Choose your own adventure

Man, I used to love those choose your own adventure books. I always read them with a finger at each of five different next steps, trying to figure out both the longest and the shortest path to completion. I think my favorite part was the fantasy of choosing what I knew to be the wrong path - the dangerous, the cruel, the unwise. What I could never do in real life, as I was (unlikely as it seems) an angelic child, pathetically eager to please.

I sometimes wish for that choose-the-wrong-path option now. I play out the adventure to its logical conclusion in my head, but it's not as satisfying. Usually the situation in which I wish to do the wrong thing involves telling someone off. I've nearly bitten my tongue off taking the high road at times, but I've also learned as I've gotten older that the maintenance of a close and special network of important people (friends, family) requires curbing some of my baser impulses.

One bad thing about having a blog is that it's a temptation to vent some of the more chronic annoyances in my life, but I'm not really anonymous enough to do so. The choices are, either censor some things here, or start a secret blog, not tell anyone about it, and vent there. That's not satisfying, though, because most of the people who I know who read this are people I WANT to commiserate with. I guess it's just an extension of real life, ultimately - in my little personal world, people are connected enough with each other to render some complaints inappropriate.

Vague enough? I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. The combination of extreme sleep deprivation (last week's 2 good nights were a fluke, apparently) and a very exciting, fun-filled birthday for my three year old have rendered me even less lucid than usual. For example, I wrote half a post earlier today. Why half a post? Because I realized at the halfway point that I had completely forgotten whatever the second half was meant to be. Here, for your mocking pleasure, is what I had written:

"The funniest things that happen in any given day in my life tend to be product of either my husband's or my children's wackiness. I feel like I'm just channeling their humor here lately, instead of coming up with my own material, but I can't deprive the world of the insanity, so here are two from today.

#1 - I noticed a white hair on my husband's head and commented on it with great sensitivity and tact, as is my wont. While he glared at me, I may also have noted that at least there wasn't as much hair left to go grey as there used to be. His response, as I tried to repress my snorts of mirth, was "my hair likes its space, just like I do." Ha!

#2 - "

And that's where memory failed me. My memory failing is hardly a rare event these days, but in this case, Keith had just said whatever funny thing I was going to put down as #2, and I walked directly in here to post, and that quickly I entirely forgot whatever it was. And naturally, he has either also forgotten or is torturing me by pretending he has.

I am a ramblin man tonight. Or woman. Whatever. I love my kids' birthdays. I like spending a whole day focusing on just one person's happiness, and seeing how special they feel in the spotlight. Now that my big three year old is in bed, and the rest of us are watching movies amidst the detritus of birthday fun, I find myself unmotivated to...well, do anything. Including write further, so you are all now released from my randomness. Good night!