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I hadn’t written. I wanted to. I was missing it. I thought I’d tell you about the dinner party and the upside down cucumber mousse that my mother made.

I thought the cocker spaniel who barged into the beautician’s just to say hi, wazaa, wag tail and quickly leave, warranted a mention.

I could’ve made a sad post out of the three people I know who have died in three days. Not close to me particularly, but the fact that I have one non-vague memory of each is enough to make me feel dry-mouthed. I’m a wimp. I’m terrified of death.

Blog wise, I thought I’d ask if you saw the picture in the papers about the elephant being air lifted – title of the post, undecided, but flying jumbos sprang to mind.

Do you too want to go bald in this heat? I could’ve asked you that and we’d have chatted a little in the comment space.

I could have kept you posted on the Monday outing, the mall-day, the cute question. If not as an opener, somewhere in the post, this is what I was going to say:

We drove to a mall to get a smoothie each. One Very Berry, large, one Tropical Blast with banana and Acai, regular; both smoothies rip offs in Styrofoam cup. Slurping the last of my Tropical Blast, I felt period cramps. I say to him, I need to stop at a chemist. Okay, he says. He is the boyfriend. And there it comes, the question, naïve, half-cute, "So, are tampons like cigarettes? Can you buy them loose?"

That was in my blog draft for a day till I got bored. A blog draft is taking a fun thing too seriously. You’re asking for trouble.

I even had a second paragraph.

I felt it deserved headline space. So what if my blog is not The Wall Street Journal. (I imagine that is where he’d rather be featured, in a piece on young, successful entrepreneurs with hobbies and flattering personal histories). But you can’t claim to know their minds. Maybe he likes it here. Maybe he prefers me to a white myopic reporter called Allan Watermallen who says uh-huh a lot. Maybe he’s so thrilled I’m finally writing about him that he doesn’t care if I’m merely putting together an assortment of not fantastic words. It’s a notion. You must mull. Only then might you, too, like the idea I float; of me, worthy girlfriend compared to Alan, mythical hack.

I think I might be in as much in trouble for my attention span becoming shorter as for, read above, taking a fun thing too seriously.

See how I changed course.

But forget that for now. I wanted to tell you about yesterday, Sunday evening. My brother’s in town. We’re all going out. Since he doesn’t live here, there is a sometimes unsaid value attached to the time when, because he is in town, all four of us -- two parents, two kids -- are together in the car. If my father drives, my mother will sit in front. At the back, my brother (taller-than-me) and I will bicker over leg room. He will make me sit behind my father – a very tall man who needs his seat pushed back -- so that he, sadist brother, can stretch like a king behind my mother’s seat. I imagine most families have these dynamics, these nuisance traditions, little ways that have always been and if they were changed now, like your place at the dining table, something would seem not right.

That’s it.

That’s my three paragraphs. I used italics to help you out. But I left you hanging. I left me hanging. I tested our collective patience. Then the phone rang. Someone called. I lost my plot. I gave up on the logical next. What I wanted to tell you was very likely, an anecdote of someone’s married life. Put like that it sounds bleah, but I wouldn’t have bored you. Honest. I’m not like that. It’s just that I was so sure that I was going to come off sounding like I had attempted to write well, I gave up. I love me for knowing me. And if I’m still an empty vessel trying to write well the next time I open a new word doc, I’ll save your eyeballs the strain, your fingers the need to scroll, and post instead high-res photos of women and iced tea that will trap you into loving me again.