Coffee with Christine: My Current First Draft Lifestyle

Grab your java while I jabber.

For starters, have you all seen this week’s Facebook post with a picture of a dog lying limply on the floor? It reads, “I can’t adult today. Please don’t make me adult today.” I’m by nature a tangential thinker, so of course my mind went to a place where I pictured the reaction of my students if I walked into my classroom one day, plopped myself on the floor, much like that dog, and said, “I can’t adult today. Please don’t make me adult today.”

I’m not going to do it, of course, but for the record, seeing my students’ reactions would totally be worth a moderate administrative reprimand.

Speaking of tangential, Baby-Girl recently told me that I have really long hair for my age and height. Coming off the senior citizen discount debacle, this was well-received with the full confusion it deserves.

I went to the Gap recently, and because I’m stupid, I took the people formerly known as the small people with me. I was trying to find a white shirt, a task I’d deemed easy before I actually attempted it. As I was pursuing alternatives to white (i.e., purple) I noticed my younger son examining a pair of women’s jeans.

This alone was enough to pique my curiosity.

They were distressed jeans, with several small holes in them. He held up one leg, trying to figure it out. When he noticed me looking at him, he asked, “What is the name of this place we’re in? Is it a thrift store?”

My efforts to curb my laughter were fruitless. I made a valiant attempt to scope out the rest of the store for the elusive white shirt, but I doubt I’d have noticed one in plain view, what with all the tears running down my face.

On the blogfront, I wrote the first draft of the aforementioned “Better Than Our First Drafts.”

And, therein lies the problem.

This is a blog, so it’s not meant to be (and isn’t) a series of final drafts. But oh, the wicked humor in publishing a first draft post on being better than our first drafts! And is it a contradiction, or is it more of a paradox? These are the things I can spend perfectly good time contemplating.

And I have. This, friends, has led me to conclude that I don’t know what to do.

As it stands, I’m leaning toward publishing the first draft of “Better Than Our First Drafts.” I wish I could say this is due to principle, or because I’m particularly confident in my first draft.

It’s not, and I’m not.

It’s mostly about this being the recently dubbed Period of Demi-Hell, the season in my life where most of what I’m doing is, due to time constraints, a first draft.

But hey, on the upside, at least I can still adult these days.