I began this blog five years ago. Five years to the day. I started Not Yet a Wino in a 400-sq-ft apartment on Capitol Hill and was using a 1995 hp when I chose the plain black template that was one of few Blogger offered. I remember vividly using the next blog function and finding Bandick. It was like making a new friend at a dinner party, wine glass in hand, and commenting to your boyfriend later just how alike you were. I was amazed. Three clicks and suddenly there she was. A few more and I’d found someone on the West Coast, another in Canada. Wanting to remain anonymous, I first used the name “Mama.” That didn’t fit for long, and quickly I stretched into Kris, a version of my full Christian name. Because of this blog, today there are more people in my life who call me Kris than don’t. That’s really something, isn’t it? Over the past five years, more than one of you has assumed that my last name was Likey. That never ceases to make me giggle. Thank you for that.
I sometimes find it hard to believe how much I’ve witnessed on the Web. I’ve read about people you love dying, your fathers, your cousins, your children. I’ve read about you prepping for your weddings and wished silently that others of you would finally call it quits in relationships that it’s evident, even through text, weren’t meant for the long term. I’ve watched you lose jobs and rise to amazing heights, making pages in national papers, finishing your degrees, writing essays and books, and pushing yourselves beyond limits that were established somewhere in the distant past. It is a likely fact that I’ve missed all of your birthdays. Not part of my charm.
Since March 2005, I roofied myself on a flight to Europe and traveled the United States more than I had in the 25 years prior. I toured the vineyards of Napa and hiked a national park in Croatia. I tried oysters again. I dated a relative of at least one of you. I fell in love deeply and passionately and I had my heart broken. More than once. I scored runs playing in a DC bar softball league and in turn drank more on Sundays than God and Oprah ever intended. I professed my love for Celine Dion, the Bachelor, and Kid Rock’s All Summer Long, and to my great surprise you kept reading. I progressed through being laid off twice and three different jobs. I bought a king bed. I helped to care for my very ill father and snuck him Goldfish crackers before his death. I found out one of my kids had cancer and grieved as he lost a leg, but only after asking the vet if I’d be able to keep the tumor. I received and threw out one of those tabletop S’mores makers and went through three laptops. I used the word “asshat” to excess, willingly ate some of the cat’s kibble, and changed my own passenger’s side headlight. But only once.
And those are just 20 of 719 posts.
Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for witnessing my life in writing.
————
Many many of the bloggers who began writing with me in 2005 are no longer on the Web. Many of you started before (OVERACHIEVERS) or after 2005. Here are just a few of the crew still writing who began when I did.
37 Comments
Honored to be part of the five-year club with you, Kris. I don’t know how we didn’t meet back in the day, but I’m sure glad to know you now.
Happy Fifth, baby! Here’s to many more.
Happy Happy Birfday!!
I can’t wait to check out some of those ‘old schoolers’ :) So much has changed in the past 5 years!
Happy Blogiversary!
Wow. What a huge milestone. Yours is one of my favorite blogs, and I’m so glad to have discovered it. Please stick around for another 5, OK?
Happy Blogiversary! I stumbled upon your blog about three years ago and have enjoyed reading it ever since. So here’s to at least five more years! Or more than that!
Thanks for sharing with us Kris–you are truly one of my faves and your writing has the ability to make me laugh, think, and sometimes even cry.
It’s only been five years? It seems so much longer than that. In a totally good way.
And I’m still here. I just have a different name than I did when my world was purple.
Thank you for letting me/us witness your life in writing. More times than I can count I have read a post and understood my own life better. I’m not sure thank you quite captures how much I appreciate that…
Has it been 5 years?! You have a great blog and you are one of my favorite reads. Keep up the good work!
I just checked my stats. My 5 year anniversary is July 8th. I have over 900 posts and maybe 2 are worth reading. Pretty sad…
Happy birthday to your blog! Five years ago this month, I was moving back to Chicago after 10 years on the West Coast and had never heard of a blog!
I’m looking forward to meeting you in August!
I love your blog. Love that I had the complete joy of meeting you in person. Love that we can text each other outside of this computer world. Love that you are in my life. Love that you are my friend. And, certainly, love YOU.
Dude. Your awesomeness transcends the page.
what fun! i’m not sure that i’ve read all of your archives, so there’s something to keep me busy for awhile :)
congrats!
Hip, hip! Being just one bloggy year older than you I feel the need to buy you a drink in New York and make inappropriate comments about founding fathers. (Can’t wait!)
Happy! five years to you. So happy you’re here.
