Ideas

 I like this picture.  I think if I could draw my thoughts, they would look a lot like this.  Only more crammed together.  And I'd never use chalk.  Chalk makes your hands feel parched.

I never know what I'm going to write about on this blog.  I have ideas, but as the days go by, it is becoming increasingly clear that everyone around me has even more.  Like the spouse.  Sometimes, when he voices a particularly witty remark he'll say, "You should blog about that!  You totally should, it would be so funny!"  But I find I don't have much to say about fairy-godmother-glitter being the most offensive kind of dust, or coffee presses being the far superior method for brewing morning coffee.  I despise all dust, fairy or otherwise, and as I am not a coffee-drinker, cannot distinguish the merits of one brewing method over another.  Plus, I'm not convinced that the whole coffee brewing issue really qualifies as "funny."  There isn't anything inherently entertaining about a coffee press (as opposed to say, the coffee machine my mother-in-law owns that churns out individual cups of coffee, decaf, or tea and that for me, requires a user's manual and/or one of the children's help to successfully use, no matter how many times I have used it on previous occasions.  It also is not hilarious, but has the potential to be so because of how complicated it is, and because of how twittery I get when I use it).

And then there is the younger-brother-with-unlimited-mobile-minutes.  He would like to see several posts devoted entirely to his (admittedly beloved and adorable) offspring.  I barely want to include details of my own children, let alone his who are still at that wonderful unsullied age where they love you unabashedly and tote their security blankets everywhere.  Alternatively, the Y.B.W.U.M.M. would appreciate it if I chronicled his wife's adventures with fire, which again, I'm not doing.  Everybody at some time or another, no matter how careful they are about their stove, has lit the kitchen in their new house on fire.  Those burn marks all over the floor where you stamped out the deluge of flames are a testament to your love of cooking, family, and fun.

I myself really wanted to process the issue of ear gauging (you know, where the "earring" is that horrible hollow sphere that makes the person's ear lobe look like a giant, tautly-stretched bicycle tire?).  But as I scanned the web for pictures to include with my thoughts, I actually started feeling a little sick, so I had to abandon the idea.  Turns out that really anything that involves the highly unnatural and the human body completely grosses me out.  A few years ago when I fainted during an eye exam, I calmly explained to Olga-the-optometrist-assistant upon awakening that my eyes cannot be touched - that's why they have lids to cover them.  Eyelids are natural, touching my eye with a little device to measure glaucoma is not.  Earlobes are natural, stretching them out in concentric, see-through rings of pain is not.  Incidentally, the younger-brother-with-unlimited-mobile-minutes refers to those with ear gauges as having "FILS" - Future Income LimiterS.  I have to agree.  I really can't see some high power executive trotting around the big city with her earlobes (or what's left of them) bobbing jauntily around her shoulders.