The One Where I Take a Little Trip

Where I was:

Near a lake in central Minnesota.
(Centrasota to the savvy)

What I did:

Walked away from this blog and all its problems.
(Not really. It was time for our annual trip to family camp.)

Who I called (whom I called?) to bail me out:

My mystery blogger and dear friend of the heart, Diane.

Isn’t she just a honey? I love Diane and I love her sense of humor. I did have to warn her to behave in my absence, however. She is, after all, my friend Diane. Her Friday, Saturday, and Sunday posts were just the thing, I think, to keep you company in my absence.

Nonetheless, I owe you all an apology. I am so sorry that I didn’t get the next installment of my conversion story finished! Me and my big mouth! When I said on Tuesday that I’d have it up on Friday, I did not take into account the following factors:

• That whole unwieldy name change thing—the length & breadth & depth of which I could not have anticipated. I’m serious. It consumed my thoughts. (Most midlife crises do, I suppose.) Would you like to know what really premeditated that whole discussion? I was at a picnic over the 4th of July weekend and met an absolutely lovely woman—a mother of seven whose Irish eyes flashed warm with personality and whose mouth was forever turned up into a wry, playful grin. When I told her my name was Margaret she said, “Oh! Do you go by anything else?”

  I hesitated. “Well, my husband’s family calls me Maggie…”

  “Maggie is better,” she declared.

  So there you have it. Existential, midlife crisis # 382.

  And just for the record? I do not think the name change would have stuck. I thought about it this weekend at family camp, where my friends (who read my blog) were still calling me Margaret and where all of the people from my parish (and their little dogs, too) were still calling me Margaret and where the staff called me “Hey, you.” Did I really want to go to all the effort of insisting that everyone call me Maggie? No, ma’am, I did not. The thought of that just made me tired and in any case, I had bigger fish to fry than that (not that I caught any) and bigger boats to sail.

  Like this one:

  Okay, so this was actually a pontoon.

  And we totally obeyed this order:

  We had seven adults on board, thank you very much.

  And 12 kids.

  Assuming that each of those “8” adults weighed 300 pounds, we were still good to go, right? And anyway, if we had been stopped by the coast guard or life guard or lake guard or whomever, we could have always tossed a couple of kids off the side and kept on boating.

  This is Felicity’s response to that idea:

  
  Ahem.

Back to my excuse-making.

• When I said on Tuesday that I would have my conversion story post done on Friday, I forgot to factor in the baseball games that I would be attending on Tuesday and Wednesday evening. Duh! (It was play-offs week and my son’s team didn’t make it. Sigh.) And what is it about sitting out in the sun for two hours that makes me want to sleep in for an extra three hours the next day? There goes my writing time. (Cue violins.)

• I forgot about having to pack for family camp on Thursday morning–I hate packing–and I forgot about having to sit in the basement for an hour on Thursday afternoon during the tornado warning. Again, that was my writing time! (But really, what’s a little tornado between a blogger and her post, anyway?) In any case, I had planned to tweak my conversion story post that afternoon and have it ready to go for Friday. Meanwhile, the kids were wandering around the house like whiny minstrels, chanting, “Can we leave for family camp now? Can we leave for family camp now?” You try to write about your pre-conversion lifestyle under an equivalent duress! I caved to the pressure and got in touch with Diane. Could she cover my sorry you-know-what? She could! Hooray! We boarded our van for family camp and it was fun, I tell you–fun! fun! fun!

  Here is a photo of how I felt at that point:

  The Minnesota State Blogger Bird

So how are my excuses so far? Pretty pathetic? Okay, already, here’s the last one:

• I just didn’t finish.

I know you understand, as many of you are writers/wanderers/busy moms yourself. (But do you forgive me? Of course not! And you shouldn’t.)

Stay tuned. I’ll do what I can when I can and get it posted. The pressure’s on.

Ad Jesum per Mariam,

PS. Thank you again, dear Diane, for your three beautiful guest blogger posts! You are a honey and a hoot and one heck of a writer. Feel free to use that password any time.

(Ha.)