I think I Have Email Notifications Available Now, But I Lost Barbie

WARNING! This is NOT one of the reviews I have promised in which I review books written by people who have parents who were A-list science fiction writers.

Concerning those two forthcoming reviews, just to pique your interest, one of the authors is a male, and his name starts with the letter M. The other author  is a female, and her first name ALSO starts with the letter M.

However, I only include that to demonstrate that in a universe full of random occurrences, you are much more likely to accumulate a random grab-bag like that, rather than win the lottery. They probably statistical events of about the same probability, but the outcomes are far different.

Based on what I know about lottery winners, it usually ruins their lives.
Based on what I know about the two books by the authors 'M,' it is quite likely that you will be stressed and blessed, and perhaps through the books, you or someone you love, may be started down the path to be set free from crippling trauma.

That is NOT the purpose of this blog post, however.

THE LAST NAKED BARBIE IS MISSING FROM HER POST! 11 months ago, I wrote a poignant, sweet memory-post about the aging of my children, entitled 'The Last Naked Barbie,'  which you may read here. My gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, and I, have been involved in raising girls (and, yes, boys, too) for some 40 years, more or less, and our youngest resident female is now an adorable young lady of 11 years old, ensconced in middle school, and so we have had to regretfully, AND gratefully, close the books on certain sweet childhood rituals.

One of those was the presence of a dozen or so naked baby dolls in the tub and on the bathroom floor. Without making a big deal out of it, Alicia gradually stopped needing a bucket of toys to take a bath. Slowly, perhaps in the middle of the night when we couldn't watch them go, they seemed to migrate from the floor of the bathroom to her closet, where they will wait until a little girl needs them again.

All except for one. The Last Naked Barbie, as I explained on my blog of December 31, 2016,

"lies on her side underneath the bookshelf in the bathroom, her head twisted at an angle that would be uncomfortable for a human."

And, as I also explained in that blog, if I had anything to do with it, she was going to stay there forever, so I could remember all the times when my little girls needed help getting the soap out of there hair, or forgot to bring either a towel or clean clothes with them, so they needed me to conduct a rescue mission, throwing pajamas through a tiny crack in the door without peeking; Or the many, many times, I stood my Beautiful Princess Bess, age 4, on the bathroom counter, with her waist length hair towel dried, and I used the hot air blow drier to make her hair fly up in all directions as she gazed into the mirror and we both laughed at how beautiful and silly she was.

BUT: as it turns out, I DON'T have anything to do with it. Which is to say, I might have had something to do with it, but not everything.

Because sometime in the past couple of weeks, the last naked Barbie has disappeared from the floor under the bookshelf in the parents' bathroom, where it has rested for some time in excess of a year.
No foul play is suspected. Alicia Ann has had a couple of different young ladies over for a sleepover, we FINALLY (after 11 years!) have a new grandDAUGHTER, the third to accompany the nine grandsons, and we have also had sleep-overs by some of our youngest grandsons. While they tend to prefer their own, well-chewed sleep toys, I believe I would not distort 4 1/2 year old Heath's position if I were to proclaim that 'a lovey is a lovey,' and it's entirely possible that The Last Naked Barbie got grabbed up to provide a sleep companion to Heath, Eliott, Trey, or the beautiful little girl, Nyle.

For a week or so, I've been hoping that she would re-appear, but that's not the case. We had 21 people at the house for  Thanksgiving, and 10 of them were children, and might have rescued her from her cramped viewing of bathroom wallpaper, and she is lovingly ensconced in a bed, drawer, or closet somewhere. When she shows up, I will then have to make the decision : do I return her under the bookshelf in the parents' bathroom; or, do I rely on something else to make me appreciative of the joys of parenting a small child, as well as the joys of parenting an adolescent?

That's not a trick question, by the way. Every age contains parenting challenges, and every age carries parenting joys that you can't get anywhere else. So, whatever decision I make, I will NOT cling to the memories of being a parent to a little girl and little boy, at the expense of the joys of being a parent to a young lady and a young man.

BUT THAT'S not the purpose of this post, either.

EMAIL NOTIFICATION: That's what. I recently discovered that I get daily email notifications for SOME FEW of my favored blogs, but not from others. To pick one of my favorites that I have to chase after, Peter S Grant's blog, "The Bayou Renaissance Man,"  is CERTAINLY something I'd like to read and feed on in the morning, BUT, I didn't know how to make that happen. As it happens, I discovered that blogs printed on the WordPress platform send me emails with each new post. Two examples of that are Mad Genius Club, and Cat Rotator's Quarterly. And, blogs printed on the Blogger/Blogspot platform, do NOT send me an email with every new post. That includes Peter's blog and MY blog, this one right here, Papa Pat Rambles.

With advice from several people, I THINK I found out how to change that. Effective immediately, IF IF HAVE UNDERSTOOD AND FOLLOWED DIRECTIONS, there will be a Gadget in the top right of my blog post which says: 'Follow By Email:'

I THINK! I did it. See the arrows? That's where you enter your email address.

I've only gotten this thing put together in the last 2 hours, which included coffee, water, yogurt, bagel, and cat, not to mention narcotics and amphetamines for that well-rounded experience, so I'm asking for a couple of you (or a lot of you) to serve as freshman psychology students, and apply for the experiment, by entering your email.
Promise: The ONLY reason I am doing this is so you get a notification in your email when I post something.
So, if you would, enter your email into the box, and hit submit. Tomorrow I will post something else on the blog, and if this works like it's supposed to, you will get an email to that effect.
If you agree to enter your email, would you let me know by sending me an email to that effect at papapatpatterson at gmail dot com? Or, if we are Facebook friends and you prefer, you can contact me that way.

And it might take a couple of attempts before it's right, but it LOOKS like it ought to work.

Peace be on your household.