NaBloPoMo Makes My Warts Show

Last night, at a few minutes to midnight, I pressed "publish." Whew! Ten days of NaBloPoMo, and holding. But, as I crawled into bed, I had misgivings.........I blog about whatever occurs to me, about what happens to be going on in my head, especially when I'm under the NaBloPoMo gun.

But maybe there are some things that should be off limits? Maybe I should only talk about cheerful, upbeat stuff? And keep the gloom, the irritation, the frustration, the impatience, the uncensored, unpolitically correct Molly to myself? And how believable would she be? Besides, I argued with myself, who am I writing for? My official answer to that is "Me!" But, truth is, I love when people take the time to put in their two cents. I love to feel I've connected.....

The OC gets up before I do, and so, when I arose, I crept quietly past his office, knowing he'd probably already, in his capacity as chief snoop on my blog, had a look, to see what mischief I had wrought while he'd been snoozing. He smiled and said "G'morning!" [that's our version of "g'day!"]. And so I relaxed a little. It can't have been that bad. After fortifying myself with coffee, I slunk over here to see if there were any comments. And what did I learn?

I learned, once again, that bloggers are empathic souls who roll equally easily with problems shared and mumbly grumbling, as with happy carefree times;

That no family is as perfect as it might seem. We all have problems. Sometimes problem children, sometimes problem elders. Fniucking** about them doesn't mean we don't love them; it just means we're human; that we get frustrated; and exasperated; that once in a while we need to have a little rant. Just a little one.... And then our heads will clear and we'll get things back into perspective.

I learned I'm not the only one to have to stifle a yawn when a story I've heard, at least a million times, is trotted out as a priceless, newly resurrected gem, never before recounted, by a man who is inordinately proud of his prodigious memory.....

I learned that others wonder, too, how we, who presently have the world so firmly by the tail, will deal with the tribulations to come? The misplaced glasses, the fading eyesight..... And the problem of how to find the former without the latter? The brittle, so-breakable bones, the creaky joints, the southerly migration, or total disappearance, of bosoms; the hearing loss. Eh? What's that you say?---THE HEARING LOSS!! And how about those trips to the back of the house? The ones where, once you get there, your mind is blank, and you scratch your balding pate, and wonder what in heaven's name you came here for?? And so you return to the scene from whence you started, in hopes of a glimmer..... It's all good exercise, if you want to look at it in a positive light.

I've warned my daughter, that when these signs and portents become chronic, I'm to be taken out quietly to the north forty, like old Yeller........never to be seen again.

Meanwhile, now is the time to develop the hobbies that will keep our minds occupied so we don't drive our children to distraction with daily organ recitals.* The way I see it, if I'm trying to figure out an intricate quilting pattern in my head, that'll leave less room in there for dwelling on the condition of my liver.....

When I look, in dismay, at the amount of fabric I've accumulated, and the number of patterns I've earmarked in scores of quilt magazines, I remind myself that they represent insurance against idleness in my dotage. I'll feel so useful,[and isn't that the biggest issue?] to be stitchin' something for someone---I may not know who, but I'll trust my children to find homes for all my finally finished projects!

Then there's the small matter of wanting to spend enough time in Ireland to hike all around the coast, taking millions of pictures, and filling notebooks with random babbling, and painting.........

The trouble with the in-laws is they never had the leisure, or the means, to develop hobbies. They were too busy learning new languages at every new place along the way. Hobbies were a luxury enjoyed by people who weren't strapped for cash; people who struggled daily to make a living, so they could feed and clothe and educate their children, so those children could grow up and marry people who would wonder why the in-laws had no hobbies.

And so it goes.


**Fniuking: a "word" of uncertain origins, invented perhaps, by one of our children and meaning grumbling and grousing about something or someone.

*I wish I had invented this one! An organ recital is what you get when you ask a hypochondriac "How are you today?"