Tuesday, September 1, 2009

A Year of Writing Dangerously. . .



I'm proud to report that I recently broke a dysfunctional two-year cycle and conquered my well-founded fear of small rodents in movie theaters.

Yes, my friends, the other day I swallowed a Xanax, donned my sneakers, propped my feet awkwardly on the armrest between the seats in front of me, and settled in to watch Julie and Julia.

Did I like it? Well, I traditionally like my movies with a little more butter. . .

But that movie got me thinking.

I am quickly approaching my one-year blog-a-versary. Perhaps A Mom on Spin's readership would increase if the blog had . . . a purpose. . .a mission. . . a Raison d'etre, if you will. . . . And if little Julie from Queens could cook her way through Julia Child's 524 recipes in 365 days, could A Mom on Spin do something similar?

But what?

My first thought was The Mickey Project. I would go to view one movie a night in order to find out just how long it would take to repeat the mouse (who am I kidding? It was a rat. . . ) incident that drove me away from movies in the first place. But then I remembered that my physician would not look kindly on prescribing 365 Xanax in one sitting. And attending all those movies would seriously cut into my wine-drinking time. Big. Drawback.

And then I thought of The Hair Art Project, where I would post pictures of my daughters' hair art on the shower wall and you could all guess what the image is. . . sort of like a Rorschach ink-dot-of-the-day . . . but then I remembered that the family's two major losers (of hair! I clearly meant hair!) have moved out of the house and cast-offs from the remaining daughter would be a bit slim. The Thong of the Day Project was immediately canceled for the same reason, because not even Ponzi's latest unauthorized shopping spree has supplied her with a full year of thongs. . .

And then it hit me.

The list. No, I mean, THE list!

Did you all know that I've been keeping a list of my daughters' foibles, untruths, and misdeeds? Let's see. . . I have three daughters and 365 days. . . if I just did the math correctly, that's a mere 122 incidents per daughter!

Bingo!

But where to start? I feel like Julie sitting in front of that huge cookbook, wondering how to tackle her project. Should I cover each episode chronologically? By type of transgression? By severity of the offense? Should I lump all alcohol-related incidents together in one month-long series, or spread them out through the year???? And where on earth would I cover the Sopranos (and I don't mean choir member!) boyfriend? Or the identity theft? Or the testosterone scare???

Oh, so much to write. . . so little time. . .