I took my dog for a walk this morning wearing two left shoes.  I rolled out of bed, stumbled to my closet and grabbed my shoes from the floor.  I carried them to the kitchen where I sat down to put them on, at which time I realized that I had inadvertently grabbled two left shoes from two different pairs of tennis shoes.  I thought about it for approximately 10 seconds and said, “what the heck?” and I pulled that left shoe onto my right foot.  So…let’s break this down. I was getting ready to take my dog FOR A WALK, yet walking the 20 feet back to my closet to get the correct shoe just seemed logistically too difficult.  Luckily I was walking our 9 year old beagle.  You could keep up with this dog even if you were 98 years old and used a walker.  The dog is slow and her highly sensitive nose halts her every 3 steps.  This allowed me to look at my mismatched shoes frequently.  Two left shoes is very visually disturbing…like you’re viewing an optical illusion on your own body.  Tripped me out.

I promise there’s a reason I’m telling you about this.

My close friends who are reading this might be shaking their heads imagining it, but they are in no way surprised.  Sometimes I just…try things.  It can be because I’m being lazy, like this morning, but mostly it’s because I just like trying new things.  Like my shoes, I’m just a bit mismatched personality-wise.  I like to call it “curious by nature,” my friends would call it weird.  My husband would say that being married to me is like aiming at a moving target…he’s never sure if I’ll love something or hate it because that too changes on a fairly frequent basis.  I’m not sure if it’s why he loves me or if he loves me in spite of it.  Hopefully both.

This blog is another example.  I’ve always loved writing.  From short stories to poetry, I’ve always written for my own pleasure.  No matter what part of my life I was walking through, I always had this itch in my soul to write.  The many, many emotions I had with a pregnancy of “advanced maternal age” caused that itch to grow to rash-level with a desire  to spew these thoughts publicly.  When I first hit publish on this blog I quickly fell in love with the written feedback I get from people who laugh or cry, relate to or disagree with what I write.  Limited audience that it is, I love it.

No really, there’s a point…I promise, hang in there with me.

Last year after this post I found myself in church and the huge screen accidentally shot ahead of where the pastor was in his sermon to an upcoming slide.  I wasn’t looking at the screen but instantly my daughters and husband started hissing simultaneously…”your blog was just on the screen!!!”  “What?!?!” I hissed back.  “YOUR BLOG WAS JUST ON THE SCREEN!” And then we all stopped breathing because who knows what your pastor is going to say when your blog that discussed the fact that you could see his pores during service comes up on the big screen in front of hundreds of people?!?

Well, right before we all passed out from lack of oxygen from aforementioned breath holding, the slide reappeared and our purple hue faded because he just wanted to read my blog.  He loved it.  He is a wonderful orator and to have something you’ve written read by someone like him gives your piece more life than you even intended for it.

But here’s what happened.

I got to WATCH people respond to something I wrote.  It.was.fantastic.  It was like it the best chocolate you’ve ever eaten combined with your favorite cup of coffee wrapped in your first kiss and marinating in a Shamrock Shake.  Not to over-dramatize it but I imagine it could be likened to God using a cattle prod on my soul.  It lit me up.

And then I went back to living a normal, non-cattle-prod-on-my-soul life.  This is a life that I LOVE…but there was that moment that made me realize that yes, I want more of that to happen.  That being said, it’s tough to randomly have people start reading your words out loud and then be able to be the creepy bystander that watches it.  Life just doesn’t offer that many opportunities.  I chalked it up to my 15 seconds of not-so-famous-fame.

I love reading blogs.

I know you’re thinking…”Wait…where did that come from?”  Stay with me…I know this is getting long but I’m wrapping up quickly.

I love reading all blogs.  Optometry blogs, leadership and employee engagement blogs, home blogs, etc.  My most favorite blogs though, are mommy blogs.  I’m not even sure if that’s a PC term anymore so forgive me if it’s not.  I love these blogs because they usually expose the rawest, realest forms of motherhood and that’s simply my favorite.  People just saying it like it is.  They can elicit more emotion than any blogs I read–and I’m including the political ones.  The subject of motherhood is so ridiculously unifying and emotionally triggering.

SO…when I read a blog that discussed an upcoming nation-wide show called “Listen To Your Mother”, my attention was piqued.  I went to the website and read this…

What is LTYM?
LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER features live readings by local writers on the beauty, the beast, and the barely-rested of motherhood, in staged community shows celebrating Mother’s Day. All shows are recorded and shared on our LTYMShow YouTube channel, boasting a catalog of nearly 1500 diverse stories of motherhood (daughter/son/father/Grandparent, etc).

Born of the creative work of mothers who publish on-line, each production is directed, produced, and performed by local communities, for local communities.

Cattle-prod moment.

Yes, this!  I want to do this!  And before I knew it I had signed up for an audition to read one of my pieces.

So last week I traveled to Lawrence, Kansas and did just that.  Auditioned.  You know what?  When I left that audition I told my husband that, at the very least, I had so much fun reading it to the producers.  It was the same feeling of getting to watch the reaction of my work that filled me up.  I knew they only picked 9 or 10 for the actual show so I couldn’t allow myself to get my hopes up.

But GUESS WHAT?!?!

This weekend I got an email with a first line that read…

We want to WELCOME you to the cast of LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER: KANSAS CITY 2016.  

So this is my latest “mismatched moment”.  I’m excited and nervous but best of all, I’m all lit-up inside over it.

I am planning on wearing matching shoes to the event though.

Here’s the info…