I have a blog?

Oh, blog. Where have I been? I'm not really sure. I feel like I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off for about two weeks now. Somewhere between my obsessive coupon savings and two sets of grandparents arriving to spoil one Piglet and two birthday parties and a flurry of fall shopping and tennis and book club and one year pictures and checkup and a bridal shower to boot, my blog got lost. I misplaced my blog. A concerned comment from Reader Mindy yesterday jogged my memory, and I tried to shake off the cobwebs and get something down.

I was reading over at AMP's that to seek your creative....um, -ness, you should write three full pages every morning as a sort of brain dump. I'm pretty sure I'd get at least half a page out of giggling over the phrase "brain dump", but after that I think it might help clear up my head. My head right now is so full of things I need to do or stuff I'm wondering about that I am struggling to come up with anything of remote interest to write about. Though this completely defeats the purpose of a brain dump, which is to clear your head so that you can write about something good, I'm going to do a practice brain dump right here and now for your reading pleasure.

Pigs' Brain Dump:

First of all, it just occurred to me that my blog actually is a brain dump. I should really just change the title to "Brain Dump" and remove any notions of quality that could be accidentally inferred. When I think of a brain dump, I have this image of a bulldozer/diggie machine scooping poop out of my brain. Not that I have poop in my brain, it's just an image, but I can't help what I see. This paragraph is kind of like a piece of brain poop. A thought log, if you will.

Why do people say "if you will"? If you will what? If you will partake of my thought log? "Not a log in the sense that you think I have a log..." Betcha can't name that quote. Well, Eddie can, so she's disqualified. Someone else then. Anyone, anyone. Bueller? I love the movie When Harry Met Sally. I could watch it every day and find something new to laugh at. I remember that it must have been a summer movie because it came out when I was at the beach one year. I wasn't allowed to see it because it was rated R. Well, that and who sees movies at the beach? You're there to be beaching, not movieing. Speaking of movie ratings, I remember when PG-13 came about. I was in sixth grade and two of the first movies to be rated PG-13 were Dirty Dancing and Gremlins. I wasn't allowed to see either of them, as I was only 12. Because this is a huge difference that my parents wished to emphasize. So my friends told me all about both movies. I was bitter. Still might be a little bit.

Time for a new thought log. I have a lot to do. I'm going to be teaching writing at my old school again like I did last year. I'm fairly certain the principal still despises me, but admires my teaching abilities because she reluctantly keeps hiring me back. I suspect it vexes her that she can't make me attend faculty meetings or participate in her inane little games. That's half the joy of this gig. It doesn't start until November, so I need to kind of put it out of my mind for a while. DUMP! Whew. That feels better already.

I have a load of thank you notes to write to the kind people who gave Piglet fun toys for his birthday. I've taken great care to buy toys without batteries that are quiet. I guess that's why a kid has to have family and friends - to buy him all the loud "fun" stuff that I avoid. Which reminds me that Christmas is coming up. It stresses me out to think of Christmas. I'm already jotting down ideas for people and trying to get a few things knocked out. Is it so wrong if I don't get Piglet much for Christmas? He'll be 15 months old and we won't even be at home. Will he really know? Really? I don't think so. We'll worry about Santa Claus next year.

I've dumped a whole lotta brain here. I hope this long post makes up for my ten day vacay I unintentionally took from my blog. Am I at three pages yet? I used to make my students do this before we started writing for real. This is the part when they would start whining....my hand hurts! I can't think of anything else! My pencil broke! Wah, wah, wah....

The crying sound reminds me of last week when I took Piglet to have his one year old pictures made. He was pretty happy until the picture folks sat him up on a block and he fell off onto his face. That made him very sad. And it made the manager very nervous. He kept flitting around me offering to pay for a doctor visit if I decided to take him. I had flashbacks to the night of the falling sink. In case you're interested, the two year mark of that event was September 25, Piglet's birthday. The lawyer occasionally communicates with me regarding my alleged case, but as far as I can tell, nothing is really happening with it. I would just like to go visit Eddie at some point, so it would be nice if my trial would commence. I wonder how many pages this would be if I had handwritten it, as AMP instructed.

I am continually interrupted by the urge to play Scrabble on Facebook. I admit, it's a nerdy obsession that I have enjoyed of late. I'm not even good at Scrabble, but for some reason it's enjoyable to play online against people I know. And one person from the blog world who I don't technically know, but it seems like I do. You know how that goes. You probably feel like you know me quite well, which is kind of freaky. What's really freaky is when you find out people you do know read your blog and you didn't know it. I mean, what if you said something about them? I tend to have mild issues with talking about people, so this is a risky game. A risky, risky game. (Hi, Lindsey's mom!)

I must tell you, my brain feels quite liberated. Freed. As though it has been expunged. Evacuated. My brain totally pooped. Maybe now I can start fresh with something coherent next time I post. I promise not to wait for two more weeks. Here, I end my first brain dump.

It seems that I am being summoned to watch our Thursday night television, specifically The Office, so I better sign off now. I hope that I have mended any broken fences and redeemed myself in terms of posting. I will try to do better.