My So-Called Life

I have been wanting to write a new blog entry for weeks now, but I have been hindered by a couple of issues. For one, I have been busy covering for our vacationing account manager, making it difficult for me to ignore my regular job duties to focus on the task of providing new reading material for my faithful readers (all three of them). But the major problem is, I have nothing to write about - nothing that wouldn't be painfully boring to read, that is. Let's face it, my life is just not that exciting. It's busy enough, what with the kids and work and soccer and Sunday School and play dates and Havurah events, but - like most working, married adults - my day-to-day life has a certain sameness to it, and as such is pretty much devoid of the emotional ups and downs and high drama that would make for a good juicy read.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks I am boring. A few months ago, the Director of Comunications at my old high school emailed me to ask if I could write an update for the alumni section of the school's annual magazine. Sure, why not, I thought - it will just take me a few minutes to dash off a few lines letting everyone know I am still here in the Bay Area, happily married with two kids. So I sat down at my computer, and I wrote that I was still living in the Bay Area, happily married with two kids, and . . . and . . . and . . . what else? Typically people write about being awarded job promotions or advanced degrees or fellowships, or they recount interesting travel experiences or unusual and creative occupations like documentary filmmaking or international archaeology. Sadly, none of those apply to me, so I spent days racking my brain trying to think of one thing - just one tiny little tidbit - that might be worthy of note.

As the deadline drew near I was still coming up blank, so I prevailed upon my long-suffering cubemate. "Help me think of something Chelle!" I wailed incessantly. Rolling her eyes at my whining, she finally sighed "I don't know - tell them you saw Sesame Street Live last weekend." Of course she meant it as a joke (actually, she meant it to shut me up already) but it gave me an idea. I wrote a tongue-in-cheek little paragraph about life with two little toddlers, describing how busy I was with intellectually stimulating activities like learning to distinguish between the different Teletubbies and attending sophisticated cultural events such as Meet the Wiggles and Around the World With Barney. In the end, I was pretty pleased with it - it was cute and funny and just self-deprecating enough while still managing to include references to those all-important signifiers of success, my new house and 10-year wedding anniversary.

So, the annual magazine arrived in the mail the other day, and guess whose entry was mysteriously missing from the alumni section? I am just going to choose to assume that with all my procrastination and dithering, I wound up missing the deadline - but I suspect that they simply found my entry far too mundane to commit to print. After all, they show this magazine to prospective families, and who is going to want to pay thousands of dollars in tuition just so their kid can end up hanging around 2-year-olds, wiping up juice spills and memorizing Elmo videos?

It's probably just as well, anyway. As I flipped through the magazine I noticed that my entry, had they deigned to print it, would have come right after that of our school's resident overachiever. After his three-column essay describing his various breakthroughs in the field of molecular pharmacology, my little blurb touting my ability to identify each Teletubby by name would have appeared a bit . . . what's the term . . . lame-ass.