an explanation

Some of you may wonder about my writing style. Here's the deal: I write like I speak. Unless I'm writing a term paper. If I'm doing that, then I come up with all kinds of thesaurus worthy vocabulary and use sentence structure that would dazzle even the most anal English professor. But that's a lot of work, so I don't do it. The next time I do writing like that will be when I'm writing my children's term papers so they get A's and get into a fantastic college on a full ride so I don't have to pay for it. Isn't that what all the parents do these days? I can't even tell you how excited I am to do a science fair project from scratch the night before it's due and let my little man take all the credit as he stands next to his perfect photo board in his preppy polo and heavily starched khaki pants.

Much of my writing style comes from the constant barrage of emails I receive from friends on a daily basis. It's normally nothing but mindless banter, witty comments and harmless teasing. Occasionally, we can come up with a good pun. That's a good day when that happens.

But the most influence on my writing has come from my best friend, T. T and I met 6 years ago while we were both working the worst job known to man. Ok, well maybe not the worst job known to man. I mean, we weren't bottling deer pee or artificially inseminating cows or even picking up dead armadillos from a sweltering Texas highway in the middle of the summer. We were just working with annoying, entitled tourists but still, it was pretty bad.

T and I hit it off from the start and we haven't stopped talking since. For 6 years, we've laughed about the same stories over and over. We think they are funny but apparently, our husbands think otherwise. Since she lives in the land of Snow and Santa Claus, not to mention the occasional igloo and penguin and I've lived in the land of cows, rain, more cows and now live in the land of beer, leiderhousen, and soft pretzels, we have to communicate by email. We are both too cheap to call unless we are using night and weekend minutes. Reading her emails makes me feel like I'm talking to her. Only she can fit Paris Hilton, big trucks, tapered pants and bad hair into the same paragraph and make it work. As Tyra Banks would say, "She's fierce". Since she writes this way to me, I write the same way back to her and it works. It's just a running commentary on the inner workings of my brain. It's almost therapeutic. And, since I can go for days without talking to another adult in person, it's nice to be able to write out my thoughts, word for word. Consider this my Zoloft substitute.