I adore you. I feel lucky to have met you through the blog world, and I’m so glad you’re still writing.
I started in 2005 too. It was a good year.
Happy birthday.
Congratulations, chica! Five years is an amazing feat! What a wondrous world it was when you started. Thank for being part of the team that forged a path for the rest of us. And here’s to many, many more stories to come.
I hardly post but do enjoy reading your site.
Happy blog birthday!
congrats on five years here! that’s really something.
i’ve always enjoyed your posts, always. i hope we can finally meet one of these days.
Congrats on five years and I’m looking forward to many more.
thanks for sharing your life with us. your blog was one of the first that i started reading. i really like you. at times when i know i’m probably drinking more wine than i need, i’ve thought that you’d probably go for the extra glass… so why shouldn’t i?
happy bday blog!
You have no idea how much fun you made blogging for me when you stumbled into my space. I’d had comments, but you were my first “friend.” For that, I’m forever grateful to blogspot for the “next blog” feature!
Much love to you!
i’d follow you to the ends of the earth, my friend!
Happy Blogoversary.
FIVE!? HOLY SMOKES! That’s like dinosaur old in blog years…
See… told you I was going to post it. ;)
That’s a huge feat, Congratulations, for realz.
XO
I just started reading. You sound fascinating; I can’t wait to read more!
I’ve had a few blogs prior to the one I have now. My first being on Blogger with, I believe, a plain blue template. I did the same thing you did and met a few other bloggers, the most memorable one being from DC. We chatted via AIM a little because Wow! We had so much in common! Then she told me she thought I looked a little like Stephanie Klein (I wasn’t semi-anonymous then) and I was all “Ooohh. Stephanie who?” Yeah, ha. That girl thought I was kind of a dumbass.
Happy Birthday baby! *mwwwwah*
I am, and always will be, a better person because I found your blog and, most importantly, you. Thank you so much for the smiles, wisdom, and clinks of a glass.
Cheers! Here’s to another five years. Isn’t it amazing where our blogs take us?
It’s amazing what transpires over the course of blogging. I have modified quite a bit how I blog in the past five years, but I still will never give it up. It’s a treat to read what’s on your mind and all those others out there.
I like how this post talks about a blog in the sense of a song. You know how songs stick with for an event that happened (good or bad) in your life. You did the same with your blog and I really like it. Keep on keeping on.
I missed your blog birthday!
Of course we started at the same time. I still remember vaguely when I realized your name wasn’t REALLY Likey and I think I was a little disappointed. ;)
And because this is the most important thing I just read about, there is nothing wrong and everything right with All Summer Long. (At least as far as we’re concerned, apparently.) I have a full interpretive dance to it that is only performed in my car and it also includes one of my favorite lyrics of all time, “Sippin’ WHISKEY out the bottle, not THINKIN’ bout tomorrow,” which I daydream about cross-stitching and framing for my office.
Seriously. Thank you for helping to give me the courage -early on and still – to write like I knew I needed to to make this worth anything at all, both in terms of quality and truth. I love that we’re still trying to figure this out, many of us, in our own ways, and beyond that I’m really grateful that you are my friend.
congrats sugar…the pleasure has been all ours…
xoxo
Happy Birthday, Kris’ blog!
Thank you for being witty, honest and REAL, even if all I know of you is what’s written on Teh Interwebs. And for forgiving me about asking about pantsing a Monkey. Or the opposite thereof.
Oh, and thanks for mentioning Shana, aka Gorillabuns at times. I found her as well, and love her to death.
Congrats! You had me @ Merlot!
Happy Blogiversary, NAGNYAW!
I’m honoured to be listed among the people who started blogging at the same time as you, Kris! Now you’ve got me thinking about what I should write on my 5th in July – lots of stuff happens in 5 years!
Here’s to many, many more years of blogging!
P.S. I totally thought, for the longest time, that your last name was Likey.
Has it been five years already? Sometimes it’s hard to believe it has been so long, and at others it seems like it couldn’t possibly be such a small number.
I can’t believe that one of my best friends of all time was a random click away. :)
Much love, sweetheart.
J
Happy Anniversary!!! Thanks for the inclusion, the entertainment, the insight and all that good stuff.
From another non-mom blogger :)
Happy 5th Birthday! We’ve come a long way…mostly :)
XOXOXO
One Trackback
[...] Credit: Posted by Leo Reynolds on Flickr. As Kris pointed out to me back when her blog turned five in March, if our blogs were babies, they’d be in kindergarten by now! [↩]and, of course, many [...]