The short answer is, "I don't know."
The longer answer is … well, longer. I don't know why I sometimes go so long without posting. It's not that stuff isn't happening. It's not that I don't have thoughts about stuff that's happening. It's not even that I don't write about my thoughts about stuff that's happening. It's just I don't post. And as I've mentioned before the more time I go without posting, the harder it is to post. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe the longer it goes, the more I feel like I have to have a comeback post (don't call it a comeback, I've been here for years). Maybe it's because lately I've felt like if I didn't have something significant to say, I had no business saying it. Which is so weird and unlike me. I mean, for a girl addicted to reality TV I should know things don't have to be significant to be interesting. (Which reminds me - have you seen RuPaul's Drag Race … oh me oh my - that's some good TV - hokay???) It all sort of makes me wonder why I started this blog in the first place. I mean it certainly wasn't because I thought anyone would read it. It was more just because. Just because I wanted to. And because Jeff talked me into it. And, if I'm totally honest, I write about things to figure out how I feel about them. So here's an insight. Since I'm writing but not posting, maybe I don't want to you know how I feel.
Lord. I'm such a control-freak sometimes.
I talk to my mom all the time. And by "all the time", I mean, when I want to - not necessarily when she calls. However, we do end up emailing or calling or texting multiple times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. I talk to my sister all the time too. phone calls, texts, email, pics back and forth. It's always been this way. Regardless of their occasional claims that I don't answer the phone, we talk all the time. Even before cell phones and friends and family plans and no penalty for calling long distance, we talked. Even when I went away to college and I had to dial crazy long combinations of numbers to be able to dial out on the dorm phone and charge the call back to my school account. Even when my sister moved to Detroit and worked crazy hours at a gladiola farm. Even when my mom moved to Florida and, for reasons I shant discuss, I had to go through the hassle of buying a long distance phone card so I could call her and it wouldn't show up on my home phone bill. And even when one or more of us has traveled overseas and paid ungodly amounts just to call home to say "Hi" and "How are you?" and "The weather is cloudy" and "Do you know how much wine I'm allowed to take back on the plane?" and "Hey guess what? I'm on the great wall!"
"Yeah, how is it?"
"Well, it's … great! And also, this call is costing me 20 dollars."
The thing is, we never run out of things to say. In fact, we rarely say anything of any importance. My sister once told me that sometimes after a 30 minute conversation with me, my brother-in-law, Bobby, will ask, "What'd you talk to your sister about?" And she'll have to say "Um. I don't know. Nothing I guess" and he'll say "Well, how's her work?" and she'll say "Um, fine I guess" and he'll say "Well how's the family?" and she'll say "Um, dunno, okay I suppose" and he'll say "Well how's her running and biking and swimming going?" and she'll say "<shrug> We didn't talk about it" and he'll say "Well what the heck did you talk about?" and she'll say, "STUFF!"
"Stuff" takes a long time to talk about. I guess because "stuff" is everything else. It's the in-between. It's the non-urgent. It's the mundane. It's the color of one bag of brown sugar compared to another. It's a conversation about wine labels and wine bottle colors. It's the size of the bristles of a toothbrush and why aren't they called teethbrushes? It's the difference between a ceramic flat iron and a regular one. It's lamenting about the amount of junk mail and discussions about how what would happen if we just started hanging up the phone without saying goodbye – to anyone – ever. It's a news article about mirror neutrons and the best solution for keeping your trips organized. It's the celebration of finding the right sized plastic box to keep photos stored in and a new mascara that doesn't flake. It's a 2008 penny that looks as old as an Indian head, a guy in a red porkpie hat and a mustard colored jacket, a new discovery about the check engine light and the dog is eating a q-tip. It's accidentally eating the thing in your new purse that says DO NOT EAT and the tulips just starting to poke through the mud. It's have you seen google today? and do they have daylight savings in china and speaking of china do you remember where we got those white plates? It's knoxberry farms jellies, the proper placement of silverware and Target just 19.99'd me to death. It's the corned beef sandwich in Cleveland and the bitter taste in my mouth after eating pine nuts. It's the theory behind muscle memory and the discovery of a twix bar in the glove box. It's the fattest robin I've ever seen, the biggest dog on the block, the rearview mirror broken off and the house key disappearing. It's the strange smell in the car that reminds me of kindergarten paste and it's a call back about the new mascara actually flaking.
Because it always flakes. Eventually.
It's everything.
It's nothing.
It's life.
So this blog cycles through … for a while it goes the way of the random stream of consciousness …. And then for a while it goes the way of the important and significant … and then for a while, it goes the way of the dodo.
But, like a bad penny ….