I know, I know....

...you're waiting for part two of "Funeral In A Small Town. The truth is, I'm having trouble. I want to convey the humor and the unique cultural flavor while still remaining respectful and that's proving harder than I thought. I don't know how to say this without sounding really flippin smug and pompous, so I'll just out with it....writing is not hard for me. It's really innate and instinctive, like breathing. Much of what I write is not "crafted", it just happens. So when I find myself struggling, it's disconcerting. It's almost like someone has put one of those weird BDSM masks over my head with only two little straws in the nostril holes to provide air. I can breathe (write), but it's a laborious, panicky, and so....deliberate. When I try too hard, everything I write sounds stilted and contrived. This is what I fear about making the commitment to write a book.

Anyway...I've decided I need to take a break, clear my mind, and come back to it later refreshed and refocused. Often when I do this, snatches of thought and fragments of prose come to me while doing the most mundane things...brushing my teeth, scrubbing a toilet, cleaning the cat box. Then I have to stop what I am doing and rush to the computer before it is obscured by the grocery list, dentist appointments and the other mindless detritus that litters my life. At my house it's not uncommon to find a forgotten pot boiling merrily on the stove, or a scrub brush bobbing in the toilet bowl, or the mop and pail abandoned in the middle of the kitchen floor. Once I scorched some peas so badly I had to dispose of the pot. The kids have peed on the toilet brush more times than I can count. And my kitchen floor is often mopped in stages, sometimes days apart.

So, I'm just writing to write, putting the words down as they come to me without really putting forth any effort to paint a verbal picture or properly characterize a person, place or thing. That means this will probably be a pretty disjointed rambling post, so feel free to skip it. I'm going to disgorge a few banal thoughts and not worry about being highbrow or erudite.

Ummm...OH! Okay. You all probably know that I am a hardcore bibliophile, and it's rare that I find a book so incredibly bad that I don't finish it. This book, is that bad. The premise is interesting, and the research seems pretty exhaustive. But the grammar is so poor and the sentence structure is so clumsy that it is actually painful to read. I found myself reading passages 3 and 4 times to puzzle through the meaning. I finally gave up. And I know this is inexcusably sexist of me, but men writing as women always comes off sounding terribly ersatz and forced. The only good thing about this book is that it made me realize that if something this bad was accepted by some publisher, perhaps I have a shot after all.

By contrast, this book, ROCKS. The two are similar only in that they are both archeological thrillers. Comparing the two is like comparing Mikasa to Corelle. I'm not much of a thriller reader in general, because they tend to be very trite and formulaic, even from one author to another. But Preston and Child always manage to make their plots fresh and interesting with truly surprising twists. In addition, their books are usually packed with well researched historical/anthropological/achealogical information and this one is no exception. If you haven't read any Preston and Child, do so.

In the same vein, don't watch this movie. It is positively abysmal, and will give you a whopping case of motion sickness to boot. I don't know what it is with all the supposedly innovative and clever camera tomfoolery that they are doing these days, but I think it's just dumb. In this case, the technique is called "hypershake" and it is used to lamentable excess. Plus, the plot was stupid, the acting was horrendous, and the ending was beyond ridiculous.

Recently, I've realized that I am somewhat of a blogging oddity. I am a post-natal, pre-menopausal, mid-life, stay at home Mom, who still has kids at home, but whose life no longer revolves around parenting. This blogosphere demographic is not exactly rife with members at the moment. I've been searching, and I've found that we are disconcertingly few. Thankfully, I have Kvetch to turn to when I am feeling like the odd man out, and when I'm feeling a little removed from the issues that are being discussed among the so-called Mommybloggers. Not that I dislike Mommybloggers. I don't at all. I truly enjoy reading and remembering. But when I read those blogs, it's with a kind of wistful fondness makes me wish things were that simple again. And honestly, beyond "it will pass" and "follow your instincts" I don't have a great deal to offer in terms of comments.

And the reverse is true as well. Young Moms focused on getting through the sleepless nights and leaky breasts and poop issues aren't really finding my issues all that relevant to them. It's hard to reason through what you're going to say to a pre-teen about pre-marital sex at some point in what seems to be the very distant future, when you're running on three hours of sleep because the parasite that you birthed cannot seem to function for more than 3o minutes without a human nipple clenched between it's toothless jaws.

I'm thinking of starting a blogring for us disenfranchised not quite ready for the red hat bloggers. What should I call it?

My husband is wonderful. Sometimes, I wonder how in the world I ended up with him. Last week, in the midst of the grief and the mourning, he still reached out to me when I was feeling lost. He let me know that whatever I needed, he would help me find and that he would do anything to support me. What a guy. When I read this site, it makes me sad that every woman can't have the unconditional love and support that I have. I don't use this term often, because of its religious connotations, but I am blessed with a truly wonderful husband. He's not perfect and I'm not either. We don't have a perfect marriage. Sometimes, we drive each other crazy. But underneath it all, there is love and respect and something that I think some people don't have, which is a genuine LIKE for their spouse. He's my best friend.

I guess that's all the rambling thoughts I have. And I feel a little better now. I'm going to go scrub toilets and wait for the rest of "Funeral in a Small Town Part 2" to come to me.

Thanks for tuning in. I want to get it right, so I am resisting the urge to push myself, but I'll try not to keep you waiting too long.