Queen of the dung heap

I read a blog written by a stranger, and I've read her blog for years. She's kind of my blogging hero since she manages to write a little something every day. This is a standard to which I aspire.
This other blogger is a woman with whom I have almost nothing in common. She is a career woman with no children and several pets. Her operational morality is significantly different from my own, and she uses language that I do not use....
at least not intentionally.
Yesterday, I took a photo of myself to send to my mother. I happened to be in costume for school, and I thought she might get a kick out of it. I quickly dictated a text message to explain the photo and hit send without proof reading. This never ends well in my experience. Unfortunately, I didn't think to look at what I'd written until several hours later. I was wondering why she hadn't texted me back, and so I looked to see if she'd received my text. Evidently, I had sent a message to my dear mother telling her that the photo was of me dressed as the Queen of Sh**. I called her immediately and begged her forgiveness.

Once my mother was entirely assured that I had not meant to say such a thing, she was able to see the humor in it. Good thing, too. She had likely been questioning my salvation for the bulk of that afternoon. I don't know which alarmed her more, the fact that I would say such a word, or the fact that I would say it to my mother.
I have sent some of the most cringe-worthy messages using voice-to-text. Why do I not learn??

Anyway,
So this blog I was telling you about...
The lady who writes it is as different from me as she can possibly be, and yet I absolutely adore her story and her writing. She talks about the antics of her pets or the mundane events of her days. It's seldom deep or instructive, yet she has this gift for telling her story in a way that frequently makes me laugh out loud. I feel like I know her; she's kept me reading for over a decade. Somewhere there is a psychological diagnosis for someone like me who feels an intimate connection with a stranger they've never met. We used to refer to this brand of voyeurism as "Stalking" but now it's just "Blogging."
There are other bloggers whose stories I used to love, but I don't really read anyone else consistently. Most of the others talk about home decorating or cooking or faith, and I find that I cannot care less about their drivel despite being topics that I am otherwise very interested in. Why is it that the telling of a story I have nothing in common with has the power to hold me enraptured? 
I suppose it's the same drive has pulled us into Autobiographical stories for eons.
One amusing autobiography is that which was penned by Benjamin Franklin. His view of himself is so different than the view that I was sold in history classes. Do you know that he fancied himself quite the ladies man? I read that book years ago, and I remember very little about it. The one thing that stands out to me in recollection is that he was smugly convinced that the entire female gender was woozy with desire for his body.
My drama class just read the biblical story of Nehemiah for the purpose of memorizing parts of it and reciting it in the study of plot and character. If you've not read it, I recommend doing so. It reads like a personal journal, not unlike a blog, and it tells an heroic story that is terrifically relate-able despite having occurred something like three thousand years ago. It's about a man who takes fantastic risks with an epic goal in mind. There's humor and sarcasm and drama and intrigue, all the good stuff to fire one's imagination. The way he tells his story is very direct without the melodrama and hand-wringing that so many of us use to falsely inflate an otherwise palatable story. He explains his goal and details his adversaries, then he walks his reader through the tension to the victory at the end. It's a good read.
The drama class performed their recitation on Friday, which is why I was dressed as a queen of Shushan. No matter that I was not actually on stage, my goal was solidarity with the students; the entire class looked like the cast of Aladdin. Who am I kidding? My goal was to wear an outrageous costume in public. My proclivity for dramatic overtures and sensational costumes is at the heart of my story. Pray that God might redeem it to His use.