Happy Anniversary! Today is the one-year anniversary of my very first post to my blog. And I've realized, thanks to Rachel's comment on my last post, that I have never bothered to explain exactly what my blog name means or what a key-slapping slippard is. How inconsiderate of me!

The reason "slippard" isn't in the dictionary is because it's the name of a creature created by Dr. Seuss. My favorite Seuss book of all time is "I Had Trouble In Getting to Solla Sollew." In the book, the main character is living a pretty good life until one day he stumps his toe. Then he gets stung and stomped on and all sorts of troubles happen to him. He's getting pretty fed up with it when one day he hears about a wonderful place called Solla Sollew, "where they never have troubles, at least very few." So our hero, disgusted by his current troubles, decides to go there. Along the way, of course, he is beset by a number of new troubles, and by the time he gets to Solla Sollew he's tired of troubles indeed.

Solla Sollew is a beautiful place, and the doorkeeper of the town welcomes our hero very graciously. At last, he thinks, he has found a wonderful place to live, a place where they have very few troubles. Indeed, he has found a place with few troubles. It turns out Solla Sollew has only one trouble. And that trouble is a key-slapping slippard, a little lizard-like creature who moved into the keyhole of the city a few days ago and refuses to leave. Everytime the doorkeeper tries to unlock the door of the city, the slippard slaps the key back out. And since it's bad luck to kill a key-slapping slippard, everyone is pretty much screwed. Nobody can get in or out of the city, and everything's falling apart.

At this point, the doorkeeper proceeds to tell our hero about another place he's heard about, "where they never have troubles, no troubles at all." But instead of searching that place out, our troubled hero decides to turn around and go back home. He finally realizes that troubles are going to be everywhere and he just needs to face them head-on instead of running away from them. Actually, he buys a bat and decides he's going to use physical violence to combat his troubles, but I like to think that the bat is metaphorical.

So there is the story of how my blog got its name. And now you know what a key-slapping slippard is. Any other questions? :)

P.S. Thanks to all my readers for sticking with me! I can't believe it's been a whole year!