share the warm fuzzy that Jacque shared with me. It'll take me a long time to find 15 blogs that I don't close after reading just the first post or two; there's a lot of really mundane blogging going on out there. Maybe having been an editor, my standards are set too high. Or maybe I just get bored too easily.

I have found three pretty good ones so far, though. I've posted them below and hope you'll give them a visit. I've yet to e-mail each blogger with their award, but I hope it makes them smile as Jacque's did me.

Thanks, Jacque.

Newly discovered blogs I've subscribed to or bookmarked:

No Telling

lining up my words

The Sharon Blog -- Grandma knows best. Really.