It’s a Family Affair

Every morning I wake up with a different song playing in my head. Sometimes I can explain it, for instance, if I heard the song right before I went to bed the night before, while other times I have no explanation as to how it got there. Today’s is a prime example of the latter. Now I like this song but ask me to sing more than the four words in the title above and you’ll catch me scratching my head.

So you can probably see the dilemma here. The same four words playing on a loop over and over again as I sit awake, alone, until Matt gets up, is moderately maddening. But instead of heading off to the loony bin, I’m going to go with it and use the song title as a writing prompt. Hey, I’m all about turning the negative into a positive like that.

Speaking of prompt…as soon as I decided to write about it, I promptly lost all steam and motivation to do so. This has been a common problem lately. I think there are a few reasons for it.

First off, I don’t want to sit here and ramble on aimlessly about everything I’ve done lately because I won’t even be able to see the bored look in your eye as you drift off and start imagining what you’re having for dinner instead of absorbing the words on the screen. My life lately has been one long thread. Literally. Pretty much all I’ve done lately is sew.

Which brings me to the second reason. Sewing, unless you’re a seamstress, is a pretty boring topic. Wait, that was the same as the first reason right? Yeah, I guess you can probably understand the inclination to keep it to myself.

So (or sew?? Haha! Oh I kill me…) this is why I had all these grand plans to turn this post into some wonderful tale about my past, something awesome and fun from the 70’s and I would have woven it around my family like the song line had been written specifically for us.

For example, I could do a big story about how I was picked on in grammar school for wearing hand me down clothes that came from my much older cousins. Or I could talk about the time when my aunt tried to talk me out of drinking because my whole family was full of alcoholics but, not only was I not entirely surprised by the information, I think I surprised her by sharing that I just wanted to go to the party; I didn’t even have one drink that night. Perhaps a nice long post about the way two people is quite enough to make a family and that I don’t need to have kids to feel like I’ve achieved that feeling.

But every single one of those topics and more would just fall flat right now because that’s how I feel. As flat as the snowman ornaments I stitched up recently. Flat, listless, languid, lifeless, wordless and inspirationless. (Is that even a word? Probably not but it pretty much perfectly describes my overall brainwave right now so I’m keeping it. Suck on that Oxford Dictionary).

I think I know the reason. I’m saving it up in the imaginary bunker in my brain. The bunker is made of four foot thick concrete walls with a solid steel hatch that only I can access because it takes my fingerprint and retina scan to get in. Yeah, the thing is secure. And for good reason. It is storing the makings of my book inside its walls.

Imagination, inspiration and ability to share a fully fluffed up story, full of good old fashioned chewy bits like warm date nut cookies, will just have to wait until November. (Ooh, cookies…)

So what the hell do I do in the meantime? I guess I could regale all of you with tales of my grocery shopping adventures but somehow I think that might have me losing a few readers. Not that I couldn’t make it funny -- hell I kept everyone reading about me having a cold by sprinkling in crap about puffy heart key chains, local New Jersey townies and Pauly Shore movies -- but something tells me it would just be far too shameless, even for me, to try to add humor to a Peapod delivery. I mean, they weren’t even late and actually delivered everything I ordered so how could I ever twist that one ya know?

Plus I’d never want to insult us by writing an entire 875 word post full of absolutely no content whatsoever. That would just be…well, it would surely be random lunacy, if you will, and I wouldn’t dream of doing that to any of us! Honestly, what do you take me for? Geesh…

While I dye my hair and get ready to go see my mom’s work at the Arlington Open Studios, and then attend my uncle’s big sixtieth birthday party later today, I will leave you with this quote my drum instructor told me yesterday. Apparently it is from a cowboy movie he watched recently.

“Never hasn’t happened yet.”

Yup, you’re right. That quote has absolutely nothing to do with anything I’ve written here.  Just like everything else.