My Maja, Who Art In Blog Land

It started with THIS.

My mom penned a pretty perfect post for The Ramblings as I drank too much wine and got too much sand in my crevices over summer vacation.

The response from readers was overwhelming in its goodness, exactly what I expected, exactly what family and friends have urged and cheered on for years and years and years: Old girl, you need to write! Before my dinky site came to fruition, before my mother so much as thought about motherdom, before my mother met my father, before, before, before all of this, she’s been a writer. A good one, as everyone who’s ever known her would say. And yet, she was surprised, caught off guard that people would compliment her, read the words she wrote, actually want to read more. I find this a charming piece of her, that she is so humble and unassuming. Then I picture some leggy, gorgeous girl in a bikini clasping her mouth, delighted and shocked that someone might think she’s swimsuit model material. “Oh, I have flawless bone structure and -3% body fat? What do you mean I’m God’s gift to eyes?”, and then the whole humble thing just made me want to kick my mom’s ass. Of course you are that good, idiot. You had to know this.

     I couldn’t very well kick my mother’s hind, not legally anyways, so I settled with a proverbial kick in the pants. It was a gentler and kinder approach that said “Hey, you did birth and raise me and all, so… I guess I’ll let you off easy this time”. And, as you’ll see, gentle and kind was never really my thing, so I wrote a post publicly threatening her to start her own blog, called on a couple thousand readers to join the peer pressure party, and we collectively pageant-mom-ed my mom.

    She seemed suddenly motivated, spurred on by your comments and encouragement. For a minute there I thought this whole bullying thing would do the trick. But then…. some hiccups.

My mom has trouble with computers, starting with Power Buttons and ending somewhere around Everything Else on This Damn Techno-Lap-Box-Thinger-Ma-Jig. The  mention of foreign sounding Widgets and HTML codes just about sent her over the edge.

Also she kind of has a full-time job that takes up big, full chunks of time.

Also, too she spends all slivers of free time playing with grandkids, leaving her little to no time or technological skill to get this blog thing going.

   We chatted. This was mostly me saying “Grandkids? A job? Listen here, kid. You need to get your priorities in order. WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE????

Clearly she’s lost her way.

And then, a compromise. Since she wouldn’t back down on neglecting her babies’ babies and presented a solid argument for why she needed a job to pay for things like a mortgage and food, we settled with this: You write some things. I’ll post them on the damn techno-lap-box-thinger-ma-jig.

And so, a year after original coercion, here is the maja’s very own, very well written blog:

On [ This]

            I hope you’ll click over and give her a warm welcome to the blogiverse.  You did, after all, help trick her into blogging.

About these ads