I Really Do Have Excuses--Lots of Them

Well, when I started this blog, I was thinking I would try to keep up a pace of one blog post per day--that seemed reasonable. And then I found myself skipping days, and making up for it on other days with two or three short posts.

And then the holidays hit, and I was out of town. But I was able to keep up a reasonable pace there for a while!

But nothing could save my blogging from its latest challenge: ennui. Sheer, unadulterated ennui.

For one thing, I ran out of interesting things to write about. For another, my wife has been feeling under the weather, and needed more of my attention (and just more down-time in general), and this necessitated me not spending so much time on the computer. For another, we've had some videos lying around that we haven't finished watching yet, and we wanted to get to them--and we don't use a TV, we just play videos on the computer (thus no blogging). For another, Tonya has become addicted to playing Sid Meier's Civilization IV.

Heck, I've become addicted to playing Sid Meier's Civilization IV--but not like Tonya. Unlike her, I can stop any time I want. ;-)

Just kidding; I'm just as bad as she is. Last Thursday, after I put my kids and my then-ill wife to bed, I found myself starting up a game and losing all track of time--not shutting the thing down until 12:30 or so. Tonya didn't do much better last night (Saturday); she didn't shut it down until 12:15. I think the pattern is that I don't play as often as she does, but when I do play, I just... can't... stop....

I say, that is a truly evil game. Too bad I can't find more time to play it.

But this week was spent getting back into a normal routine, and Tonya and I are very happy about this fact. We're getting our strength and sanity back. And this was the first normal weekend we've had in a very, very long time. No traveling! No performances! Not even any rehearsals, for crying out loud! We had time to lounge about and have one of those Sabbath thingies, the lack of which I've lamented before.

Oddly enough, the off-schedule-ness of the last few weeks has hampered my blogging, not enhanced it. You'd think that a person would run out of ideas while living in a regular, daily routine, and would come up with new ideas while doing new and exciting things while off the routine. I find that this isn't the case. When I'm on my routine, I actually have the chance to learn lots of new and interesting things, and I have some time to myself so I can think. Furthermore, my children's homeschooling progress and antics are major sources of ideas for blog posts. If all these wellsprings of ideas are disrupted, I quickly run out of things to say. Those of you who don't blog (or don't blog regularly) would be surprised how hard it is to come up with even one interesting thing to say each day, every day. I find that when I'm blasted out of my routines, I'm often out of touch with my regular muses, so to speak--or that when I do come up with something interesting to say, I'm away from my computer.

Anyway, now that the routines are starting to be re-established, hopefully we'll all get back to being ourselves, and I'll be blogging a bit more regularly again soon.

In the meantime, here are a few items I found noteworthy over the last few days:

• Very, very briefly this week, I found myself wishing I was in Baghdad rather than here. As you may imagine, the feeling went away very quickly. Still, I found that to be one of the happiest news stories I've seen in a long time.
• We got our minivan back from the body shop! We are now using our own set of wheels again. The kids are once again fully separated and unable to play the "quit touching me!" game. This goes back to the idea of we're finally back in our own routine. And this is a wonderful feeling. Now if we can just drive a little more carefully, we'll be OK.
• For those of you who are wondering: no, Tonya's not pregnant yet. We were wondering when she got sick this week if that was the case, but it's not. We think she was done in by some overripe thousand-island dressing she put on a salad. As for me, I stay healthy by avoiding the salads entirely. :-)
• The Pillowfight Fairy keeps bending the English Language to express her mighty will. Two from today: while trying to coax her out of bed this morning, the mostly-still-asleep five-year-old intoned: "I'm unawakeable." Then about dinnertime tonight, while contemplating the pad of paper where we write our grocery lists, she said, "You need to write love here. We need more love."

We explained to her that you can't buy love; but we had to concede that yes, more love would in general be a good thing.