Dear Reader's Digest Lady.....

Dear Reader's Digest Lady also known as Katharine Bass,

To start off with, shouldn't it be Readers' Digest? With the apostrophe after the "s"? Or do you only HAVE one reader? Just curious.

When I got your little note about renewing my subscription, I almost didn't open it at all. Mainly because I start getting those cute little reminders about two and a half years before my subscription is due to expire. Are y'all really that desperate for money? If so, how can you possibly afford to give me a 74% discount? Just charge me full price; I probably won't know the difference.

But I DID open your letter, and when I realized the expiration date was just three months away instead of the usual three years, I was prepared to write a check and put it in the mail. Especially when I noticed that the yearly rate is only $10.00!!! That's a savings of 74% off the cover price!!!

Then I made the mistake of reading the P.S. after your letter.

As a grammar snob and self-proclaimed writing expert, first of all I have a little trouble with the whole concept of P.S. If it's important enough to say, shouldn't it be included in the BODY of the letter? I can understand back in the days of writing letters by hand that occasionally one might suddenly remember a pithy saying or an important detail and feel obligated to tack it on at the end, after the signature is in place. Nowadays, though, that practice is a wee bit antiquated, wouldn't you say? If you remember something you should have said but neglected to, can't you put your little cursor up there and insert the comment? You can even make it bold, put it in italics, make it both bold AND italics, underline it, or make it a different color, for crying out loud. The P.S. is dead in the computer age.

Your P.S. requested that if for some far-fetched reason my failure to renew my subscription was a conscious decision rather than a simple oversight, you would like to know about it. To quote your P.S.: "Feel free to write me!"

Oh Katharine.

There's a problem with that sentence construction. I can call you, I can email you, but I can't write you. Unless I write "you," which would make no sense out of the context of this particular blog post.

The verb "write" typically calls for a direct object. Write a will, write a letter, write a check (yes, I remember it's only $10, and I'm still debating), write a blog post, write it off.

The verb "write" is also one of a select group of verbs that will also allow for an indirect object. By definition, though, a sentence cannot have an indirect object unless it also has a direct object, and the indirect object must come BEFORE the direct object.

I can write Katharine a letter, write the Reader's Digest a check (yes, I remember it's only $10, and I'm still debating), write my husband a note.

But in the sentence "Feel free to write me!" (I feel almost the same way about exclamation points as I do about P.S., by the way), there is no direct object. There is nothing that I should WRITE. There is no place in our syntax for the direct object to be understood, even though the "me" in that sentence is clearly intended to be an indirect object, the receiver of whatever the direct object might be.

You might even have avoided the entire direct object/indirect object snafu entirely by inserting one teeny tiny little prepositon: "to." I could write TO you, and everything would be fine. Sadly, though, I cannot write you. Unless I write "you." Here we go again.

So now I'm on the horns of a dilemma. (If you can use P.S. and exclamation points, I can certainly use cliches.) Do I even WANT to renew my subscription to a magazine that allows its Consumer Marketing person to get away with such shoddy sentence construction?

I'm still debating.

Sincerely,

Bragger

P.S. When I make up my mind, the check (yes, I remember it's only $10) will be in the mail! Really!!!!!!!

My Last Christmas Break Ever - Day One.....

It's kind of depressing to think this is my last Christmas break as a teacher. In fact, it's so depressing that I'm considering putting off retirement for a few years.

Not.

Whenever I have an extended break from school, I alternate between doing absolutely NOTHING of value (and feeling kind of guilty about that) and trying to cram as many useful activities into a single day as I can (and feeling kind of exhausted from that). Not much middle ground.

I would have put today in the former category until I started thinking about writing this blog post. I spent most of the day waiting for the big brown truck to arrive with the Warrior Princess' Christmas gift, and it didn't come until about 3:30. But if I had dared leave the house, that bad boy would have driven up at 10:15. I could have used the time I was "trapped" at home to do some -- oh, I don't know -- HOME projects. But I didn't.

It wasn't a total waste, though. I shipped Sweet Girl's package to her and was assured it would get there on Wednesday, much earlier than I was afraid it would. I bought a couple of gifts for my godchildren, some sweetener I forgot to get at the grocery store, and some antacid tablets for Hubby. I prepared my fantasy gymnastics team line-up for week one (and my team is NOT heavy with UGA gymnasts, believe it or not), and I paid our car insurance. I did two loads of laundry, cooked an almost-actual meal for dinner, and loaded the dishwasher.

The best part of the whole day, though, was taking a walk with Hubby (and Gus) in the park. We walked for about an hour, and it was glorious being outside in the fresh air. It was about 60 degrees and would have been PERFECT for a bike ride, thank you very much Mr. Big Brown Truck. Rainy weather is supposed to be moving in tomorrow, so I may have missed one of the last good riding opportunities for this year. We'll be out of town for four days right after Christmas, but I hope to squeeze in at least a couple more rides before the end of the year.

I don't usually plug other people's blogs here (especially people I don't even know remotely, as in this case), but I have to tell you the story behind this one. Warrior Princess called me last night and said, "I'm afraid I may have misrepresented you to my co-workers." (And I got teary-eyed that she has other co-workers now and I'm not one of them, but I'm working through those issues.) It seems she was telling her co-workers about my blog and my writing style and my sense of (?) humor, and one of them came in saying she thought she had found my blog all by herself.

She thought it was called "People I Want to Punch in the Throat."

I haven't read many of the entries, but part of me is sad that it ISN'T my blog. Part of me is grateful, though, because if I've learned one thing about my writing, it's that I can't maintain a writing style consistently. I can't be funny all the time, I can't be sentimental (hardly ever, in fact), and I can't even be grumpy all the time. I can do sarcasm, but I'm always afraid it comes across as more pissed off than I really am, so I try to use it modestly.

No, really. I do.

I have found much to love in this blog so far. I do find some of the language offensive, so I hope Warrior Princess corrected her co-worker about its authorship. Still, some of the ideas could have come straight out of my head. I just wish I could express them as well.