Things I can't write about

With the success of this blog has come a wide readership that includes, unfortunately, Familiar Readers. Family. Friends. Co-workers. So with that readership comes Responsibility and Self-Censorship. There are so many things I'd like to write about and no longer can out of fear of offending those Familiar Readers. The former fodder for my blogs has been stripped, given that I want to stay married, keep my job, am afraid of my family and am quite fond of my friends.

I can no longer write about the fact that our family has a hereditary disease from which so many of our generations suffer: Dumbshittedness. It has affected so many in the bloodline on my father's side - my only clear bloodline, given that my mother was adopted. I can only hope it skipped me.

I can't write about my mother's recent discovery that she's Irish, leading to a sudden love of Enya, anything Celtic and all things green and perhaps, in the near future, to the abandonment of a tea-totaling life and the embracing of whiskey and beer and bar fights.

I can't write about a former coworker's completely inappropriate pursuit of another coworker, complete with flowers and cards and kittens and baleful, longing looks tossed across cube-tops.

I can't write about how after years of living alone that sometimes it is, even in the midst of love and respect and desire, absolutely horrifying to be faced with some of the natural bodily functions and associated sounds that emanate from a man, especially one with an inability to sense my presence at times and a love of large portions of meat.

I can't write about the days when I can't face one more strategic deck and take an extended and early lunch just to watch the Scrubs or American Idol DVRd from the night before, ignoring the ringing phone and the insistent ping of IM while I drink my diet coke and eat my 100 calorie pack of crispy peanut butter cookies.

I can't write about how truly awful the first year of marriage is, and how many times you scream inside your head "HIDE THE ASSETS! GET READY FOR A MIDDLE AGE WITH NOTHING BUT LOTS OF CATS!" before ultimately seeing a couples therapist that silences the voices and teaches you that NO, YOU'RE NOT ALWAYS RIGHT. NOT EVEN MOST OF THE TIME. And the year passes and you find that you did indeed make the right choice and yes, yes, you will keep that man after all, until death do you part.

I can't write about a crazy friend, my idle consideration of faking my own death to be able to finally get some sleep, the local mom who makes my life miserable and leaves me thinking of ways to slight her that will never actually happen but are oh-so-fun to plan, the times I consider letting the dog run away so I never have to scoop her poop again, the way that some client's voice makes me want to smash my face repeatedly with a stapler to have something else to think about other than that screechy, nasally and ultimately demanding voice.

I can't write about anything but my drunken son, my ethnically-confused self and the occasional public figure deserving of derision (coming soon: a Newt-bashing entry, probably written in my "language of the ghetto", Spanish) and other safe topics. Look for how to get stains out of your clothes or how to watch paint dry in an upcoming blog, with all references to "ass" removed in deference to my sainted Irish mother.