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.