"Sleepy as a Buffalo"

I was chatting with a fellow OSer this morning on how intimidating it can be to post a blog entry when we're surrounded by professional writers and razor sharp writing hobbyists (is that a word?). I pointed out to him that it was possible to enjoy reading all kinds of writing, to the super slick poster with an eerie ability to make language his bitch, to the clumsy blogger that seems to write by smashing his face into the keyboard.

My style (HA!) of writing is to throw a pile of words in the middle of the page and let you guys sort it out. When I read other peoples' blogs about their writing pet peeves, I do worry. I'm afraid if they stumble in here I could melt their brains.

My greatest language crime is my tendency to just make phrases up. I admit I do it out of boredom. Now several phrases have become part of our family's language. It never occurred to me that this could impact my kid (remember, my son, the one I'm trying to turn into a cat). A few years ago when Ben was delivering an oral book report he said, "Huck Finn became sleepy like a buffalo." After the report, the teacher asked about the buffalo reference. Ben said, "you know, sleepy like a buffalo." She told him she had never heard of that saying. Well of course she hadn't - I MADE IT UP. I started saying that when a very round plush buffalo we owned wouldn't remain upright. I explained that to Ben. In an effort to avoid embarrassing himself, he demanded a list of other made up sayings. Here are a few:

"Itchy like a kitty." - all cats are itchy. They long to be scratched. It doesn't matter if they're not itchy. I think they are.

"Itchy like a kitty"

"I need a wombat."- This came about after I took a Xanax. I became rather blind and had a need to tunnel. I've used this phrase enough at school for it to become part of our office language. I had a friend recently that went to the doctor and asked for four wombats because she was afraid to fly. I believe she left with four wombats and some other medications. When we went to Mexico, I went to farmacia and got Mexican wombats.

"I need a wombat"

"She's lemur nice." - This one is the lemur's fault. A few years ago you couldn't shake out a newspaper without reading a story about some zoo building lemurs a new multimillion dollar home. Sure lemurs did their best to look all cute and endangered, but I'm pretty sure it's all a lemur scam. Lemurs try to be all sweet and nice, but now we know what they're up to. I tried to look all cute and endangered, no one built me a multimillion dollar home - though someone did give me some spare change and told me to get a job.

"She's lemur nice"
(with special guest appearance by Frieda and tequila)

"Party 'til your eyes pop off." - Did you know that scallops can regrow eyes? I didn't. Then I started to think about how cool that would be, dancing up in the club, swinging your eyes around, and suddenly one goes flying off. Do you sweat it? Naw, you just keep on dancing.

"Party 'til your eyes pop off"

That's the end of the short list, but trust me, there's lots more. If you stick around long enough, I'm sure I'll use them at one time or another in my writings. I've never written for public consumption before. I'm surprised by how much I enjoy it. I want to thank you guys for reading my blather, and express my appreciation for being allowed to sneak in the back door of OS and set up shop. (Okay, now that I reread that last bit, it's sort of sappy, but I'm not taking it out because I'm being spatula sincere.)

"Spatula sincere"