This blog has been in existence for 10 years now. I’ve been rather sporadic with it, never consistent, but now I feel I need to step it up.
When my kids were small, I wrote a weekly column for a local newspaper and in it I tried to bring positivity and laughter to the daily busyness, chaos, messiness and, at times drudgery of being a mommy to toddlers. I was successful at it too. So many women appreciated my expressing what they felt while helping them to laugh about it at the same time.
Now my children are grown, and married, even my grandchildren are past that age of cute anecdotal stories, but the busyness, chaos, messiness and drudgery of this world needs more than ever – a time to laugh. So, I’d like to make a commitment to make people laugh. It’s difficult though. My material in the past was always my family, if not my sons, then I’d pick on my husband. I could write daily about his routines, his expressions, and how his poor hearing has been the cause of ongoing miscommunication with us for several years now, but is that fair? He could counter with so many of my foibles…but he’s not a writer and so he wouldn’t. So, it is unfair – no tit for tat.
I don’t want to talk about politics – the political tensions of this world are the very reason I wish to talk about anything else…laugh about anything else. Though my husband listens to news programs into the wee hours of the night. And he insists on telling me all the news stories he’s heard, dropping names of secretaries of state, supreme court justices and governors of various states as if they were our next-door neighbours. I don’t know these people he’s talking about, and I don’t want to know. I live in Canada – for which I am most grateful. But still, he goes on and on, causing me to lose my appetite when he recounts these stories over dinner. Ok, I’ve not lost weight over it, but seriously, it’s stressful and not conducive to a relaxing mealtime.
I guess the only constant in my life these days is…ageing. Now, just like being a stay-at-home mommy with toddlers, it could be a limitless category of material. And, as ageing beats the alternative, so is laughing a better option. Well then, I guess that will be my theme for the foreseeable future. Since many of my friends are around my age, like those mommies who found it helpful, my expressing what they were feeling raising their toddlers, perhaps we ‘seniors’ (that word makes me cringe) can find comfort and humour in knowing we are not alone in the busyness, chaos, messiness and sometimes drudgery of this our new normal.
Stay tuned.