Relatively Speaking

If there were de-addiction centres for blogging, I’d quite possibly be one of the first ones to be presented there, kicking and screaming my protest in a straitjacket.

I realise that my obsession with blogging has reached unhealthy levels. I am constantly on the lookout for interesting subjects (and by that I also mean annoying, stupid or just regular amusement on two legs) to blog about.

When my sibling Scion kicked his leg through the seat of a dining chair in a bizarre accident while reaching for rose cookies, giving himself a nasty bruise on the chest, my immediate reaction should ideally have been a concerned, “Oh, my God! Are you all right?” Right?

No. Instead, yours truly looks at him quizzically, wondering at the mass of arms and legs entangled in what was once a perfectly intact dining chair. Then, as he hopped over to a sofa to nurse a wounded knee, to my horror, I felt the stirrings of an awful giggle fit.

Because in my head, all that I could think of was, “With bruises like that, people would think the hero had been out rock climbing or rappelling. Instead he earned those black and blue hues reaching for rose cookies. I wonder how I can incorporate this on my blog?”

With that, the damage was done. I burst out laughing. Luckily, my family has more funny bones than an elephant graveyard and pretty soon, Scion was chuckling away while still groaning with pain.

A few weekends ago, I had a couple of social functions to attend. A cousin’s engagement and a friend’s wedding reception. While I quite looked forward to the latter, I was in two minds about the former. Family obligation and all that jazz is not a reason that sits well with me since I do not feel guilty remorse at skipping one of those. I only view events in terms of “boring” or “not-so-boring”.

And then I looked at my blog. Uh-oh. If I did not act quickly, A Touch of Tabasco would soon belong to the World Wide Cob Web.

A community gathering, eh? Perfect. With some luck, I could find some material there to blog about. And so, with a much willing heart, I went - ears flapping and eyes peeled. I did pick up a few perils of wisdom such as how one must always place potted palms on a veranda as they prevent old people from falling. Don’t you just love illogical data of that sort? It gives me something to try and attach logic to while in the company of coma-inducing individuals later.

I found myself having a surprisingly enjoyable misandrist-oriented conversation with a very well-spoken, witty old lady with an in-your-face attitude. She did not have anything to say about the strategic use of potted palms, but she did have a lot of rather amusing observations, collated over several years, about the males of my tribe and their general attitude toward us alien non-resident types.

However, one cannot spend an entire evening in the company of an octogenarian, maverick or not. I soon found myself surveying the room again with an uninterested eye, slightly disheartened that I had no material for a new blog post after all.

Blame it on the heavy rain that evening. But suddenly, a bunch of cousins came crawling out of the woodwork. Now, I have this thing about cousins. I always thought that Cousin Binky, her brother Cousin I-don’t-think-horror-movies-have-enough-bloodshed A, Cousin I-am-also-your-uncle-because-of-rampant-in-breeding-bordering-on-incest Whisky and Little Miss Britain were the only cousins I could relate to. We are all social outcasts of sorts - what with our tendency to converse in English all the time and such.

Most others, (and I say “most” because there could be exceptions who do not spring to mind at the moment), are just too old or too young or too... well... different. I am barely past the initial polite conversation about coffee, hockey, rainfall and work before they mentally stick a skewer through me and roast a misfit-cousin-on-the-spit while chanting in a tongue I do not comprehend.

So you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was to stumble upon second cousins who were well, in the same generation, and more importantly, quite “PLU or people like us” as Bin somewhat snobbishly puts it. A bunch of previously undiscovered cool cousins? I think my luck’s finally beginning to turn.

I came looking for blog-worthy snippets and I stumbled on flesh-and-blood smarty-pants company. It also means I can finally ditch the octogenarians. And that’s not such a bad thing even for a snooping material-hungry blogoholic.