Pauline Baird Jones: A Random Act of Blogging…ness.

Since I ramped up my blogging efforts, I examine all elements of my life for possible inclusion in a blog post. Well, not everything. I do shut some mental doors. I’ve discovered that some ideas are…not bad, they just aren’t sufficient unto the day for a whole blog post. So I was mulling what to blog about this week, looking over my list of ideas, and I thought maybe I should commit a random act of blogging-ness.

So, without further ado, here are my insufficient blog post ideas in no particular order (cause that’s how they came to me. And they kind of resist getting order, almost as hard as they resisted being a whole blog post):

• The Post Menopausal ‘stache: When I achieved adulthood, I was…initiated into the society of older women. This initiation mostly involved pregnancy and menopause horror stories. Like guilt, it is the gift that keeps on giving, handed down from one generation to another. So I learned to fear the menopausal ‘stache long before I began to worry about menopause. That fear was helped by the sight of some of the female ‘staches, sprouting on female upper lips of older ladies at church. If one were stupid enough to make fun of one (even the ‘staches sprouting from a well place mole), one would get the ominous, “You just wait.” Well, I have met my ‘stache and it is…weird. It’s not even a half or quarter ‘stache. It lurks on one side of my mouth, like eye brow hairs that got lost or punctuation for a bad sentence. Sometimes it’s ellipsis or commas or periods. I try not to let it achieve question mark length. Sometimes I get it waxed, though it feels silly. And it’s very painful, despite its diminutive size. I swear those hairs are rooted to the back of my head. And that’s all I got on ‘staches. (I looked for an image to go with this section, but it was too painful. Madonna’s daughter has a better ‘stache than I do.)
• Why I didn’t send Christmas cards last year: I had to stop and think about this, because once you pass menopause, the years start to blur together. Then it came to me. Last year the hubs got hip replacement surgery. And I staggered into Christmas relieved I hadn’t gone to jail. Not the letter you want to send to your friends who got Nobel Prizes (yeah, you almost believe I know people who win those, right?) and such that year. (Before you judge, I am also not very reasonable when I’m not feeling well. And he had gotten his hip whacked out and replaced with metal and other crap. Oh, it was me you were judging…hey, he’d gotten his hip whacked out and was pretty cranky. And he’s still breathing…though quite a few characters got whacked in Kicking Ashe, the book that followed his recovery…)

This is the hubs before they whacked out his hip.

• Diet Dr. Pepper: I just love it. When I mix drinks? It’s caff and decaff DDP, but I only do it in the afternoon, the mixing part, cause if I drink caff too late in the day, then I can’t get to sleep. And that’s all I got for this one, too.
• Kids and Thought Transference: I had high hopes for this one, but it’s not that complicated. When my son was little, I had to be careful not to think, “Oh, I hope he doesn’t fill-in-the-blank.” Because if I thought it, he’d do it, like my thoughts were transferred to his brain and then changed thought into terrible action. Example: We were walking into the grocery store and someone was painting some concrete poles white. Yup, I thought it and he did it. There I was holding two, white, wet hands. Couldn’t even dig in my purse for a wet wipe, because he was too little to keep his hands off himself or me. And that wasn’t the only time. So, beware of thought transference around a kid. (This one is a public service message for parents.)
• Spellcheckless: I was having such a miserable time with spell check on my iPhone (it actually changed “most” into mwhahaha. I would not lie about this). I was complaining about it to my sister, who always goes spellcheckless, so I thought, I couldn’t be worse, could it? Turns out it can.

So this is the end. You can relax now. I’ve gotten the not-quite-blog-posts out of my system. Crossed them off my idea list. Set them free. This would also be why I sometimes write short stories. Because some ideas won’t leave, even though they’ll never grow up to be novels. Over the years, I’ve written a number of short stories, though not an impressive number. But a number. My publisher recently assembled them into three collections for me so I could also get them into audio (I’m working through ACX to get all my fiction into audio. Yay!). This also allows readers easy access to all my short stories, instead of having to collect the various anthologies they appeared in.

So, I can finish this if I can just figure out what to ask as my wrap-up question. I didn’t think about this part when I started my random act of blogging-ness. Hmmm…do you have any questions for me? Because I’m drawing a question blank here. And if I don’t ask a question, how do I urge you to comment and thus be entered into my monthly drawing for $10 AnaBanana Gift Card of awesome thusly-ness? I announce the winner in the first blog post of the month, which just happens to be this blog post! See announcement below!

Drum roll please! And the winner is:

Mary Roya!!!

Perilously yours,

Pauline

This random act committed by Pauline Baird Jones