Inaugural Address

Have you ever noticed that courage is easier to find at night? Maybe its the lights being on in your house, and all the doors locked, and knowing that darkness is outside and can't intrude. Maybe its the sheer delerium of exhaustion, or the glass of wine you drank and the one belonging to your husband that you finished when he wasn't looking. I am not sure what it is, but I KNOW I am braver at night than in the light of day.

Last night, in a moment of wine-free, possibly delereium induced bravery, I set up a blog...Correction, my husband set it up for me, and I washed dishes and called out passwords and such for him to type into his laptop. The kids somehow heard us calling to each other across the room (I don't know how they can hear anything over themselves, for they are, without doubt, the worlds loudest humans) and paused in their squealing, laughing, playing noise to ask me questions.

"Why are you going to have a blog, Mommy?" asked Clay, my 7 year old.
"I don't know, Clay," came my reply. "I don't have anything to say, but I can't ever seem to stop talking, and I think its driving Daddy crazy, so he's setting up a place where I can ramble all I want."
"What are you going to call it?" This question came from my almost 10 year old daughter, Faith.
"We were just talking about it," I told her. " and I don't know that either. I want it to be something clever, and original, and not lame." And after a few more minutes, the only thing we could come up with was...my name. Which isn't clever, or original, and its really, really lame. So, it seems failure is the first emotion to follow courage. Awesome.
"What will you write about?" Again, this question from Faith. She seemed immensly concerned about this blog being done right, and I couldn't decide if that was because she was afraid it would make me or her look less cool. Probably both, but then maybe thats just my hope that she finds me cool at all talking. I shrugged my shoulders as I started the dishwasher.
"Anything I want to. I guess I will have to think about it."
"I know, Mommy!" chimed in Nate, my almost 5 year old. "You can tell funny stories about us like you do on facebook!" He said all this while jumping up and down and throwing himself around the room for no apparant reason. Sometimes I wonder if that kid has ants in his pants ALL THE TIME.
"I am sure that I will." I laughed.
"Yeah!" Nate went on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I had spoken. "You can tell about that time I got stuck under the trailer because I was trying to get my ball out. Or you can tell about the time my poop looked like Mickey Mouse!"
"No," I shook my head. "I don't think I will be telling any of your potty stories. They are funny, but they might gross people out." Undettered, he dashed off to get into more trouble which I am sure will find its way to this page at some point, and I went back to feeling confident and excited about a new undertaking, however diminishing to my 'cool' status it may turn out to be.

But now morning is here and all courage has flown. Why did I do this? When will I find time for this? Who CARES what I have to say? I mean, the 'me' in my head is very cool, not lame, clever and original...but that ship has already sunk in reality. I often find myself relating to the stick bug in the movie "A Bug's Life" who says to his audience "I am a cute little flower with nothing interesting to say." See!!!! That's not even an original line! And now anyone who reads this will think I find myself 'cute' when in actuality its just part of the line in the movie!!! Crap! This was a mistake.

Maybe I can be like one of those cool bloggers on the movies. You know, there was the one who cooked all those recipes, and blogged about it every day for 365 days???  But I  think that would be cool to start on January 1st...and this isn't. It's not a noteworthy day at all. Its the day BEFORE Valentine's Day. How lame is that?

Or I saw on the news a while back this lady who started blogging about her 'mommy trials' and everyone loved her so much that she is writing a book. Yeah...I'll be like that...and then the momentary carryover of bravery from last night fades, and I am back to stealing lines from children's movies.

After pausing to refill my coffee cup (because it is, after all, only 6 a.m. and who can think straight at 6 a.m. without coffee?) I have made a resolution. I am not going to blog in order to become popular, or to get people to think I am cool, clever, or original. I am not even expecting anyone but me to read this lovely rant I have just written while experiencing a courage hangover. I have decided to metaphorically stick my tongue out at the whole process (oops, not metaphorically...my tongue obviously has a mind of its own) and write because I enjoy writing...and possibly because I am driving my husband crazy with my senseless ramblings.

So, there it is. I promise to tell stories about my four kids. They are by far the funniest and most interesting things in my life. I may tell stories about my husband too, (who is even funnier than my kids, he just likes to keep that a secret from the world) but I have been informed that all stories must be pre-approved by said husband or he will delete the entire blog...which only he can do since I have no idea how it works.

I promise to make absolutely no sense at times and to air all my insecurities that hide at night but can't stop shouting at me in the early morning hours. I vow (to myself, the only one reading this) to ramble and rant to my hearts content, and possibly make horrifying and embarrassing confessions about myself...to myself. I mean, why does it matter, because after this point who will ever think I am cool again? The 'me' in my head has even been knocked down a few notches. I swear to be slightly innapropriate at times. (if you know me in person you know thats basically a given) but for the sake of my parents (who will never read this because they know even less about blogging than I do) I will try really hard to sensor all curse words and super questionable content and replace them with code words...when possible.

So now that I have vowed things to myself over cup of coffee #2, and because I really have to pee (thanks to cup of coffee #1) I am shutting this stupid blog idea down for the day. More-or maybe not- later.

P.S. Why the h*%# doesn't this blog thing have spell and grammer check?