If only the posts made it from my mind to the page

I know I haven't been here lately, but I do write alot. In my head.

Where to start..........?

I'll start at the beginning.

When I first received notice that we were going to have to move from AOL elsewhere, it got me to thinking why I'd ever started blogging in the first place.

I mean, I've always told other people stories about my kids, subjecting them to whatever happened that day that I found amusing. When you're home with four children, believe me, it's better to think about their antics as "amusing" and not "the reason why Anna drinks." Now that they are bigger, and I am able to talk to adults more, like at work, I find myself talking to them about.....my kids.

I remember one time at work, one of my colleagues mentioned to me that I should "start a blog...you know, write the stories so someone else can read them on the internet." At the time, I shrugged him off, and I stopped talking for a few days, thinking maybe he'd had enough of Ryan's last rash and how Ben told the saleslady in Home Depot that I was the reason we were there buying a toilet plunger and a mop.

And then one night, a few months later, I was waiting for my kids to finish a class, and another friend of mine told me that he'd just started a blog, and I should check it out. He also suggested I write down some of the things I would tell him as we waited for our children.

At the time, I was inclined to shrug him off. But something about the look on his face, the excitement he had on it, and the fact that he was gave me the address so that I, a friend, not even his teacher grading an assignment, could read it----I got curious. I'd not really ever pegged him as a writer, and that is my own bias--all the boys I know or ever knew up until that point were decidedly not given to writing.

I read. Once I got over my initial discomfort, that I was invading his privacy, I was dazzled. Impressed. A little intimidated.

I could never write like that, I thought.

Yet I found myself writing posts in my head at night as I fell asleep...in the morning as the kids and I made it through our morning motions....at the grocery store.....as I gave everyone their baths at night. Eventually I emailed my friend an account of what happened to me one morning, telling him that I thought I might post something like that. "Looks like you have the idea, " he encouraged. That evening, I bit the bullet and put it out there for the world to see. I made some new friends. Somewhere in the sharing of my life's little details, I was able to find a place of my own, a place I liked to visit and have others visit, too.

Which is what I hope to find here. I've felt a little off balance not writing anything at all. The posts in my head are staging a coup, they want OUT.

I still read everything my friend writes as soon as I know he's posted it. I am still dazzled, amused, impressed, and sometimes intimidated by the things that come out of his head.

So, to my good friend Remo, thanks for the nudge. I know I'll like this new place as much as I did my last.