I'm finding it a little aimless these days.
The writing, I mean. The living gets done little bit by little bit: some housework here and a birthday party or two over there; and a couple of unmentionable potty trips and a lamb dinner; and a couple of hot dogs and tapas dinner with friends and a sip of disgusting sherry a little while back; and a couple more trips to the nail salon; and a gawking moment of wondering who's getting arrested and why; and a damaged silk skirt later; and all in all, life just happens infinitely, because after you're done talking about the dishes that needed to be done, they are done and new ones appear to take their place.
Whenever I talk to friends in order to catch up –lives become disconnected the farther away you live and the less your lives intersect– and I'm asked that uncomfortable question, "So, what have you been up to?" or its derivatives, I never know what to answer.
Shall I fess up to the truth and wax poetic about watching Herr Meow grow and tell me sweet, unintelligible, interminable stories about the "firemans" who are mommy and daddy and grandma and Gracie too and how he played with his friends and how anytime he's mischievous he thinks saying "I love you" in as earnest a face as he can muster can somehow erase the throbbing foot or the burn of the twisted arm?
Shall I go into depth about preferring to call plants by their scientific name? How even though I know the difference between an oak and a maple I sometimes end up calling an oak Acer and completely blank out on Quercus and how sometimes I think that calling daylilies Hemerocallis makes them sound far prettier than they really are? About how it's actually really easy to compost things and how it's really not that stressful and you don't need to know at all times how your nitrogen and carbon percentages add up?
Or maybe I should talk about the best cleaner for stainless steel (nothing, but that Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day stuff at least smells nice), or the best kind of duster (I seriously love that Pledge allergen control stuff, chemicals be damned)?
Sometimes I just end up talking about blogging, which to my non-blogging friends ends up sounding like a hybrid between astrology and quantum mechanics ("Really… you blog. Huh. That's…. interesting.") –some sort of esoteric and mildly ridiculous endeavor for either the feeblebrained or those with too much time in their hands.
But then they share their stories and I realize that I need to let my guard down a little. It's okay –expected, even!– to talk about your children. (Who knew?!) And it's okay to talk about hobbies, even if they are not to others' liking.
But most of all, it's okay to share. Even if sometimes it feels a little like a chore.
It isn't.
A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm! 
Many of my conversational references used to be about television. Now they’re often about blogs. I don’t know if that’s an improvement.
And I feel the same way about laundry that you feel about dishes… there’s always more.
I seem to do less writing these days and more just sending my readers to read things I’ve enjoyed that other people have written… getting lazy, I suppose…
I agree with you both about laundry AND dishes… the sink and hamper are both bottomless pits… job security for me, I suppose…
Yes… laundry too. Pretty much all housework, really, because what about bathrooms and floors and the daily newspaper too?
Just thinking about it makes me queasy.
Hey. :o)
I’m moving again … *erm, *we’re* moving, again, in three weeks. So I have an excuse to slack for another month.
/goes back to lurk mode
*laughs* When I get asked that I answer like I expect my friends to answer, “life is okay, things are good, we’re happy most of the time, been keeping busy with all the usual stuff” which is all true in varying degrees. Sometimes I get asked that right after something happened to annoy me or make me sad however I know that it’s more important that I look at my life overall not just at that moment.
Then I get into the stories, trading the funny and mundane with my friend. I eagerly await her stories and hope she feels the same about mine. Life is easier to handle when you can share it with someone who understands. So laundry, kids, dishes, cleaning, shopping, men, hobbies, tv, music, books, all of it becomes fair game for discussion.
So when I ask you how you’ve been, you know I’m looking for a general overview and then some of the favorite stories you like to tell. 🙂
All I talk about with anyone these days is my thesis. And it’s killing me.
Ghosty– Hi/bye/yay/KEEP ME POSTED!
Vix– It’s good to hear that, but you’d be surprised at how many times people don’t mean what they ask.
E– Hang in there! You’re almost done and I’m personally cheering from you from over here! How long is the thesis now anyway?