No More Drooling on the Couch

I have no idea how to start a blog.  I am not even sure if I should start a blog; this blog attempt really, really is the product of peer pressure, like I might as well be sneaking out my bedroom window and climbing down the grape arbor to hang out with the cool kids.  I feel like I am doing something risky...introducing myself to a room full of strangers who have been trained in the art of pithy, snarky comments.  In truth - I am much better in the company of friends, and my idea of a friend is someone who is careful about what they say and how they say it - they seldom pith or snark at you...we only pith and snark about other people, and we never pith and snark in front of the other people.

Now, I just googled pith, and it means to remove the spinal cord of cattle.  So, obviously, I do not like people who do THAT.

I do not like a good debate.  I will not fight you, unless you are my husband, in which case I will fight you every time you look at me sideways or when you point out that I could buy a new pair of TOMS every month if I stopped going to Starbucks.  That's stupid.

But, if we are not married, I will always let you win in the moment, but then I will spend the rest of my life trying to find a gentle way to live my point in front of you, while wearing tie dye and stupid hats and incredibly frayed and flattened TOMS that have holes in the toes...(talk about a covert mission).

If I ever write anything on Facebook that results in someone writing a venomous comment - I unfriend them faster than I can zip my fly in public.

Over on my Facebook page, I have been spewing the stories of my day to day life..for years now.  I write paragraphs and paragraphs, mostly about raising kids...lots and lots of kids.  Posting more than a few sentences makes me a bit of a Facebook oddity, if not an all-out spectacle, but I have not relented.  Folks have nudged me, "Maybe you should write a blog.  I mean, you are kinda blogging here...on Facebook, which is not a blog...clearly...not a blog...Cammie."

It is like I was a teenager who fell asleep on the couch, and my mom kept coming down the stairs saying, "Let's get you to bed," and it was half because she wanted me to be more comfortable, but it was also because she didn't want drool stains on her couch cushions.

However, when I see my kids asleep on the couch, I do not think "drool."

I think pee.

In any case, I kept blogging it up on Facebook because I had my people.  I got rid of the meanies, and what was left was a happy hollow of good folks, hundreds of them, all joining me in a circle of Fah Who For-Aze. I haven't received an unkind comment in years.  I get to let it rip - tell all the gory details of bad things that happen to chickens and unspeakable things that can be found under bunk beds, and I know my people will love me still.

But, last night, my husband was the peer to break me.

As he sat on the couch dreading his return to work - he will leave today for a fourteen day hitch - he calmly said, "You just have to DO something."  He didn't mean DO something like "Make me a sammich, woman" because he would never ever ever say that to me if I was sitting next to him on the couch.  He would absolutely get at least arm's length away from me.

He meant DO something with...my writing...with all the mess swirling around in my head, which I sometimes manage to squeeze out in intelligible paragraphs.  He meant he wanted me to move out of my comfort zone...maybe even shimmy down the grape arbor and go running into the street.  I heard him, and I felt it.  I almost felt like he wanted me to do it for HIM, which is all I ever need to do anything at all.

But, see...we need to be clear here- when I shimmy down the arbor and run into the street, I usually have on some mismatched pajamas, and I usually have a death grip on a donut, and I am usually chasing and cursing an animal who is about to poop in your yard, and I am usually being followed by scantily clad children who are carrying blunt objects, and I am usually about to cry...or maybe laugh really loudly instead of cry...or maybe I am reciting my grocery list...BUT...no matter what train wreck comes rolling out into the street because of me and with me...it is all a part of me, and I wouldn't be allowed down the grape arbor without all of it.  I do not travel alone.  I am a part of a dangerous gang, and we are packin.

I am going to blog now. I am going to blog because I never did have a darn grape arbor near my window, and even if I had, I would have been too afraid to go down it,

so here we come - all of us...out into the street, but...

don't snark or pith on my blog...

leave my spinal cord alone please.