Maybe It's Time For a Blog Redesign

Sometimes I miss the old me. You know, back when I used to be funny and write about humorous things on this here old blog. It has been a gradual evolution from college student to my current infatuation with my child and camera. The title moved from "Happy Thoughts" to "Hazardous Undertakings" in the course of a couple of years.

Lately, I've thought up some new possible titles:


"Pictures of my kid!"

"Stuff I've made from other people's ideas!"

"What happens when a perpetual academic overachiever stays home with her kid all day!"

"Something to read when you have a smart phone and the need to go #2"

"Item #5 on the post email compulsory website checking queue"

"Your link list to other people in the family"

"Adventures I went on to make my life cool! Or at least seem cool when looked at months/years later"

or probably the most apropo,

" PLEASE VALIDATE MY LIFE, FRIENDS AND STRANGERS OF THE INTERNET!"

You know, I adore looking at other people's blogs who post pictures solely of their kids and life in general. They are pretty much a favorite. Even when I don't even know them, although I do chant my mantra of "Lurking does not make me a creep. Lurking does not make me a creep" after indulging in a friendship that exists only in my head.  My version of the lifestyle blog will just never seem as interesting simply because it's mine. And because I live in Arizona. I'm pretty sure if I lived on the east coast or somewhere where the water is blue instead of lentil soup green.

This silly "whoa is me" attitude is a partial result of reading someone else's exceptionally funny prose. I just read another Laurie Notoro book and got crazy jealous because she writes about how she started playing the Sims and almost got divorced and I'm laughing hysterically. I'm not jealous of the Sims playing. I succumbed to a summer of virtual peopledom once in high school and emerged looking for the bladder bars under people's feet and trying to figure out how they didn't manage to kill their children because my virtual children always died. One summer was enough for me.

I can't even tell you the year of that summer because I lost so much to that game. I could probably deduce it from a vague memory of the family computer being in the study instead it's final resting spot in the family room, but since no one else judges time by furniture placement, I wouldn't be able to confirm it. Now if I could correlate it to boyfriend my sister had at the time, I wouldn't even need carbon dating. Although I don't think she dated a boy named Carbon, but I could be wrong if it happened that summer.

So this book. And the other book I read by her. Most of the chapters are stories easily summarized into two sentences For example, "I went to Disneyland with my nephew and soaked my white Tshirt on Splash Mountain. I fell in the dirt later and kids laughed at me." Yet I find myself cackling  like a 3rd grader who just correctly identified the kid guilty of a loud stinky fart. Then I do the annoying thing readers do to people in the room privy to their literary giggles: I try and explain and/or read the passage to my husband in an effort to share the hilarity and get validation that it deserves an out loud laugh.

Really I just get a sample of my husband's amazing ability to patronize me without making me feel patronized. This talent of his brought me to the state of matrimony in the first place so I happily continue reading him passages. Usually I get another two in before I get annoyed at how long it takes to read out loud versus in my head and my husband's kind eyes start to veer back towards whatever screen he graciously pulled himself away from.

If listening to someone else explain a funny part in a book isn't true love, I don't know what is. he even muted the basketball game for me.

So in an effort to stave off my feelings of "Look what my life has become!" I decided I needed a  humorous Laurie Notoro-esque ranting post, if only to prove to myself I can still do it like I did in my adolescent infested teaching days. Back when the white couch was parallel to the walkway in the front room and the sectional still had the wedge in it.