I had coffee (okay, he had coffee.  I had butternut bisque and coconut shrimp) the other day with Ron who blogs at Vent and Moi Review Blog.  Something that Ron said really stuck with me.  When we were talking about blogs and bloggers and blog topics and blog faux pas and blog everything else, he referred to his readers and the authors of the blogs he reads as "people he blogs with".  I like that.

I like that we blog together.

That it's more than clicking over and scanning a page and moving on.
That it's more than a noun or a verb.
That it's more than reading.  Or posting.  Or journaling.  Or scouring.  Or whatever it is we do here.
That it's something we do collectively, and in relatively small groups.  Overlapping groups.  Exclusive groups.

Quite often I'll come across a new blog I like only to find comments from and mentions of other bloggers I enjoy.   

People I blog with.

I like thinking of us all bouncing off and pulling from and drawing down and lifting up one another.

***

You know what else I like doing?  Looking at dead things.

It's like a sickness.

I love looking at dead things.

Flowers and trees will do.  Animals are better.  People are the ultimate.

You don't know how often I have to stop myself from taking pictures of dead things and posting them on the Urbanity blog.

I don't want you to think I'm weird so I just keep all the dead things I take pictures of in a photofilefolder on my work computer.

What?  You can't have that sort of thing on your home computer.  Big brother is watching.

I wonder what will happen if I ever get hit by a bus and never make it back to my desk.  I wonder if they search the files before deleting them.  Nestled in between the child/drug/sex/domestic/alcohol/physical/emotional/animal/financial abuse resources and the 879 paperwork form templates I have saved on my desktop, there are pictures of dead birds and bugs and fish and cats and discarded crab claws and chicken wing scraps and raggety bones.

The other day, I admitted this to Dave.  Somehow it came up in conversation.  Somehow after fifteen years of knowing each other it finally came up in conversation.

I forget how.

His reaction was, well.  His reaction was what you might think it would be.

His mouth said "oh, really?  That's weird".

His eyes said "I can't believe the person whose name is next to mine on a deed, on a car note, on a marriage certificate, on a damned birth certificate just told me after a decade and a half of conversation that she spends a bit of her downtime looking at dead things."

But I do.  I love seeing what happens to something once nature takes over.  Once the lifespark is out of it.

Not enough to take the lifespark out of it, mind you.

Just enough to stare at it as long as possible once it's gone.

I'm not alone in this.  Diane over at Good Mourning, Glory! is a dead thing lover too and she has named me Mourner of the Month for October.  I'd like to think that it is because she likes to blog with me, but I'm sure that the amount of time I spend over at her site Wouldn't You Like To See Something Strange? has a lot to do with it too.

Happy October, everybody.

It's is the most wonderful time of my year.