A million thanks

At an unknown hour on an unknown day in the last week, this little slice of literary heaven reached an amazing milestone.

Someone, either accidentally on purpose, visited TheLyonsDin.com and became its one millionth visitor. I wish I could say they were greeted with confetti and balloons but, alas, they were not. They either scrolled around and read a couple of blog posts about me, my daughter or my husband, or they said 'Oops!" and left. It is highly probable that they Googled 'big tits and mardi gras" and landed here. It happens more than you think.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that magical number -- 1,000,000. One million people somewhere in the world discovering my little blog. There is a little map on the bottom right of this page that shows where my visitors are from. I think it still works. For a while, I was very popular in Russia. I now know they were bots and were probably scraping my English content for nefarious purposes. 

I also want to state publicly that absolutely no money has been made from this blog. I had a few offers to put ads on my page, but none worth entertaining. Sadly, no big conglomerate has offered to buy my domain either -- not that I would want them to. I've seen the results.

I was encouraged to write a book after a posting about the week our daughter was born. I did, but it hasn't made much money either. 

You don't need to pay to read me or even subscribe. I let people on Facebook know when I've posted something new and, somehow, that works. And Google. 

So how did we get here? Well, before there was Facebook, there was America Online. And I, having just adopted the most precious baby girl in the world, needed a way to share things with my family, friends and a host of other women who had gone or were still going through the difficult infertility journey. I posted a few pictures and cute quotes on my AOL Hometown.

Then, one day, AOL decided it didn't want to be in the blogging business and moved us all over to Blog Spot. That eventually was bought by Google and became Blogger.

And a little blog was born.The Lyons Din. A din is a loud noise. A co-worker of mine said if I ever had a column in the newspaper we worked for, I should call it that. Instead, I used it here.

I started slow, writing small -- what today might be called a Facebook post -- about Lora, The Coach, weird or funny things that happened, a fun link here or there.

That was 2006.

Then in 2010, the Men in Ties decided to bench me. Moved me from fulltime female sports writer to female clerk who also writes about crime in a Louisiana parish where the crime rate is lower than the current president's approval rating. My creative side was stifled. I needed an outlet. I had The Lyons Din.

Then, when I was laid off in 2012, it became my solace. You know 2011 was a bad year because I wrote more than 100 posts.

In all, I've written 374 (now 375) posts. Posts about my life, my jobs, my lack of jobs, my search for jobs, my daughter, my husband, my stepchildren, our crazy blended family, our dogs, our mamas, life, death and baseball. It's certainly more than a million words. I guess I've had a million ideas.

I wrote one about Mardi Gras which, to this day is the most seen and read, with more than 37,000 views.

The one about rescuing my friends from the Spillway after a tornado interrupted the Warrior Dash reached 26,000.

The one about the first fight with my mother-in-law after she moved in and I became her full time caretaker got 8,600.

 I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about web analytics. I don't know exactly how to read all the graphs that show peak traffic or how to maximize it to my benefit.  I'm just a blogger. A writer who has to write. Or die. 

Some would call me a "mom blogger." 

Well, I tried to be. I tried to model The Bloggess, Scary Mommy, Hot Mess Mom and others. Scary Mommy sold her blog to a conglomerate and now is battling brain cancer. A couple have migrated to Facebook. A bunch of them just quit.

I'm still hanging on. 

People say people don't read blogs anymore. Maybe I'm proving them wrong. I hope you keep visiting once in a while.

Thank you all! I wish I could give you all cake!

Lo