Random Acts of Blogging

The hardest thing about being a daily (er ... weekdaily?) blogger is not coming up with ideas.  No, funny stuff happens to me all the time.  The hardest part is coming up with cohesive stories I can tell you in more than one paragraph and in only one sitting.

The second hardest thing is not getting stuck in a rut when my life gets stuck in a rut.  We all have that from time to time, don't we?  This problem isn't exclusive to any occupation.  Some days, if you have to get up and do the (insert monotonous task) one more day, you might fall over from sheer bordeom.  Even if you aren't bored quite yet, after so many days of the same thing, sometimes finding an original blog entry can be a challenge.

Take my past two weeks, for example.  I have been rather dominated by two primary tasks - getting my kid to poop on the potty so we can declare daytime potty training over, and getting ready for a garage sale next month.  Of course, if I weren't stuck in or near the house for the first one, I would probably not be bothering too much with the second one, but that's life.  Anyway, most of what ends up happening around here these days involves potty stories and stories about dirt and junk.  Sure, poop, dirt, and junk have their moments, but I think I have used up all of those moments for several years to come.  I don't doubt that most of you are bored with those topics, because, candidly, I am bored with those topics. 

So, on days like this, as I think I have said before in this blog, the best we can do is to embrace the randomness.  Like this:

Big Black Cat just came down the stairs, yowling like he was sitting on the fence outside his girlfriend's litterbox just waiting for a date.  (Not that he is interested in that sort of thing anymore, I should add.)  Once upon a time, I used to think this horrible cat-erwauling sound was the sign of a feline in the house about to drop dead of some fit, but now I know the truth.  I know that Big Black Cat has triumphed over a mean and viscious predator, and he is waiting in the entranceway for me to come and praise his fighting and pouncing ability.  He only graces us with this performance once every few months, so we should enjoy the moment when it comes.  Today's prey?  A green spongy bath toy he found in Toddler's bathroom.  He even managed to drop it in front of me without leaving any teeth marks -- he's just that good.

Today, I have finally decided to embrace the great Easter egg decoration tradition.  I know -- for you Easter was last week, but I wasn't organized enough to get this post up last week, so you'll have to read about it this week.  I have the vinegar, the egg dye kit, and I know where the coffee cups are.  Yet, I hesitate.  Me and a not quite three-year old working around food dye, eggs, and ceramics ... I think I might very well be nuts.

Of course, thinking about Easter egg kits makes me think of my own childhood, and how I begged my mother to please buy me the  ... let's call it the "Humpty Dumpty" Easter Egg decorating kit I saw on TV every day.  (Yes, that's a fake name, in case you didn't catch on.)  The Humpty Dumpty kit was the only one I wanted because it made neat blotchy egss from shaking (I think.  That was a long time ago.)  Either way, my mom bought the classic ... let's call it "Paws" kit that year.  She probably bought them because they were what she knew, and in the small town we lived in, Humpty Dumpty probably hadn't yet made it to the shelves.  Either way, I was disappointed.  Interestingly enough, while I was shopping for my own supplies this year, I was bemused to note that in at least one store, I found only Humpty Dumpty kits and no Paws.  Of course, I didn't find a single kit anywhere that had any Mickey Mouse Clubhouse characters involved.  Marvel Comics? Sure.  Disney Princesses?  Absolutely.  Mickey Mouse?  No, sir.  As an avid Mouse Fan and mother of an even bigger Mouse Fan, I remain disappointed.  Oh, well.  I'm sure they will come out with them around the time Toddler has moved on to prefer Spiderman.  Life has a way of working out like that.

On to other fun topics, we have finally finished getting our back yard regraded and drained, with all the downspouts and sump pumps hooked together in an underground system running to the nearest municipal drainage ditch ... just in time for the gutters to fall off the house from the damage from the last few storms.  Of course, no gutter guys are returning our calls, because everone else's gutters have fallen off, too.  No one installed gutters rated for two 20 inch snowfalls and general rain forest conditions in Virginia.  One guy did stop by the other day to talk about gutters.  He was going door to door, trying to sell me on his gutter-replacement services like I didn't know that having the wood rot and the trenches dangling from the roof was a bad thing.  (Yeah, I knew that.)  My question?  If he is that good, how come he is the only gutter guy going door to door these days when everyone else is too busy actually doing jobs to bother to return phone calls?  Yeah.  That.

Moving on ... I think a scientific miracle might be happening in my garage.  I think the cardboard boxes in my garage are actually multiplying.  I take them out on recycling day, but I always seem to find more the next week than the week before.  No matter how hard I try, though, I cannot think of any good biological reason why boxes would want to multiply so effectively in a contained space, and I am forced to wonder if perhaps Entropy has played an April Fool's Day joke on me ... except it never stops.

Finally, as I am typing this paragraph, Big Black Cat has once again triumphed over his green sponge and is yowling at me to come tell him what a good job he has done, once again, in defending this family.  I think now is as good a time as any to end today's post.