Random Ramblings(TM). Alternate title: Why it’s so frikkin’ hard for a chatterbox to work at home by herself

I’m a talker. And I think I’m hilarious. I dream up about 50 funny things to say A MINUTE!

OK—maybe not every minute.

But anyway, it’s lonely here in my head. Other parents hate to see me coming when I pick my daughter up from school or skating or wherever because I always wear these big Parent-Catcher Arm Extensions^TM,¹ and then I corral them into a corner and wrap myself around them and scream funny things in their ears and won’t let them leave for a good hour.

It’s not that I don’t like working from home (who needs a kitchen table for eating anyway?). Self employment is wonderful—what’s not to love about working your ass off all the time and getting paid completely unreliably, if at all? Awesome in a sack, right there.

What concerns me is that I spin this comic gold like Rumpelstiltskin’s gonna steal my kid and there’s no one here to benefit from the hilarity.² Brilliant bon mots and witty rejoinders—said only in my head or to the cat (who, while lovely and fluffy, has a really poorly developed sense of humour)—just dissolve into the air like this morning’s fog.⁴ To top it off, my husband is out of town for most of the week, so I don’t even have him to share my funnies at the end of the day.

But really, the jokes don’t last anyway, for a couple of reasons. It’s sort of like when someone interrupts you in the middle of a joke and then you eventually deliver the punchline and it just fizzles into awkward silence.⁵ That’s sort of what happens when you try to relive the funny thing you thought of at 10 am when you get to the playground at 3 pm.

And then there’s the fact that I’m 41.⁶ I can’t remember shit anymore. Nothing. I have to take at least seven minutes to recall any fact that is not in my immediate short-term-memory bank. That can be a problem for...

Uh... Where was I going with that? Just hang on a minute, ok?



*crickets*



*tumbleweeds*


Uh... Can anyone remember what else you’re supposed to use to signify—oh wait! I’m ready to to hop back on my train of thought!

OK, so if I don’t write something down immediately, it’s gone. Like this morning’s fog.⁷

So to to address these issues, I am going to start writing Random Ramblings^TM here. They won’t be part of a larger post necessarily, just throwing it down here to ensure these droll tidbits don’t disappear into the ether, FOREVER, to the detriment of all humanity.

I will also include non-funny things.⁸

Random Ramble^TM #1:

So I had to send a story to my writing group this week. I think I’m ok at writing dialogue, so almost everything I write is dialogue. (Like this blog—it’s just me talking. OK, technically that’s a monologue. Quick—someone say something! ... Thanks! Like I said, dialogue.) I suck at description. Plus I’m lazy. Anyway, I send them the piece with an accompanying note to explain my overall writing suckage (they know about that already though), then I realize⁹ what it is about my descriptions that doesn’t work. It’s like my characters talk and talk and talk just fine, but then when I try to describe how they look or what they’re doing, all of a sudden they start doing a bad version of the robot. Hot teenager while talking, C3PO whilst being described.¹⁰


*crickets*



*tumbleweeds*


*Stillunabletoremembertheotherthingthatsignifieswhatcricketsandtumbleweedssignify*


That ramble is way funnier with my accompanying arm gestures. You'll just have to trust me, OK?

I promise there will be less lead up for the next Random Ramble^TM. I actually had two for this post, but I seriously cannot remember the other one. Not. Even. Joking.¹¹

f
   i
       z
           z
               l
                   e ......

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1. Patent pending.

2. If a joke crashes to the ground in the forest, does anybody laugh? Well, I KNOW animals find me funny.³ Can’t you tell when they’re laughing? I can. And they laugh at me ALL the time.

3. Except for my own cat.

4. Halifax, baby.

5. Jokus interruptus.

6. If you’ve ever met my daughter you would know that already, because she feels compelled to tell everyone she meets that I’m 41. It’s like she has weird obsession with the number. 41. 41. 41. She keeps saying it over and over and over again. That’s not annoying at ALL. She’s as funny as the damn cat.

7. That sounds familiar. Why does that sound familiar? I can’t remember.

8.  CMA, just in case my jokes don’t fly.

9. Three hours later, natch.

10. For those of you who know my husband, this is not meant to diss him, by the way. C3PO’s great. But he IS a robot.

11. I know, I know—I can hear your thoughts screaming, “Uh, you were joking before?” Listen closely—there are animals in a forest somewhere laughing their asses off.