Sundee Undies

Often, Sunday morning conversations between my husband and me go a little like this:

Me: “Awww, Man!” (My go-to exclamation in a high-pitched voice for anything I lost, dropped, broke, can’t figure out, you name it.)

Him: “What happened?” (Said in his usual, I-won’t- be-surprised-by –anything-you-say-after-living-with-you-for-almost- 4 years, tone)

Me: “My Sundee undies are in the hamper!  It’s Sunday – I need my Sundee undies!”

Him: “Sorry, dude.”

You see, I believe it’s the little things in life that create the greatest happiness and contentment.  And my pair of Sundee undies is just one of those little things.  Actually, maybe I shouldn’t call them little because there is nothing dainty about them, and that’s the whole point!  The first time the hubbs saw me in them, he told me I look like professional wrestler Bruce Santino.  For the record, that’s not the guy’s name at all.  I had a lot of trouble remembering his name the first few times; though I could have sworn I heard Bruce Santino.  No matter, because regardless of how many times I’m corrected (or even if I remember the real name), that’s the name I use when I call the Sundee undies by their other alias – my Bruce Santino’s.  If you want to know the real guy’s name for a reference, no doubt Marcus will add a comment under this post correcting me for the umpteenth time.

Anyway, I digress from my point – that’s right, I do have a point I was planning on getting to after I finished divulging TMI.  So, why do a pair of clearly unattractive, clearly un-sexy undies provide a source of happiness?  Well, first and foremost because they are comfortable as hell.  Don’t get me wrong, I like to avoid panty lines as much as the next girl, and I want to try to be cute for my boo.  So, 6 days a week I don the appropriate underwear for such things. 

But on Sundays -- oh, Sundays – I get to remove myself from the everyday world and forego these societal pressures!  It’s my way of claiming a day for myself where I don’t need to worry about anyone or anything.  These Bruce Santino’s represent all things that are lazy, indulgent, rebellious, and relaxing.   And we all need at least one day a week where we allow ourselves to duck out of the world as much as possible to recharge.  So on this sure-to-be-rainy-from-Irene Sunday, I wish for all of you the chance to find a pair of Sundee undies or some other equally comfortable and indulgent symbol of the Sunday Funday.

Biting the Bullet

I didn't watch Sex and the City until it had ended its six-season run. I didn't read Harry Potter until the last book was published. I didn't get a cell phone until my friends finally bought me one because they were sick of me being the only one they couldn’t reach (and worrying about me taking night classes at my university in Baltimore City). I didn't join Facebook until well after it was established as "the" social networking site (and I might add until I moved far away from my home town and needed to keep in touch more easily). The list goes on, and includes life decisions as well as technology ones. My point is: I don't tend to follow the hype. I like to make my own decisions on when to enter into the current craze--and I usually prefer to enter once it's no longer considered a craze.

This is how I find myself a 33-year-old former writing teacher -- with a current job where my main duty is writing -- who is just now entering the blogging world. My only foray into the genre was a blog I was required to keep for a class called Digital Writing in the Classroom. In the interest of full disclosure, that first paragraph up there was stolen from the first post I ever made to that blog.  All writers know you need to start with something, and most are taught to start with something already written, so there you have it.

Clearly, I like writing, given my current and former professions.  And clearly, if I gave in to the Facebook craze, I might as well give in to the blogging one.  It’s like my friend Sarah and I say: Sometimes things are a trend for a reason.  Things don’ t exactly become crazy popular because they suck, now do they? Let’s face it: Sex and the City was all that and a bag of potato chips – so much so that I’m right now watching a repeat episode on E! that I’ve likely seen 10 times (the one where she dates the ballplayer and runs into Big, for all my fellow fans out there).  And the Harry Potter books? Pure magic, no pun intended.

The bottom line is that, I process things by writing up reactions, summaries, and stories in my head.  I’ve essentially been keeping a brain blog for three years.  Why not put it on paper and torture others too? If nothing else, the people who know me and love me might get a chuckle and feel more connected even though we live far apart. And at the end of the day I will be writing. Not teaching writing; not writing to fulfill a requirement; not writing about a hydroelectric facility; not writing to jump on the bandwagon that I had convinced myself blogging had become. Writing because I love to do it. Writing because I need to do it. Writing because I have something to say that someone else--or no one else--wants to hear.

Because Stephen King's right: writing regularly is the point. Doing it for joy is the point. Someone else actually reading what we've written? Well, that's just icing on the cake.