momfoolery

Merry Christmas.

It feels perfect to me that the introduction to my blog comes in my third post. It happened this way because my oh so very long-suffering husband nailed it straight to the wall when I opened my Christmas present from him. and it was just a piece of paper on which was written in his lovely handwriting, “Your blog is up and running.”  

Oh my god.

Backstory is that Spouse and I have been taking care of my mom for a while, with varying degrees of success. And my modus operandi (aka, the way I roll) is to write constantly about everything that is going on in my life, and then freak out about anything to do with taking the next step toward making my writing public. Way back in the day, I was too shy to even consider having an audience, but after that fell away, it became a terror of feeling inadequate in the face of technology. And logistics. And struggling to untangle how to do the things that most other people on this planet seem to do easily. Like communicate via proper channels. Should I text? Or email? Or, god forbid, call and leave a message?

At one point during this process of me screwing things up and then writing about it, my computer went down. My husband swooped in, as he is wont to do, and handled it, by calling his young friend Dariuish (he who carries the name of a wonderful king, btw) to help. Dariush is a computer guy, so he came in, swept off with our machine under his arm, promising to come back with everything running smoothly.

Daruish delivered on his promise and life rolled on. Much later, Spouse casually mentioned to me that, when talking to Dariush, he’d emphasized that he needed to please make sure that all of our files survived intact because, “my wife writes, and if any of her stuff gets lost, she’ll freak out.” Dariush said, when he returned our machine, “Yeah, this was pretty unprofessional, but I was curious. I opened one of your wife’s files. She can really write.”

I immediately knocked Spouse back and pinned him against the wall. “WHAT!!! He said WHAT??? Wait, tell me exactly how he said it. Did he emphasize ‘really’ or ‘write’? Or she?? Oh my god…!!!” Now’s the part where I release Spouse and run around the room screaming.

Sweet Dariush, whom I barely met once, gave me the shot in the arm to take myself just a tiny bit more seriously as a writer. I felt like I could call myself a writer, for better or for worse. Thanks, dude.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago when Spouse couldn’t think of a thing to get me for Christmas, and he decided that finally untangling the nightmare of starting my blog would be the perfect thing. Which it was.

Spouse and I have stared down the barrel of all those perky youtube videos, about how it will take two minutes and only 50 braincells to start your very own blog! It’s so easy! Any idiot can do it! And considering how many idiots have done it that, it must be true, meaning that Spouse and I are some special breed of Super Idiots. Sometimes I guess excelling at something is better than nothing, so we rested on our laurels. Meaning we gave up.  Many months passed, and then Christmas loomed, so Spouse called Dariush.

That became the first in a long string of phone calls – national and international – between Spouse, my sister-in-law, my super tech savvy nephew, and Dariush that spanned the length of an entire Cowboys game which Spouse missed. Spouse has been a fan since Tom Landry years; this was a huge sacrifice.

But he pulled it off, and put tears in my eyes. Thanks honey. Tonight, mom is coming over for Christmas dinner. I’m sure she’ll say something hilarious, and I am absolutely committed to writing a post about it. As always, for better or worse.

So today, the most holy of all days, (except for all those others) please celebrate by giving me the gift of a like on Yelpbook, or a couple of stars on Instaface. Kidding, of course. Just go out and have yourself the merriest day you can. And say something sweet and silly to some random joe who is personing a cash register. They might appreciate it.