inspirational spirits need love too

i already expressed this week how i'm complete rubbish at passing along blog awards, as deserving as i think all of you most decidedly are and as appreciative as i myself am of receiving them. however, in a fit of self-improvement, i'm passing along this particular award, which i was given by polly of sotto voce, because it seems a particularly worthy award of passing along. to use her words, "It's one of the most meaningful awards in the blogworld because it honours someone who is incredibly inspirational in her intelligent and witty writing. And by doing so this award celebrates women's smart, strong and inspirational spirit. These women are like Renee: the acorn, a small package becoming a tall and sturdy oak giving more acorns, becoming tall and sturdy oaks, giving acorns…" please check in on polly's blog for more of the links to the originators of this award (these things have a way of becoming diluted in the blogosphere and i feel i would be slightly disingenuous to link to them here when i don't really know them (i am aware this slightly defeats the purpose)).  (dang, that was a lot of parentheses and this paragraph is really getting long.)

when i look through my reader (google's, of course), there are several blogs that jump out at me as the right voices to pass this award along to. if you don't already read them, i hope you will go check them out. they are, in no particular order:

tara at eyeblog 

she has a house full of girls

she cooks

she's on flickr 

she owns an art gallery

she uses those fabulous double colons as bullets

she makes me think and want to be better at well...everything

molly at ohfortheloveofblog 

she's another of those people who feels like a long-lost sister to me

like a really cool one

who lives in cape town

reads murakami

and has a dog

and a daughter

and steals avocados from the neighbor's tree

and swears on her blog when it's warranted

b at cuttings on a blog 

like me, she lives outside her home country

she inspired me to embark on austerity april 

(which is working, by the way)

she reads lots of great books

and she's a belly dancer

just for fun

delwyn at a hazy moon 

because she takes the loveliest walks

and shares them so generously

and discovers interesting new characters 

and has some japanese-oz connection that i haven't yet worked out

but which keeps me coming back

i hope that all of you will check out these bloggers and i hope that you strong, fabulous women will pass this along to some deserving bloggers. and if you didn't get an award this time, just wait, i've got quite a few to catch up on...

thanks again, polly, for this one, it was a good one.