When I first began working on this blog, I brainstormed over 20 different titles for it. My original ideas sounded like "Diary of a Stay at Home Spouse" and "The Homemaker Project." Google shouted at me with its glaring white list of search results that those kind of blog names are already taken, or overused at least. Fine, Google. You're always right. I should be more creative with my title.
TheSquatPanRests.blogspot.com it is.
Yes, that's what I originally named this blog. For those of you did not take 20th Century British and Irish Poetry in college, "the squat pen rests" is a line from a Seamus Heaney poem. I'll explain the personal significance of that poem in the next post. Stay tuned.
I settled on that title. It was a bit odd, but I certainly wasn't making the same mistake as those poor souls at the Farmers Market that named their venture "Kuntry Kitchen." I'm too nervous to buy their muffins.
The Squat Pan Rests was unique, creative, and showed that I was capital S Smart. My husband is also capital S Smart. But I knew that title wouldn't work when he couldn't remember it over the course of 12 hours. Sigh. Google doesn't like my ideas and now this? In the words of Sonny Corleone, it was time to take my titular frustrations to the mattresses. I often do my best thinking right before I'm about to go to sleep, so I head to our bedroom hoping to defeat my writers block by assaulting it with the elite thinking forces of my nighttime brain.
Off to bed. Let Operation Think-Of-A-Good-Title begin.
Colbert is over, the lights are out, and Ian has rolled onto his stomach with his head to the side. The fan hums and my puppy snores softly in his crate. It's too cute to be annoying. I've wrapped myself into an braid with my cool summer blanket, the tip nestled between my hand and my ear. My eyelids are heavy, and my mind is softening. Before I close my eyes I see the glare of the streetlight sneaking under the blinds in our darkened room, the shadows of the trees dancing in the orange light on my wall. Pretty. We just moved in two months ago. I wonder if we should paint the walls. It'd be nice to paint that pattern. Orange branches dancing. Kind of like my parents' old kitchen wallpaper. The one with the apricots hanging on twisty vines. The little patch of it that's left by the stove must have many stories to tell. Stories about my mom's famous brownies and my dad's buckwheat pancakes. About listening to the Indy 500 on the radio while we work in the garden in the backyard. About spilling the dogs' water bowl and the triumph of unclogging the sink. About the panic to get the corn casserole done in time for Thanksgiving. But I'm sure that the wallpaper's favorite story is how it gave me my first word, "apricot," after I heard my mom talking about the pattern. My goodness, that wallpaper is an expert on the pleasures of being at home and the celebration of family. I should name my blog after it. The Apricot Wallpaper. There it is...The perfect title... And the orange branch dances behind my eyes.
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