One day a while back, I was reading about an intriguing sounding parenting book on Bring the Rain (one of the blogs that originally got me hooked... check out the older posts about their journey with Audrey Caroline--incredibly moving). Anyway, the blog author Angie Smith was hosting a contest to win a copy of the book Parenting the Way that God Parents: Refusing to Recycle Your Parents' Mistakes. Bring the Rain has a huge readership and receives hundreds if not thousands of comments on each post, but this book sounded great, so I decided it wouldn't hurt to leave a comment to "enter" the contest.
Fast forward a couple of weeks to last night. I was browsing Bring the Rain again to find out how to create a music playlist on a blog like she has on hers. The book contest hadn't ever entered my mind again since the day I commented/entered. But as I was scrolling down the screen, I saw the name "Tiffany" at the end of the list of 10 winners.
"You're kidding," I thought. "I wonder if that could actually be me? There are 2031 comments/entries into the contest, so odds are it's a different Tiffany somewhere out there in Blogland. Because I never win anything! But I may as well check it out." So I scrolled through about 1800 of the 2031 comments and found the "Tiffany" comment she was referring to, and believe it or not, I won! "I guess I can't say I never win anything anymore."
Oh, my, but I'm afraid I can. I was really just quite tickled about it all.... until today, when I figured out that I did not win. And on top of that, I had already sent a gushing e-mail to the author, letting her know where she could send my book. Just a tad embarrassing, wouldn't you say?
I discovered my mistake when I went back to the contest post today to see what my comment actually said (Something about it being unlikely I'd win with the volume of comments she receives. I thought it would be so clever of me to add that to my blog post announcing that I actually won!)
I scrolled through those 1800 comments again, and somehow, what last night was clearly my comment linking to my blog was now a comment left by Tiffany Carter. What in the world? Seriously, I am so certain that last night I found the comment, clicked on the link, and saw a picture of me and my cute little family, confirming that I was indeed the winner. Yeah, well, today, I saw a picture of Tiffany Carter and her cute little family.
Maybe I shouldn't be browsing blogs so late at night because clearly, my tired mind couldn't handle the excitement of potentially beating the 10 in 2031 odds to win a book. (Unless my conspiracy theory that someone somehow moved my comment so they could win the book is true!) I guess I'll put this book in my Amazon shopping cart along with the 5 dozen other books I have saved there and see if I can find a little cash to buy it sometime. Bummer.
So, even though it turns out my not-winning streak continues (losing streak sounds so negative), this whole thing has really got me thinking. Since my blog is so new and I haven't done nearly as much posting as I hoped, I haven't written much yet about our family's, or perhaps it's primarily just my, journey this past year and a half since the surprise of discovering Tori would join our family. And quite a journey it's been.
But you'll have to check back later to hear more about it. No telling what might happen if I try to blog late into the night again.... And I don't want to give Tiffany Carter a bad name.
