Pressure cooked

You know that feeling, when you think you ought to write a post because it’s been a few days, but there is a to do list a mile long staring you in the face and you’ve got nothing?

Yeah. That first sentence was your cue to stop reading and go somewhere else because this will be a directionless ramble. I used up my best writing at 4 am yesterday trying to get Little to go back to sleep again and commenting on another blog. I was passionate and poetic and almost teary about my response. This morning my brain is a dry, wrung out, exhausted dishrag. (See, even my metaphors don’t make sense. How does a dishrag become exhausted exactly?)

My neighbors have a darling little newborn baby. I want to eat him he’s so sweet. So in my clever plot to be allowed to hold him more often I am taking his parents dinner in the evenings. I think corn bread and chili is a fair trade for newborn snuggles. (Well, and I remember those fantastic ladies who barely knew me and brought dinner to my house after the Boy was born and I had a c-section. I decided then that I wanted to be like them when I grew up, so I’m trying. I managed brownies, but have not yet worked up to homemade apple pie and chocolate truffles as they have. Of course, they had older daughters who pitched in…)

We are speaking at a fundraiser in two weeks. The practice session is this Sunday, which means I must be prepared by then to talk and show pictures. I’m not really a shrinking violet when it comes to public speaking, that part doesn’t bother me that much. It’s just the responsibility that gets to me. To have so many lives hanging in balance on how my words communicate their situation. EEEK. Pressure. And you can’t take back a spoken word and go insert a more appropriate one later like in writing, it’s stuck out there. And trust me, I’m good at sticking my foot in my mouth.

Once I was talking to someone about religion, always an ominous beginning, and they were saying something about their heart so I asked, “Do you have a brain?” It was a rhetorical question. I was trying to make the point that I think one’s brain is just as important as one’s heart in matters of faith and that it should be considered too. But in the context it sounded like I was saying that the other person was totally stupid. Yeah, go me. If you were my friend in real life I would probably insult you at least once a month without realizing it. And then if we were really good friends you would tell me that I was a total dweeb, and I would fall all over myself telling you how sorry I was, I didn’t realize. And then if you were one of my best friends ever you would forgive me and we would go on. See, I think all of the people who have been my friends for a really long time are just the people who were willing to forgive me when I made a total dork of myself. I love them dearly, but that doesn’t stop me from saying some pretty stupid things in their presence. 🙂 Perhaps I should be more of a shrinking violet when it comes to talking.

Here’s where I change topic again without a clever segue. I’ve found another reason to be thankful for the time and money spent on a degree that I didn’t complete in a field I no longer want to be in. All of those hours a week spent standing on a stage, in front of an audience of peers and professors, having my singing and playing critiqued by anyone who wanted to comment have served to make me pretty much bullet proof when it comes to fear of speaking in front of others. I think. I mean, there’s not much that will make you sweat more than to have to perform a piece you have prepared, and the stand there under the lights for another 15 or 20 minutes and have your performance analyzed. And then there’s the part where they tell you to try something new, or do this part again only different, so you have to experiment, and OMG, screw up in front of a crowd of people over and over again until you can get it right. Yeah, I’m kind of grateful for that experience now. One less thing to be afraid of.

And now I must go and start the kids on the next subject in school or they will start to PLAY AND HAVE FUN INSTEAD and we all know that can’t be allowed to happen during school hours, they must LEARN STUFF. I’m off to kill the budding fun activity and force them to learn something.

And then I’m going to stuff a turkey because I have one to cook still.