AWARDS

I have been blessed and fortunate to be on the receiving end, lately, of a number of blogging awards. Moncha Eilis of "Dreaming of Avalon" has awarded me the Arte y Pico award, above, which is given to bloggers based on their creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogging community, no matter what language.

Here's what Moncha has to say: "Julie shares lovely stories about Celtic culture and her own life, together with beautiful pictures. I love the Celtic look her blog has and as I am very interested in Celtic culture, I can learn a lot by reading the stories."

The Arte y Pico award originated in a blog of the same name, by a creative lady named Eseya in Uruguay. I can guess what arte means in Spanish. Any one know what pico means?

Karen (KJ) at "eye-dyllic" and Carol of "Charli and Me" both gave me the "E" award for excellence in blogging. Carol chose my art blog, "Julie Julie" for this award, which is very flattering, to say the least.

And last but by no means least, Louise at "At the Pink Gate" has awarded me the "I've got a friend in you" award.

Now comes the part I dread - sharing this award with others. Not that I dread sharing. I dread singling out just a few blogs from among the 50 on my sidebar. I believe this causes hurt feelings among those who are "left out". Having been left out of things plenty of times in my childhood - and adult life, come to think of it - I choose not to perpetuate those feelings.

I have actually thought about not accepting awards at all. But that wouldn't be fair to the bloggers who were gracious enough to choose me. And even though I am almost through reading Eckhart Tolle's "A New World", and know that the ego needs to be suppressed, I still have a big enough ego to be thrilled to be singled out.

I've thought of not passing along the awards I receive. One of the awards came with a stipulation that to even accept it, I had to obligate myself to name at least a dozen other recipients for the award, so perhaps I should not even include it in this post. The trouble is, I am a bit of a rebel. As Craig Ferguson says, "I just can't live by your rules, man!"

Fortunately, some choices have already been made for me. My friends Robyn at "Tales of Inglewood" and Annie at "Bimbimbie" have already been awarded the Arte y Pico award. Hear, hear, I second that! Janet at "The Lavender Loft" has already been given the "Friend" award, and I couldn't have named a better blogging friend than Janet. And my friend Joyce at "The Secret Gardener" has already won the "Excellence" award, and you couldn't find a more deserving person.

So that leaves me only 46 names to choose from. I could say, "I award all three awards to all of you." But that would be a cop out.

Or, I could choose some people - maybe 2, maybe 5, maybe 10, who knows or needs to know how many - and let the recipients know privately. Which I will be doing.

And thank you, thank you to those who gave me these awards. "Due to circumstances beyond my control" I haven't been much of a blogging friend lately. Therefore I will try harder to deserve the "Friends" award. For the same reason, I haven't been very inspired lately, so I will try to be a more "Excellent" blogger. And I haven't posted as much about the Celts as I had planned to when I started blogging, so I will try harder to live up to the expectations of the "Arte y Pico" award.