Exciting Things Happening in the Nest!

Any guesses as to what's got me so excited?!?

Nope, I am not pregnant. I've damaged the human race enough as it is.

There is no new life ready to burst forth and eat my brain but I have secured my new blog address at wordpress! How exciting!!

I labored for a few days with a thesaurus and booze, but I couldn't come up with anything. I had just pushed Donovan to his limit when he back-talked something to the effect of, "ought to be locked up in a padded room..."

Genius! It was just the inspiration that I needed.

"Letters from the Padded Room" will debut in February. I'm having fun editing and re-working my old posts. I'm deleting a few of the depressing ones and splitting up some of the long ones. I've copied and pasted them into Word, where each and every one of my grammar and spelling errors have been glaring at me and spreading rumors (all of which are false, except the one about the hyphen, but I'll explain later.)

I have a lot of enthusiasm for this project. Sure, I've only been writing for about 6 months, but that is far longer than I've stuck with most things. I don't even think I was pregnant for 9 months.

I'm also entering the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition. If you don't know who Erma was, pour yourself a bottle of wine and crack open "At Wit's End", "Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession" or "I lost Everything in the Post-Natal Depression". Brilliant, funny domestic humor columnist who was syndicated in over 900 newspapers and the author of several best sellers. Do you see a Julie & Julia connection here? I don't.

Anyways...

Every year a conference is held at the University of Dayton for aspiring humor writers. Every two years, the conference runs a writing competition and four winners receive free registration to the conference ($380!). Just the collection of audio recordings from last year's seminars are over $150! This is way out of my leaugue.

As awesome as it would be to win, my dream isn't to be a finalist. My goal is to create something I'm proud of and do it with a deadline (I didn't realize competition began December 1st - I just noticed it was open a few days ago). I want to finish something that I started. I want the opportunity to be judged by writing professors and people who don't know me.

But most of all, I want to win the bet I made with my husband. If whatever I write is funny enough to make him pee involuntarily, I get $20 and an order of General Tsao's chicken with fried rice.

So - here's the breakdown.

450 words or less
Must be funny
Cannot be previously published on a website (Sorry, Psycho Hermaphrodite Chicken Attack)
Must capture the essence of Erma Bombeck
Must be submitted by midnight on January 31st.

Wish me luck!!!!