36 (or so) Reasons Why I Will Never Be A Professional Writer

1. I am a Stay-At-Home mom.
2. That lives in the suburbs. 
3. With my husband.
4. And three kids.
5. And I like it. 
6. I like to come home and pull my big SUV into a garage. 
7. I like square-footage and acreage. 
8. I like chemically treated lawns with playsets in the back. 
9. I like a basement full of toys.
10. I like shopping malls. And Target. Even Wal-Mart. I love Costco. 
11. I eat at chain restaurants. 
12. I order pizza from Dominos.
13. I go to a hair dresser to have my hair dyed blonde.
14. I've been known to listen to RadioDisney when the kids aren't in the car. 
15. Once, I even turned on Saturday Night Live to watch One Direction (but fell asleep 10 minutes in and missed their performance).
16. I love Disney World. Love it. Even though I can see the reasons why one might not love it – the crowds, the expense, the tourist traps, the marketing gimmicks, and the complete and total fakeness of everything -- I still love it. 
17. I think Disney World is the happiest place on earth.
18. I can’t describe things in metaphor. If something is good, it’s just “good” not “as good as a hot day at the beach” (see that sucked). And, if something is bad, it’s just “bad” not “as bad as a cup of coffee with no cream or sugar” (again, suck).
19. I use a thesaurus. A lot. So I can make things slightly better than “good” and come up with “propitious” but since I think I've changed the meaning, I go back to good and resign myself to the fact that I am a suck-a$$ writer.
20. I do like New York which seems to be some prerequisite for writerly-types. 
21. I love New York, as a matter of fact – Times Square, Toys R Us, The M&M Store, The Hard Rock Café, FAO Schwartz, The American Girl Doll Store, The Lego Store…
22. I don’t understand why I used the em-dash above instead of a comma or semicolon. 
23. I use too many ellipses. Seriously…
24. I don’t have an MFA but occasionally research it until I see the admissions requirements and then I freak out and close the computer.
25. I cannot recall ever having read anything by Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, James Joyce, or Gertrude Stein. 
26. I could never be a cool beatnik. The closest thing I came was my college cross country road trip in which I happened to bring along a tattered copy of On The Road.
27. I watched On The Road recently and felt anxious. I mean, how could those people live like that – traveling around without an itinerary?!
28. I write detailed itineraries for vacations. The last time we went to Disney World it was 14 pages long.
29. That is the longest thing I've written that I actually let anyone read.
30. I waste too much time on social media.
31. I will now spend the rest of the day checking for comments on my blog (hint hint hint).
32. I want to stay married, though, so I will go clean my house and make some dinner.
33. And check on the kids so Child Protective Services doesn't take them away…
34. Oh, and maybe I’ll go wash everyone’s underwear for good measure.
35. I write clichéd things like “for good measure.”
36. I don’t know whether the period goes inside or outside of the quotation marks above (actually, it should go outside but it didn't look right...)