eyes wide open

Blame blogger's block for the lack of winking.

I knew I'd run right into it. [Just like I'm going do run into you, crazy chef/harem-pants man who insists on going the wrong way in bike lane every single day during rush hour. I am not moving next time. I will clothesline you, Mr. Sous Chef at Cheesecake Factory. I will "Jerry 'The King' Lawler style" clothesline you. I will.

Why the block? Well, I'm too obsessed with forcing themes -- like when I declare it's Kinkos Day at work because everyone (or four people) is wearing khakis and light blue button-down shirts). I'm too determined to give everything a sassy headline or subhead -- like when I take our dog Bailey out for a dump and think if I had a baileyblog, this would be titled, "Beagle Bailey reporting for doody."

Or maybe it's because I feel the need to report a trend. Like when I noted yesterday to a friend that the Tour de France seems to attract stars with decidely un-jocky names. Jan, Lance, Floyd, George. Of course I stopped that brilliant line of thinking before getting to any names that would prove me wrong (Greg, Yuroslav) and before letting her point out that other sports do as well: Peyton, Fran, Dwayne, Kimmie, Plaxico, Christian.

And then there's my Time-Life Mystery Book sensibility of finding kismet in barely-there, gossamer strings of connective tissue between the day's events.

Remember those Time-Life Mystery Book commercials? Cue dramatic voice: A woman in Pennslyvania asks for her French salad dressing on the side, at the same time her daughter in California feels a sharp pain in her side as she's putting on a pair of Sassoon jeans. Is it just a coincidence?

Here's a glimpse into a Winky-Life Mystery chapter: On Monday, my friend Beth, who's from Wisconsin and went to school in Madison, called just to say hi. Later that day, another friend at work told me he went to SummerFest in Madison, Wisc., over the weekend and saw Ted Nugent in concert. At that very moment, I was checking my Yahoo account and opening an e-mail from The Brady Campaign, with updates on anti-gun legislation. And you know who loves his guns, don't you? The Nuge.
Hmmm, see the concentric cirles!??!!!

So you can see why I have trouble going topic-sentence free. Or maybe not. Maybe you wonder if I EVER have a topic sentence. But even when it's buried under allusions to hair-band lyrics, high-school reveries, "Facts of Life" plot lines and endless run-on, full-of-hyphenatations lists, the topic sentence is usually there for me.

I can only thank my mom. If having my grammar corrected at my own damn graduation party wasn't bad enough, my English-teaching mother gave me this essay obsession.

True story: Driving down to Florida for spring break, 1996. I kept wailing from the back seat "I have to pee soooooooooooo bad. Can we stop at this exit?" about every 500 feet in Georgia. Every time, my mom and aunt (also a teacher) would chime in with "lee" and keep on driving past the Stuckey's signs and See Ruby Falls billboards. They wanted me to say I have to "pee soooooooooooo badly." Finally after the fifth passed exit and fifth duet of "lee." This 12-year-old losing bladder control and all sense of self-censorshop at the same rate says: "I don't know who in the hell this Lee guy is, but I am sure he does not have to piss like I do."
We stopped at the next exit.
I spend the rest of the trip showing off my command of the simili "I have to piss like a racehorse on Derby Day."

But isn't the point of blogging not having just one point? That's at least why I started doing it. I wanted a place to get down on my random thoughts cycling through my brain -- without worrying if they somehow connected in a way that would make a nice essay.

But that pesky title line up there tempts me each time. All 2 1/2 inches of white space up there, demanding a few words of tidy summation.

Sometimes days don't have descriptors you can put in bubble-lettered sorority font under a photo of that day's events. You know?! Friday was "So hot I want an SUV with four window-unit ACs instead of a bike" Friday. Today was, "Let's go to Costco five minutes before it closes and be more dissappointed by that fact than by the fact we were going to Costo on a Saturday night" Saturday.

How's this for tidy summations?
The End.