I should write a book?

This was pointed out to me by someone last night while I was babbling about something or other.  She was immediately agreed with by at least two other people.

I shut up.  Obviously, I'd been running my mouth far too much again.

Books are written by creative people who are capable of keeping their thoughts on the same train and sometimes even in the same passenger car.  My thoughts are the ones running alongside the train banging on the windows and begging the driver not to leave them behind.

Oh, I come up with some awesome ideas for stories!  Generally based on a story written by someone else that was so good I went straight back to the first page and started over trying to imagine it being told from the point of view of a different character.  I'm sure I'd be an amazingly famous published writer living in the lap of luxury off of the royalties I was raking in... if it wasn't for all this malarky about plagiarism or some nonsense about stealing someone else's ideas.  Pfffft.

I mean.  errrmmm....

*cough*

"But you write a blog, don't you?"

Yeah.  Once in a blue moon.  Unreliably.  Badly.

And it's about my kids and my cats.

Riveting stuff.

Books are supposed to be written by people who can draw on their own life experiences for inspiration.

I just don't have that exciting a life.  Oh there's drama alright.  I have a teenage daughter.  Drama moved in and took over several years ago.  And isn't paying its fair share of the bills, either.

But even the drama isn't really MY drama.  I grew up being surrounded by other people's drama.  Somehow I always seemed to be a spectator to the most unbelievable situations.  A few times I played a minor role while trying to get away from whatever was going on.  But almost every unbelievable event I can recall swirled around somebody else I just happened to be standing near.

There was the time I was walking home from school with a couple of classmates when I was maybe 11 years old.  We came around a patch of trees and could see the huge field we'd be crossing to get to the apartment complex I lived in.  I ran ahead of my two friends and slowed down when I saw my mother and little sister coming across that field to meet us.  Then I saw my sister cover her face, my mother's face turn ghost white and she tried to run (Mom had ankle issues that made running a physical impossibility for her) toward me, and I heard my friends behind me screaming my name frantically.  There was this really strong breeze that blew past me suddenly and when I turned to see what all the ruckus was about, a wannabe yacht of an ugly yellow old car was entering the gas station parking lot across the street from us... via the curb and sidewalk.

According to everyone else, the driver had turned his car so he was aiming directly at me and then at the last second swerved away which is what caused that gust of air I remember.  I don't remember hearing any squealing tires at all, but there must have been something because people were pouring out of the stores and running toward us to make sure I was alright.

Honestly, I was just wondering what the fuss was all about.

Which has been a pretty consistent theme throughout my life.

The details I remember out of these events are strange too.

~I remember the color of that car perfectly and can recreate it fairly easily with a dirty yellow crayola marker and a splash of weak coffee.

~I remember how, when I was about 12, an apartment complex pool went from sounding like a library while a neighbor's 3 year old was drowning in front of everyone to sounding like a bomb had gone off when I tapped her mother on the leg and pointed to the little girl.

~I remember thinking, at the supposedly mature age of 33, how I was "never going to get that smell out of my carpet" when my neighbor's 2 year old daughter's body relaxed and emptied on my dining room floor after she'd left the child alone in a bathtub for what she said was "only thirty minutes".

~I remember being angry at Steve for a few moments when it happened because he'd just deployed two days earlier and this stuff NEVER happens when he's around.

~I remember the sound of happy birds nearby, the color and smell of the hair, and the Easter pink business jacket and skirt of the woman who tried to take my then 5 month old son out of my car at a fast food drive-thru.

~I remember the click of a traffic signal changing colors followed by the sounds of car doors in every direction flying open when a driver fell asleep at the wheel, careened headlong into a large generator box at a major intersection, and I joined a dozen or more other people racing toward his car to see if he was okay.

~I remember the sound of metal collapsing in on itself and the rough, angry tremble in Steve's voice coming across his cellphone when his little hatchback was unlucky enough to be in the path of a large buck... for the second time in a month.

~I remember hearing a car radio struggling to play music that sounded like it was underwater when a woman called into the center after being in an accident and nearly five minutes of hysterical sobbing later was finally able to make us understand she was trapped in her seat, under the windshield, with the corpse of the full grown deer she'd collided with laying on top of her.


~~~~~~~~

See... this is the stuff I remember.  This is the sort of thing I can catch myself babbling about incessantly if I'm not careful.  Not the sort of thing people typically want to read about.  And I want to laugh anyway.  I need to find humor in everything, perhaps because of the above situations.

So I focus my attention and my blog on the fairly regular, but small, bits of lunacy my cats and children can produce.  That's never enough to write a full book about, though.

Which is good.

Somehow having a full length catalog of all the ways I can blackmail my children when they start dating doesn't seem the best way to win Mother of the Year.

And it doesn't help that my cats seem hellbent on proving they are all completely insane and gonna take me down with them.

I think they may succeed.

Something just crashed downstairs.

Zippy looks like she has a bottle brush stuck to her butt.

Lea looks irritated and bored at the same time.

Flicker looks sleepy.

Jack looks innocent.

Bullpuckey.