Weekend Update

If I had hired myself to write this blog, I would totally fire myself.  Because what is this?  Posting once a week?  How do you expect to keep your traffic up if the posts are all moldy oldies?  Seriously.  Get it together, Self, or you’ll be looking for new (unpaid, thankless, pointless) work.

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So this morning, I went to a baby shower.  I had asked my daughter if she wanted to go–she’s 7, you know, and in love with babies–but at the last minute, she decided against it.  I was shocked!  That’s just a residual headache speaking.  I don’t think she’s feeling entirely better yet.

So I drove thirty or forty minutes to the gathering at someone’s house.  I love driving with a GPS barking out step-by-step directions, though I do find myself not paying any attention at all to where I am and where I’m turning.  I’m becoming absolutely dependent on that bit of technology.  If all the satellites in the sky ever crash, I will be immobilized or driving in circles like I”m stuck in a  roundabout.

I pulled into the driveway, only one minute late and congratulated myself.  I retrieved my iPhone and sat in the driveway for a few minutes taking care of something with a deadline.  As I sat there, the front door opened and two women emerged.  They kind of stared at my car in the driveway–there were four or five other cars–and I wondered if maybe I had blocked them in.  I opened my door, stood and said, “Did I block you?”

They looked at me like I was a foreigner from a distasteful country.

“I’m here for the baby shower.  Is this the right place?”

They shook their heads at me and pointed down the gravel road.

I was so grateful I hadn’t bounded up the stairs to that house.  How awkward.

The baby shower was lovely.  The pregnant woman is one of those remarkably pregnant-pregnant tiny women with a beach-ball shaped belly and absolutely no double-chin.  I wish I had been that type of pregnant woman, but alas, I was not.  I had a double-chin.  And back fat.  (Okay, let’s not destroy all the mystique I have left on this blog.)

After two hours, I headed to the library where I very studiously worked on my long-neglected novel.  I have no idea if it’s holding together.  I wish it were a snowman, plain to see if the thing is packing together and taking shape.  It feels more like digging a moat around  sandcastle, just piling up the sand, patting it into place and hoping it will hold against the tide.  As if.

I had tentative plans to meet Mrs. Darling (of Dishpan Dribble), but it didn’t work out.  Instead, I went to see “Precious,” a movie about a 350-pound illiterate 16-year old mom of two babies who is abused by her mother.  Not exactly an easy movie to watch.  I only went because I’ve heard the buzz about it and I think maybe it will get some Oscar nominations–and I like to see all the Oscar-nominated movies before the award show.  I did enjoy the camaraderie of watching that particular movie in a full theater where many of the viewers talked out loud to the screen.  Some people hate that, but I think it’s like watching a movie while hearing someone else’s thoughts, too.  It’s almost like a conversation, a shared moment.

Also worth noting was the absolute bedlam in the parking lot, box-office lines and inside the theater because of “New Moon.”  I have never seen so many people lining up for tickets nor lining up to enter the movie.  I haven’t read Twilight or its sequels yet, and so haven’t seen the movies, either, but the fanfare is really quite remarkable.

Then I came home, cleaned up the kitchen, Twittered (for my job) and here I am, shocked at the neglect of this blog!

Okay, well, not really.

I had thought I would do better but I did not.

However, tomorrow is a new day.  And today is an old day so I’m going to go read.  (Elizabeth Berg’s Never Change which I adore.  When I grow up, I’m going to be Elizabeth Berg.)