I like this assignment. Decide what to write about. Not what’s the point of the whole blog; been there, done that. It’s picking a topic – daily. This topic is the same as finding a plot for your next book. Which I’m bad at.

There’s no genre called ‘blog.’ I’ve been thinking about it and I can’t come up with such a genre. I’m not going to write a memoir. I admit, the first blog I attempted was a long therapy session. I never published the blog because therapy is private. This is different and maybe my target reader will get a chuckle out of it as it morphs into whatever it will be.

I wasn’t going to publish this blog until I figured out all the bits and pieces that the class wanted me to figure out. But, part of the curriculum is sharing my assignments and what better place to do it that here? I’ll tell you straight up, I will change the titles of these posts but, for now, I’m sticking with what’s at the top of the page. My topic for the day starts below.

My youngest granddaughter wanted to know why baby birds have their eyes shut and their mouths open when she sees pictures of them in their nests. We looked it up and discovered that, for the most part, hatchlings pop out of the shell naked with their eyes closed. She thought that was hilarious and wanted to see more. We looked up more photos.

Now, she likes babies and she thinks they’re cute. First picture: baby bird, eyes shut, devoid of feathers or down, mouth agape.

“Aww,” she starts as usual, “it’s so…” I’m waiting for it. “Ugly.”

And so it went, photo after photo: “ugly,” “ugly,” “really ugly,” and so on.

Once we found a cute baby – a heron with down – she wandered off to watch her favorite nature cartoon.

Like baby birds, some blog topics are ugly and readers will bypass them. Others strike a chord and readers will enjoy them. What topic will I pick? Whichever one allows me to put words on the page in a coherent form. Now I have to come up with a title for the moment I don’t need to remind myself of my assignment. I’ll keep you informed. See you.