Earlier this year before Leta was born when I was in a state of behemoth, swollen proportions and prone to crying at the beauty of a saltine cracker, I got the following email in my dooce inbox:

Subject: welfare journaling

I found your site through some other site. It’s obviously a well designed site that uses decent software.

But whenever I see a “donate” page on a blog, it’s a major turn off. I never revisit sites that ask for donations or even suggest that readers donate. If you can’t afford to fund your own domain, find a free site like diaryland or something.

If people have money to donate this frivolously, why not list worthwhile charities that you support (if you support any at all).

You don’t classify as a charity.

Had this person seen the state of my ankles at the time I think he might have reconsidered. I cried for hours after reading this because I was pregnant and because I felt so misunderstood in the most dramatic, teenage way possible. Why couldn’t the world just get along?

I think most people who visit this site understand that the donate option is a way for readers to say thanks. It’s more like dropping a few bucks into the hat of a street performer than it is supporting a charity, and thank you dear reader for being so clear-headed and very, very generous.

If I haven’t thanked you for a donation you’ve sent to this website, please know that I’m working on it. Sometimes Amazon doesn’t send me your name when you donate, and sometimes I just get behind. Please send me an email and kick me in the butt. In the meantime, thank you. I can’t say it enough: thank you.

As for selling my soul to advertisers, I’m doing a test run of sorts with the lovely and wonderful people at Coudal Partners who agreed to sponsor this site for a couple months with an ad for their very cool and “sweet” Jewelboxing Packaging Systems. We’re going to look at traffic patterns and statistics, and then I’ll use that data to develop a system of ads for this site in the next few months. If you’d like to be notified when that system goes live and are interested in advertising here, please drop me an email and I’ll add you to the list.

In the meantime, Coudal is running a week-long Dooce Family and Friends discount on their Jewelboxing DVD/CD packages. Write a note to “crew at jewelboxing dot com” and mention Dooce and they’ll send you a link to follow for a $10 discount. Valid until midnight next Thursday August 26. How cool are these people? I would definitely party with them, and then let them watch my baby as I got drunk and passed out. Just kidding. I wouldn’t pass out. I’d just throw up.

And another thing about the selling of the soul and the thing: Google AdSense reversed their decision and accepted my application! FUCKERS! Thank you to whoever wrote in and complained because YOU WIELDED SPECIAL GOOGLE MIND POWERS! I will probably test out a few ads here and there in the next couple of days because not enough of my soul has been sold. Only parts of it are black and dead. I should sell the rest of it on eBay.

(UPDATE: I’m running some test ads on the individual archive pages, and I’m getting ads for canker sores! CANKER SORES! I didn’t know canker sores needed advertising. AWESOME!)

Last night Jon coded the new homepage design for this site in CSS. I designed it, he coded it, and the dog sat at the end of the bed and made that annoying licking-of-the-empty-ballsack noise. I need to start giving Jon credit right now for the work he has done/will do for the new site because if I don’t start now I will NEVER FINISH. I just can’t give up HTML tables, and he is forbidding me to use tables because they are bad for me and for the world. I will study his CSS and code the rest of the site myself, and all this has to be done while the baby sleeps. This is just a very long way of saying that things are moving along, and if you are a religious person who has a close relationship with God, maybe you could pray for the baby to sleep. My prayers wouldn’t work because I’m going to have ads on my website.