Secrets...

I don't like having secrets. In fact, I suck at having secrets -- or should I say I suck at KEEPING secrets. When I was a small child, my mother bought all of my gifts for my dad -- birthdays, Father's Day, Christmas. Each time, she would carefully explain to me that the gift was a secret and that I shouldn't tell my dad what we'd bought. Inevitably, I would let the cat out of the bag -- innocently, and certainly not on purpose. One year, confident that I would finally keep the secret, I came running into the room when my dad came home from work, leapt into his arms and said, "Daddy, Daddy, I'm not going to tell you we got you a tie for your birthday!" The entire room was reduced to tear-producing belly laughter. Lauren had done it again! Eventually, I got better at it... but it still leaves me feeling uneasy to be harboring a secret.

Given my history, I'm sure you can understand the trepidation surrounding my current secret - my blog. (At least it's a secret from Mr. Small) I am afraid that, in typical Lauren fashion, I'm going to spill the beans. Inadvertently, I came close the other day when I posted a picture of my puppy -- I linked to a picture on his website, where we have an entire collection of puppy pictures, and then tested it. I realized immediately what I'd done and I walked on egg shells for two days -- worrying that he would track the link back to my blog and that my safe haven would be ruined. Fortunately for me, he's not tracking all of his website hits any more, which means that my secret's safe for now. Let's hope that it stays that way!

"I'm not going to tell you that I have a secret place on the Internet where I tell the world how you got your name!"