Here it is! My first blog. A number of people have encouraged me to do this - thus the title "You Asked." "You Asked" also serves as my blanket answer to anyone who objects to something I blog about. This will be the place that I let my musings and rants run their course in full rather than being limited to a short Facebook post. I never feel satisified when I have to concentrate my stories down to something that will fit in a FB post. My stories are never brief. There's too much delicious detail that sets the comical tone to whatever I might be going on about to try to be concise. I don't seem to be very worried about how much of your day I am taking up with my intricate storytelling. It's all about me, right?
Speaking of me, here is a short bio so you know where I am coming from. I am the 40 year old, married, mother of 5. Four of them are boys. My children are currently 14, 11, 8, 3, and 4 months. No, we may not be done yet. Quit asking me that. My husband is a computer guy. I am a Christian Education gal. In addition to homeschooling my kids, I have 4 other jobs. I am the Christian Ed. Director at my church, the chair of the Christian Ed. Commission for my diocese, and serve on the executive board of a continental Christian Ed. related thing. I'm being vague because it just occured to me that perhaps none of these organizations wants to be associated with the things that I will be blogging about - namely my messy family life. And I sell digital and traditional scrapbooking supplies in my home business. I'm a conservative Anglo-Catholic. I'm pro-life. We live in a too small for us house. I drive a minivan for obvious reasons, but I am not ashamed or unhappy about it like some people seem to be. I loved my former Jeep Grand Cherokee, but when we had just three kids they looked like a package of hotdogs back there. I like plenty of space and smooth ride.
I rarely sleep which accounts for my dwindling IQ and the need to find humor in things that are not necessarily all that funny. Not that lower IQ and finding everything funny are related. What I mean is, if I didn't laugh about all the things that go wrong or right in my life, I'd be crying. Sleep deprivation makes me funnier, apparently. I'll be unabashed about this - I'm funny. I can't help it. Even when the chips are down, there is some way to find humor with a sarcastic remark. There just is. If you can't find it, I know I can.
So, I hope you enjoy this catalogue of my life. I will try to keep it fun. It will usually be about something my kids did or a funny thing that happened. It might occasionally be about churchy things because I'm a churchy person and it's bound to come up. There will definitely be stories about the agony and ecstasy of big family life. For the faint of heart I give fair warning: there will be bodily functions. Why? Because there are 7 bodies functioning in this house and it never goes completely smoothly. We also have pets. I'll probably mention them from time to time. I read sometimes - I may comment on that. TV shows, news items, the purchase of goods and services gone wrong - I picture these making it in here now and again. Oh, and there will be rants, of course. This is just going to be whatever falls out of my head on a given day. Maybe you'll like it, maybe you'll laugh, maybe not. I'm not making any promises.
At some point there will be enough of these to slap together into a book. Since some of you have many times suggested that I write a book, I will expect you to buy that book even though you have already read the contents here. That seems fair. Remember, you asked.
I try to monitor spelling and grammar, but sometimes it all gets away from me in the effort to capture the story. This is sort of ironic because I can be such a snob about those things with other people. Let's face it, run-on sentences, when properly delivered, are funny. If I'm on a rant and as you are reading you have to stop and gasp for a breath before you hit the period because I have packed so much information in St. Paul-like fashion into said rant, I have done my job. Let's just assume that if you run across an error, I know it's there, I just decided I don't care. My worst trait is ending sentences with prepositions. I tried really hard to formulate that last sentence in such a way as to actually end it with a preposition because I am a smart alec, but I couldn't figure out a way to do it.
I will try not to swear, but just know that as I type, I'm swearing in my head. Like "smart alec" - that was not at all what I was thinking in my head. It's all about self-control. Occasionally, I have it. I don't want people to be thinking, "Wow, the churchy lady swears a lot." I do, but I don't want everyone to know that. Working on that...
I don't know how often I will blog. I may have mentioned I am a bit busy. I'm actually feeling guilty about the other things I should be doing right now, but I'm calling this my sanity break. I'm not even sure how these things work exactly, but I'm giving it a try. I hope it's a fun ride for all of us. Now you can join the crowd of people who are thinking, "I never know what's going to come out of her mouth next."
