Once upon a time I heard a newspaper columnist say “writing a daily colum is like being married to a nymphomaniac. It’s wonderfully exciting at first, but eventually it becomes a chore.”
I love to write and cannot imagine it would ever be a chore, but I realized that posting something daily might be more than I bargained for, so I devised a plan: I’ll alternate between writing about Phyllis Diller and about wine — the two things I actually know something about — and I’ll do it every other weekday: Monday, Wednesday and Friday (okay, you had that part figured out).
I’m sort of thinking now that I should’ve included cats. I know a lot about cats. And a lot of cats. I write poems for my cats (I call them cat raps because, really, they do not rise to the level of poetry) and my cats are a source of great amusement to me. And sometimes pain. For instance, I finally broke down and bought a “Furminator” to brush them. Paddy O’Cat (named that by my friend Jean because he lived on my patio for the better part of a year before I finally broke down and let him come in the house) is a rag doll with long, fine hair. He only has to walk through a room and everything in the room is covered in cat hair. I brush him, but it doesn’t seem to make much difference. If he sits on my lap for a moment, I spend the next 5 minutes getting intimate with the lint brush. So, yeah, the Furminator. In two days I’ve harvested enough cat fur between him and Blackjack to stuff a small pillow.
This morning, having established he was in the mood to be brushed, I explored an aea that I didn’t get yesterday — the underside. I was very gentle and at first he liked it. Then he said, “meow.” This cat does not normally talk outloud, so I knew he was communicating something, but I wasn’t sure what — I went on ahead brushing. A moment later, I discovered he’d meant “stop that!” A douse of peroxide later on my bleeding arm reminded me that when Paddy says “meow,” he means it. I’ll try again tomorrow.
So, yes, I could include cats, but phyllisdillerandwineandcats would be a little long for a title.
Another thing I should probably share with you — the length of the blog. At the first blog “meet up” I attended, they suggested a 300 word post was about the right length. I’ve tried to keep it under 400, or, well, not more than 500. After all, you have better things to do than spend the morning reading a blog, and brevity is the soul of wit, they say.
So, there — I’ve told you my plan. Shoulda done that at the beginning, but I was so eager to get started (and there is still SO much to learn!) that I just plunged in. It’s still new and still exciting and I hope it never gets to be a chore. For either of us.
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