I spuddle.

1. Do not write posts when you are in a horrible, dark, very bad, evil, angry, no-good, rotten mood.   Or even if you are just slightly cross.   This will come through in your post and instead of laughing gaily and merrily and going about their day with a sparkle in their eye and a spring in their step and maybe some pee in their pants (which makes every day brighter, no?), your readers will just become ornery and snappish and dislikeable and it will be your fault.   You have to live with that.

I should warn you that I might be a bit tetchy today.    I’m not going to tell you why, or am I?   No, I’m not.   But I will tell you that I’M SO MAD!   I’M SO FREAKING MAD!   I’M REALLY MAD!   I blame the weather.   When it is hot,  really really freaking hot (as in over thirty degrees Canadian, which is like 1000 degrees American depending on the exchange rate), people are unreasonable.   It’s possible that I am unreasonable, too.   Not likely, I’m just saying it’s POSSIBLE.   Being hot also makes for cranky kids.   It was ninety (American) (I use the American because it sounds hotter when you use higher numbers) degrees in The Birdy’s room last night.   NINETY!   Why don’t we have central air?   In my dream house, I have central air and also a pool and maybe a staff of people who will rub my feet (and perhaps wash them, because I have “gardeners’ feet” in that I rarely wear shoes outside and I do a lot of gardening and my feet are totally gnarly and kind of cracked — because I am old — and also permanently black from filth like maybe I live under the earth with all my little mole friends and only come up for sunlight and reality TV marathons and to shout at people indiscriminately).    Writing a post while in a a bad mood is like when you are short-tempered with your kids and they pick up on it and get all stroppy and start crying about how they’ve jut realized they don’t know how to hop on one leg all the way to the kitchen and also how they can’t get the dime out of the doll-house pitcher that it’s stuck in, which I must tell you is what is happening in my world RIGHT NOW.

2.   Keep your blog focussed.   If you are a writer, blog about writing.   If you are a fashion person, write about fashion.   If you are Perez Hilton, write about celebrities. (It totally worked for him, I swear).   If you are Dooce, you can pretty much write about anything, but she is the exception, not the rule.   Do not post random things about stuff you’d buy if you could afford it and that time when you dropped a solid-oak toilet seat on your foot and fainted in public.    People will get confused about what the H-E-double-hockey-sticks your blog is about and they will stop visiting.

I should tell you that I was working at a hardware store at the time of the toilet seat incident.   I was a cashier and some woman, who I can still picture exactly to this day (overly dyed blonde hair, past a certain age, lots of gold necklaces) bought a solid oak toilet seat (which just speaks to her poor taste, really, because WHY?) and wanted me to put it in a bag because she didn’t want to be seen carrying it out of the shop and it slipped through the bag and out onto my foot, at which point I said, “I’m OK!” and fanted.   Apparently there is a bunch of nerves on the top of your foot and when hit simultaneously with a heavy and ugly object, this can cause fainting, like a Vulcan death pinch but less portable.  ( I mean, really, when are you going to have a solid oak toilet seat handy when an enemy is present?) A bunch of people in the line up were all pissed off because who was going to take their money now?  And what kind of bad service was that?   And the woman with the toilet seat was mad because I dropped it and what if it had cracked?   People are so kind.   It makes me want to buy the world a Coke, only I’d totally shake it first so that when they opened it, it would spray all over them and maybe wreck their hair.    Because I’m cranky.  Did you know that if you put a nail in a can of Coke it will disintegrate?**  Imagine what it could do to your overly dyed hair.

I have also fainted at the Expo site in Montreal, on the bus, in class (more than once), in the bathroom (at least four times) and almost last month at the petting zoo in the goat pen.   In case you are keeping track.

**I don’t know if this is true, perhaps it’s just an urban myth, which I’m here to help spread.

3.   Keep your blog posts short.   No one wants to read 1000 words about every random thing that comes into your head.

Or do they?

Because I have to tell you, I find it a lot easier to write 1000 words on a topic than, say, 100.    Which is why I write books.    I do write books, you know.   You’d probably love them.   Starting next week on my other site, I will have a number of them available at a Deep Discount. Don’t forget to buy some.

4.   Do not constantly post pictures of your kids and talk about the totally cute OMG can you believe it things that they do or say.    No one thinks your kids are as cute and funny as you do.

But seriously, I think my kids may be an exception.    Yes, I’m ignoring them right now so I can write this.   Yes, I’m forcing them against their will to watch Mickey Mouse Club on TV which may be a form of child abuse.    But LOOK:

I had the camera on the wrong setting for this entire set of pictures, but who cares? I still love them.

5.   Do not write blog posts when you have five minutes to get into the shower, get dressed, get ready to go, get your kids to your mum’s house for babysitting, and get up to the university where you will deliver a lecture about yourself (but probably mostly about your hair and the weather) because it’s hard to pretend to be important when you have spent the morning typing about that whole toilet-seat thing.

Now I’m late!   And it’s your fault!   And the kids have already watched Mickey Mouse Club House which means that while I’m in the shower, they will prostrate themselves in grief on the floor while screaming MUMMY MUMMY MUMMY over and over again!    Oh, wait, now they’re watching Handy Manny so maybe it’s all good.    No, not good, there is screaming.   Oh, now it’s stopped.    All good.

6.   Not as many people care about The Bachelorette as you might think.

Yeah, I don’t know why not either.

There.   I said five, but you got a bonus!   Lucky you.    This is all awesome advice and you should totally follow it.   I never say “awesome” or “totally” so much as when I’m blogging.   Apparently when I blog, it’s like totally 1985 you know and I’m like an awesome surfer or something.   Hang ten, dude.    Or loose.   Or whatever.

* OK, maybe not the Smurf lunchbox, but totally all that other stuff.

Filed under: Kids, Me, Myself and I, The Bachelorette