What Little I Know

I was stunned when Arianna Huffington sold her blog for millions of dollars. Who knew a blog is worth money? I immediately went blog-diving to see what's out there and was amazed at how other writers present themselves. Some take themselves quite seriously, as if their thoughts matter more than those of the average Jane or Joe. The most pretentious blogs have a section called About Me that documents the blogger's valuable professional experience, marital status or number of pets. 

This morning I read one of those pretentious blog's Statement of Purpose that said: "I offer my blog as a resource for busy working moms." Barf. That particular sentence was written by a Washington, D.C. real estate agent who "understands how hard it is to juggle work and family life." What juggle? How busy is she? I guess not too busy since her blog posts go on and on.

For me, a blog allows me to keep writing, an activity I find as much fun as eating but a lot less fattening. Not as much fun as oil painting, but blogging is a lot neater and there is almost no cleanup. There's also no boss, no agenda, no assigned subject and no deadline. It's sort of like when musicians get together for a jam session, only it's just me. I can write it off the top of my head, then go back the next day and improve it, change a word or a phrase, correct a typo.

As for my mission, even when I write about something weighty, I'm just kidding. I assume that anyone who has a need for correct and/or urgent information will be looking elsewhere. Besides, I am an expert on only a very few things, and have never written about them. My areas of expertise: 
     1. Cleaning litter boxes. My cats have barely finished doing their business before I'm on the scene with a scooper. The thought of cat excrement lying in open containers around my house is a great motivator.
     2. Cooking soup. Nobody makes better soup than me, and I defy anyone to try. Again, this is not something one can write about since you need a kitchen and lots of ingredients. Besides, soup just happens, I guess you could call it a natural gift. (Here's a tip: if there aren't any onions in the house, don't even think about it.)
     3. Reading people's minds. I do this constantly with my husband, a skill with very little practical use to anyone else, but it comes in handy every so often and naturally keeps him quite honest in his dealings with me. Even better, at cocktail parties I can always tell when the person with whom I'm engaged in idle chatter thinks I'm an asshole.
     4. Weighing myself surreptitiously. I have done this daily, and sometimes more often than that, for the last 40 years. I weighed myself on the walk back to my hospital room after 23 hours of labor giving birth to my son when the nurse escorting me looked away. I have stripped down and weighed myself on many doctor's scales in empty examining rooms while waiting for another family member to be seen by a physician. It's tricky but it can be done, and unlike shoplifting, if you get caught it's not going on your record. Finally I purchased a regulation doctor's scale so I don't have to do that anymore.