Photoessay #456 - Making dinner

I flat out stole this picture. I googled images for 'making dinner' and lifted this picture from a woman who writes about her experiences as a stay at home mom in her new home with her twin sons who just entered kindergarten.

More power to her. I kiped her picture.

To answer this burning question posed by my friend Emily who is considering starting a similar sort of blog...is blogging like making dinner?

Yes.

Blogging IS like making dinner

Because making dinner is not about groceries, recipes, food preparation or skill. It's about knowing what you are going to make. Once you know what you are going to make, you are mostly there. When you don't know what you will make, when you don't have a clue and you can't even bear to think about it, you can have all the ingredients in the world and you can't make dinner.

When I get to around 2pm in the afternoon, I've got to either have an idea or get busy thinking about one. I don't really have to have a picture though a picture can give me an idea. That's what happened yesterday, I had no idea, started looking old pictures that Dennis has up on the server, saw that picture from the 2004 Canada Cup, started thinking about Yukiko Ueno and I was off. You can always find a picture if you've got an idea. Through my own stuff or...well the web is so wide open and the way things are now, I can steal almost anything.

Once I have the idea, the writing is easy. I just say what the picture suggests. It means something to me (or you) and that provides the material. That doesn't mean I can write a book or a coherent piece, it just means I can blog every day. Is that a gift in itself?

mmmmm...not sure

Can anybody do it?

Not sure about that either. I know that I can do it. Maybe, deep down, in that childhood place, I still want to think that I'm the smartest. And not *everybody* can write a piece every day. That gives me another idea for another day. Daily Fiction.

I think anybody can write a piece every day. It's just that most people don't CARE to.

Dinner? My plan is to use all those green peppers and tomatoes that I bought last weekend. Use that costco spaghetti sauce and some organic hamburger in the freezer.