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My son turns the television on, and what should pop up on the screen, but the remake movie of Leave It To Beaver.  Who needs the internet for advice, when they can learn everything they ever needed to know the old-fashioned way, from tv.

I am considering the recommendation to hang feeders all around the house.  It’s one of those suggestions that sounds so promising - a real time saver.

But in the growing boy’s defense, I don’t have to poke pasta down his gaping mouth every time it opens.  Like just now.

“Dad, do we have outlines?”
“Outlines?  What do you mean, outlines?”
“You know - outlines.  Black outlines, like they have on Rugrats or Chalk Zone or The Wild Thornberrys.”
“What do you think we are?  Cartoons?”

Actually, I think he might have been trying to distract me.  For someone who didn’t own many of the properties on the Junior Monopoly board, he sure seemed to be accumulating huge sums of money.

I have obviously been reincarnated as the super domestic, early 20th century housewife.  You never hear about that possibility when you come across reincarnation.  It must be the hidden secret.  I need some help!  My son must be some sort of mitosis king, dividing and growing, redividing and growing all over again at an unprecedented rate.  He’s on a feeding frenzy.  How many meals am I supposed to prepare in one day?

I’ve sought a little help from the Be June Cleaver website.  I don’t have a husband, a pretty dress, or a string of pearls.  But coffee I can do, and a hearty breakfast (WHAT?!  ANOTHER MEAL?!), and if forced, I’ll drag the vacuum around.

I’ll let you know if any of it works.

I can see already that things just aren’t right.  “Come on, do it! do it!” I can still hear your words in my head.  “Just do it,” everyone said, “You’re a born blogger.” Well where are you now, my friends.  Years ago it was your foolish crowd mentality, chanting “chug, chug, chug,” which slowly mellowed into a softer, friendlier sounding, “blog, blog, blog.” So, like then, I have given in.  Heeded the call.  I did it.

Yes, I did it, a couple of years later, in my procrastinating full speed ahead kind of way.  But even waiting that long suddenly doesn’t seem quite long enough, as I’m thinking now that Word Shadows shouldn’t have been the name at all, but maybe Procrastination’s Shadow.  I would like to imagine, at least, that it’s procrastination that follows me, and not the other way around.  But we all know that’s wishful thinking.  I am procrastination’s slave.  Which isn’t always such a bad thing, being the lazy taskmaster that he is. 

But this is no time for procrastination!  The beginning of a new year is no time for that!  We must be bold and resolute and proclaim unreachable goals.  Which, of course, I am getting to.

But my point (I think) was supposed to be that nobody told me to do any planning before I started this thing.  I wrestled around with that damn mysterious html code until I ran out of energy, and now I see that I should have put in some categories and maybe multiple favorite blog lists, because while I like a lot of blogs, I certainly don’t read every single one of them every single day.  So what do I do, make a favorites list and an almost favorites list?  Almost reminds me of the time some girl called up my little brother when he was in about the fourth grade and asked him if he liked her. 

“Just a minute,” he said, put down the phone, walked off, but returned a few seconds later with a scrap of paper, which I later found out was a list.  “Yes,” he told the little girl.  “You’re number 6 on the list.  Okay.  Goodbye.”

I guess I just need to get busy with a little more creating.  I need to be as straight forward and blunt as a nine year old boy.

You know, if the world was in fact created by God, then we’re all lucky it was done in miracles and not html, or we’d all still be sitting here, waiting to get tweaked.  On the other hand, that would explain . . . .

If I’d stuck with the original plan, this blog would have been born back around February or March of 2002.  That was just about the time I was being introduced to my wife’s new boyfriend and life was beginning to feel a little too tight.  But then, for me the words wife’s new boyfriend seem proof enough that original plans don’t always work out.

In hindsight, the original plan had its flaws.  For one, I would have had to actually do some thinking during a time that I seemed capable of only one thought.  Writing, at least good writing, usually requires the mind to breathe, and I don’t think my brain took a good deep breath of air until just a couple of months ago.  The only thing I can think of, is that my lungs must have taken pity on the poor, beaten up brain, slipping it a drop or two of oxygen when it wasn’t looking. 

Someone asked me once why I didn’t write it all down, all of that original plan gone awry stuff.  It was jodi I think, who seems to have that incredible talent of writing everything down.  I don’t know.  It just seemed too hard.  Or maybe I thought if I didn’t write it down I would be able to someday forget everything that happened.

But some of it made it down.  A tiny taste of that suffocating emotion and pain, and even some funny stuff, like the time I discovered I made a lousy detective.  For everyone’s information, in matters very little how many millions of minivans are on the roads, they’re just no good for sneaking around in.