Inflatable inspiration

So, I put up this blog at the suggestion of my friend (codename: Wonder Woman - you know who you are, darling!), to whom (or is it who? I never can get that straight) I began writing little email stories about my adventures I had while just trying to get through life, going from A to B, hopefully having a bit of champagne in between. She said to me, and I near quote "Your stories are fantastic, you should put them on a blog" - so I, being the complete follower that I am said OK, and during a jetlagged induced stupor while staying at her fabulous and well appointed house high above San Francisco, I signed up and suddenly, I was a blogger. It was amazing, I posted what stories I could find that I had saved and sent out my little email notice to all my friends and non-friends alike. I had every intention of keeping this up, writing about this and that and keeping my friends and non-friends entertained. I was going to blog and blog until there was just nothing left for me to say. Then I decided I would write my first real post when I returned home. I was at the time en route from home to home while heading constantly east - Amsterdam - Seoul, Beijing - (ok, I do know that Beijing isn't east of Seoul and there will be a few other exceptions to that during this trip) San Francisco - Las Vegas - Seattle - San Francisco - Amsterdam, all in less than 2 weeks and I was brimming with all sorts of useless details, pointless ideas and perhaps even the random epiphany. I arrived home all motivated and full of procrastination and decided that, like Miss O'Hara, I would think about that tomorrow. Well, as it does in my world, tomorrow turns into another one and before I know it, a whole bunch of tomorrows had piled up in the middle of my living room and like most spring cleaning, seemed such a daunting task to begin that I decided to wait until tomorrow.

We are currently having a heatwave here in Europe and as I live in a building that has been around pretty much as long as the US has officially been a country, I do not have airconditioning. What I do have are two ceiling fans which are doing an absolutely amazing job of blowing the hot air around without actually cooling anything down, although I should not complain as most people living here don't even have a fan as we tend to get only 2 days of really nice weather here per year. This year has been great. I love the heat, I really love it, except when trying to sleep. I am a cuddly, indulgent sleeper. I cuddle with my pillows, comforter, teddy bear and anything else I can get my hands on and in this heat that just isn't possible. I have tried compromising and sleeping with just a sheet - not cuddly enough. I turned on the ceiling fan above my bed - too noisy and I don't like air blowing on me when I sleep. I have put teddy on the shelf - his crying keeps me awake. I put the comforter just over my legs - not really cuddling, is it? And on and on the drama went until at last I decided to give up and get up. I don't have a television and I don't really have the energy to decide which of the current 5 books I am in the middle of I want to pick up and read, and then, like a bolt from the blue, I decided now would be a good time to sweep that pile of tomorrow's right out the window and onto the group of loud toursists eating on the terrace two floors down. And then it hit me - what would I write about? And then I heard that little voice "just think about that tomorrow" it screamed at me and so I went to blogger.com and decided to just browse around and see what other people wrote about. Now, there is some boring things going on out there in the world and now I know that when things get really bad for me, I just need to let my fingers do the walking and I will find something to be thankful for within a couple of clicks... And then, when I thought I had seen it all, I came across the one that would give the the ultimate inspiration to write at this very moment. It was so amazing I could not put it off one minute longer. It was a blog of news stories about inflatables. People who had been rescued after their inflatable raft had them stranded in the middle of a river. People killed when their inflatable over inflated and exploded. And on and on it went. I was mesmerised, hypnotised and confused. I thought "why?".

Suddenly I felt the urge to write, the need. I felt if I didn't get this out, I wouldn't sleep regardless of how cuddly my blankey may be. And it get's even wierder. I just tried to find that blog back because I actually want to read more. It's like a drug. But when I do a search on "the inflatable mattress" as that was the name of the blog, there were 20,321 results. That gave me pause and realised that with my own little insignificant entry, I have raised that by 1 and as soon as I post, I will do a search, just so I can see myself.