Three Oreos and a Warm Root Beer

I stop myself from writing in this blog a lot. Sometimes more than once per day. I have a peculiar attitude about the whole thing and can never seem to wrestle myself into any sort of consistency.

The trouble is I don't want to be trivial, not in a trivial sort of way. I don't mind being trivial if it's sort of interesting -- oftentimes interestingly trivial blogs are the very best kind. But it's very hard to see anything interesting in my own trivialities. So I come up with a dumb title and write a couple paragraphs and then go, what the flip am I doing, and back out without saving.

I could have done that just now. But I didn't, somehow. I seem bound and determined to write something, to go to the world, hey, you don't care but here I am. Here's me. Yep. Right here. Hey.

The real trouble, of course, is a) I am altogether too serious ... charming and humorous enough in person if I want to be, but put a keyboard in my hand and the light wit and dancer-like physicality go right on out the window, and b) I have way too much on my mind of a nature that I just can't share with y'all, much as I'd like to, much as it would probably help me to, but that would be selfish, and really, you don't want to know. Other people's strangely inexplicable problems can be diverting for a little while, but only a little while, and you didn't come here for that, so why start.

But tonight is different. Why? It's no secret to those whose opinions matter (and a few whose don't) that I'm deeply conflicted over this married-going-on-twenty thing, that I've got strong impulses yanking me in diverse directions; yet it seems that when my wife is out of town, I just can't get anything started, and I end up losing the entire weekend to a weird sense of uncertainty, like a ship tossing in the ways without lines to hold her in or sails and oars to take her out. Her thought was, hey, you've got all weekend, you can write. My thought was, hey, I've got all weekend, I can focus on some household project or other that people are usually in the way of. The reality was, hey, what have I done anyway. Pretty much nuthin'.

So I blog. Blogito ergo sum. A reminder I'm alive (breathing was never much proof of it).

Well, I did order tickets. That's a commitment. It will be interesting to see what we do with it. I need to break up some mental concrete and that's one way. Indeed, it's been all I can think about. The need for escape is that great. I don't mean marital escape -- we're going together. Maybe it'll be a make it or break it thing. That's fine. Truth will out.

Also went to Borders, because I have several gift cards in my wallet and I'm tired of sitting on all that bulky plastic. Cruised around. Leaned against a shelf reading bits and pieces of various books in the "19th Cent US History" section. Went away without buying a thing. I don't like to stack up unread books, and I've already got a stack. Besides, whenever I read something, I feel like writing; and sometimes I actually start to, but it doesn't go very far, mainly because my thoughts cannot stay on topic but instead fall off into the myriad channels that I claim I can't (or won't) write about here. It is possible that I'm simply going crazy. Sometimes I think that would be the easier path. But it doesn't really work that way, does it.

I'm surprisingly positive for one thirty in the morning. Must be the Oreos and root beer.

So here's what I got at the silent auction that was part of a fundraiser for the high school jazz band. We had a spaghetti dinner, and I spent an hour and a half shoveling spaghetti onto plates before I got to sit down and eat some. When I saw this thing, I had to have it. If you have to ask why, well, you know how that goes.


It's a telephone.