Pigs and Rats Make Me Smile.

Four lines into Ghost of a Smile, Heather applied the term 'douche bag' to our venerated Olympic Hero, Michael Phelps. I was laughing right off the bat.

Heather is a leftist, hippy, greenie. Her husband who advocates for wind farms, has a great site of his own. His is simple, effective and pleasing to the eye (that's a freebie mini-review, hubster). What a team. I could set up a commune with these folks. We'd live off the grid. Can I tend the rabbits, George?

Her content is great fun, easy to read and entertaining, although she says she doesn't know it. I have to admit that the one post that really hit home was about her purchase of a renaissance dress. In this day of economic crunch, it's a serious indulgence which says, "I am going to play with my baby girl and really get into it." I do this with my little girl. I know, you can't picture she and I in princess dresses, drinking tea, can you? I thought I was strange for doing it, but apparently I'm not.

I like that she's pretty dedicated to posting most every day. There are not weeks of lapses between writings. She's not a lazy blogger, but she usually picks one topic, covers it briefly - and that's it. She's not beating us over the head with every single detail of her day - unlike the vast multitude of twitter-pated mommy bloggers. She left me with more questions than answers in her posts. Those questions sent me into the archives for answers. I liked what I found.

There's very little crap on her page. Nothing glares, blinks or otherwise pisses me off. No counters, badges, or other gizmos. I didn't have to zap her colors. We don't know what the hell her weather is or where her visitors are coming from geographically. It's a clean page. However, she does have a rat on her front page. Are rats clean?

"I'm a hamster not a rat, you idiot,
let me out of here and I'll bite your arm off."

I really like her photos, especially this one. Heather's selected music clips are great and the listener decides whether or not to listen. I hate sites where autoplay music jumps out at me like a VC attack.

One thing that we know is that size matters. Heather keeps her posts fairly short, sometimes almost too short. But she makes a lot out of those words. Not every post is outstanding, but there are a lot of great things right on the front page. Why am I not complaining about too many posts on the front page? Because they are, for the most part, good reads. Keep it up, Heather.

Visit her toplisted links, they are all great and she puts them right up front where we can find them. The Wind in My Vagina, the name alone won me but the banner, content and setup held me. I just love it when one excellent blog leads me to others. It’s like striking gold. Her toplist links open in a new window, which helps keep traffic at home. Smart.

Here are my suggestions:
1. Shorten up your banner a bit. It's humongo-long.

2. I prefer monthly archives to weekly, seeing a month at a time makes it faster to read your work without having to go back and forth repeatedly. Keep it drop down. Move your archive box up in your sidebar.

3. How about adding a drop down category list? I’d love to see what else is out there that I might have missed. Avoid a long listing that mucks up your sidebar.

Heather, I love your site and have subscribed, you get: