Picky in Print

Mood: mildly annoyed / picky
Music: 80's music channel on DirecTV

I've been surfing Blog Explosion this evening. I wanted to see what everybody's been up to lately, since I've not been blogging for a while. It was nice to catch up with several I used to regularly read, and find new blogs to add to the regular rounds. The only downside was the filthy language.

Now, I don't mean this in the ordinary sense. I mean the rampant misspelling of the word 'lose' as L-O-O-S-E.

Please tell me that schools haven't disintegrated so far as to fail to teach basic spelling and word usage to an entire generation! I'd love to believe that it's just a typo, but I've seen it far too often for it to be unintentional.

Oh, and another one that gets me is the abuse of the apostrophe. It's everywhere! I've seen restaurant menus that had "pizza's" and produce stands with huge signs declaring they had "strawberry's" (strawberry's what, I always wonder). It's just not that difficult to pluralize words, folks! I mean, whatever happened to "change the y to i and add es"?

Maybe I'm just a spelling snob, but after seeing about a dozen misspellings, I start tuning out whatever I'm reading and mentally writing the author off as ignorant. Now, I know there is an article floating around that has a paragraph entirely misspelled, but argues that if the first and last letters are right, the brain will fill in the proper word. But that doesn't make spelling irrelevant in my book. After all, I'm sure we could all communicate in grunts and Charades gestures, but, obviously, we (most of us) use language to intelligently, precisely and efficiently convey thoughts and ideas.

I think we need to continue to hold ourselves and our children to a higher standard.

That being said, I'm going to climb down off my soapbox now. Anybody else want it? It's still warm....

Just Like Starting Over

Mood: Introspective

New blog = fresh start. This is my second attempt at a blog. I got bogged down and bored with my other blog. It just wasn't ....me. It didn't feel right.

This time, I give myself full permission to bounce around from mood to mood and topic to topic (or topic to mood or mood to topic, even).

Are there a lot of people out there who, like me, are struggling to express the inner voice(s)? It seems I can't settle on one narrative style, one aspect of me to speak for all.

My personal theme song is Meredith Brooks' "Bitch". If I had to choose one song to introduce myself with, that would be it. I've always been too many contradictory things in one body. It makes for some interesting (read: painful/heartbreaking) internal struggles, let me tell you!

Some of my contradictions:

• I'm not a girly-girl by any means, but put a big ole bathtub full of hot water and suds in front of me and you won't get me out of it for hours.
• Deep down, I'm...well, an insatiable slut; but past abuse keeps me from expressing it, even with my husband.
• I hate being told what to do and losing control of a situation, but feel most free when restrained (which would freak dear hubby out).
• I'm an adult crayon snob.
• I would like life to be simple, but I go out of my way to complicate things (subconsciously for the most part, although I've caught myself doing it before).
• I tend to be a perfectionist, but my house is a mess (perfecting disaster, perhaps?).

Some days I don't make sense to myself.

So anyway, pull up a chair, beanbag, bench, stool, sofa, magic carpet, or whatever your pleasure is, and introduce yourself.