Comments (please read this post)

Ah, remember the good old days? When I used to respond to most of the comments left on my blog?

That was cool.

Here's the thing, though. My name is Beth. And I'm a recovering Internetaholic.

Really, I was just online far too much, and recently I've cut back. It's been a good thing, a healthy thing. Now I have time to feed and bathe my children. (Okay, I was doing that before, but I am finding I have more peace when I'm not online so much.)

So I haven't been responding that often. I miss it. The few of you who came back and checked for responses probably miss it too.

But that's part of the problem--"the few of you." I'm guessing most of you don't come back to read comments after you so kindly post your own. (I usually don't, on other blogs!) So it's been all too tempting for me to slack off in responding to comments, knowing many of my responses are probably not being read.

But Cate over at Show My Face has started responding to comments in a different way. I think Cate's awesome, and so of course I am going to steal her idea. (I'm also going to get two cats named Rusty and Tonya--think she'll mind? Think my cat allergies will mind?)

Here's what Cate does--she responds to comments via email. That way you actually see her responses. I'm not going to respond to every comment, because I just can't hope to fully attain Cate's level of awesomeosity. But, depending on my schedule, sporadic novel reading obsessions, the number of teeth Zoodle is cutting, and the topic of your comment, I may respond.

Here's where I need your help. If you comment using a Blogger account, you can make your email address public so that when your comment comes into my email in-box, I can easily respond directly to you. You'll need to go to your Blogger profile and, under "Privacy," click "Show my email address."

Here's how I keep my privacy while sharing my email address with the world. I have a personal email address, bethfumperstizitzkin@yahoo.com, but I don't use it for my blogs. (If I did, you'd all know my last name is Fumperstizitzkin.) Instead, I have a Gmail email address specifically for my blogs. It's a little nervewracking to have it out there for the whole world to see, but Gmail's spam filtering is so excellent that I get very little spam.

If you're not comfortable making your email address public, or if you don't have a Blogger account, I invite you to email me (cbethblog@gmail.com) so that I can save your email address and use it in responding to you. If you prefer not to share an email address with me at all, that's fine; but I probably won't be responding to your comments.

Thanks for helping me with this! Let's get the conversation going!