And so it goes

The thing of it is, of course, that I keep intending to get back to the writing desk and do something new. Yes, I do. Now I understand that some of you are snickering right now, that you have heard me sing this song before and that you are thinking to yourselves that he’ll never get back to it unless someone with a gun makes him sit down and write, but you would be wrong—I have every intention to sit down and write some more for the blog, just as I have every intention of losing thirty of forty pounds; I just haven’t decided when I am going to do this. But I am writing for the blog, I am, I really am,

and I don't care how much you say otherwise. I have my pencils out and the paper (I use yellow legal paper, just in case such things interest you. I can’t imagine why this would interest you, but there are people in this world who collect sports memorabilia even though they know that most sports collectibles are fakes and there are others who think that having the world’s greatest collection of fifteenth century Moldovan bathroom fixtures is an actual accomplishment as opposed to being a sign that these people have way too much time on their hands).  And there is actual writing on that legal pad! Yes, there is. I am writing something right now despite what the cynics and the backbiters and the faultfinders say behind my back and to my face.  So take that, smart guys! 

In other news, my mother has the flu. I realize that my mother having the flu is not really a big deal; lots of people have the flu at this time of the year—it is flu season, after all—but she was one of the first people to get her flu shot this past year and finding out that the twenty-five dollars she shelled out for the shot was for naught did not make her happy, as if the coughing, sneezing, fever, and all the other foulness that accompany the flu were not enough to make her unhappy. What is really rankling her, however, is that she could not go to church today.  If you live in a place where there are a decent number of Roman Catholics, you will have noticed today that many of them are wandering the highways and byways with dirt on their foreheads.  The Papists are doing this on purpose (they’re like Commies that way, you know). Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the penitential season of Lent, and on this day Roman Catholics have their foreheads marked by a priest who intones, remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return—like so many things, this sounds much more impressive in Latin: Meménto, homo, quia pulvis es, et in púlverem revertéris.  This is to remind us all of our shared mortality. Well, my mother has had a priest slather dirt on her forehead every year since 1934 and is deeply annoyed that she could not go to church today to keep the streak going. What makes the end of the streak even worse is that she is blaming me for this. 

I am not sure how this is my fault: I did not give her the flu, I did not plan for her to get the flu, I did not enter into a grand conspiracy with the forces of secularism and British imperialism to give her the flu, and I did not deliberately expose her to people with the flu. I did not do any of these things, but her having the flu is my fault, just as it is my fault that the deer chow down on her azaleas and hedges. In short, logic and rational argument are not going to work in this case. Like original sin, the fault is mine whether I want it or not, and despite the fact that I haven’t done anything to deserve the opprobrium. And so it goes, as a wise man once said.