I haven’t been picked up for syndication via 50 something Moms in a while. It’s been bumming me out a bit frankly. I would like to say I write simply to hone my craft but the truth is I write to be read, and the more people who read me, the happier I am. Syndication is a chance to be more widely read and as I stated – I haven’t been picked up  for a couple of months now.

Three months. Not that I am counting.*

As I was reading a draft for Rob the other night, he remarked that I might want to tone down my language because I used the words bejeezus, hell and fat bastard. Just for effect and it was a funny. If I am going to mommyblog**, I am going to have fun with it.

“Why? I am just trying to be funny,” I was whining a bit because I don’t often try to be funny and succeed and because like most writers, I hate to cut what I think are good lines that work.

“Because I think it’s what’s keeping you from being picked up again. A lot of the papers that ran your early stuff were in the south. Not just Bible Belt but buckle and notches.”

Now I was confused. The Bloggess is more profane than I am – she posts kitty porn and holds discussions on Jesus’s sperm – and she lives in Texas. It doesn’t get redder or deeper in the pants than the belt that is holding up East Texas.

“When we were living in Kansas, Shelley liked to say that we weren’t just living in the Bible Belt but we were on its buckle. One time shortly after we moved there, and they still hadn’t figured out that our religious affiliation really was ‘none of the above’, a neighbor asked Shelley to help out with a school bake sale. They were driving somewhere together and the woman mentioned that she only baked for sales because she didn’t enjoy it. Shelley replied that she did and she sometimes baked just for the hell of it. And that was the end of that budding friendship.”

“Because she used the word hell?”

“Yep.”

“So I need to ask myself will this play in the Bible Belt from now on?”

“Only if you want to get picked up again.”

Which I do. Damn.

Um, I mean darnit. Or is that dang nabbit? No, it’s darnit. The other is Yosemite Sam.

*Three months on the 28th. Of course I am counting.

*Mommyblogging means exploiting the cute foibles of one’s loins for the entertainment of others as opposed to mentioning them in passing to preserve their privacy and/or dignity. I am endeavoring to exploit my womb and Rob’s loins as much as possible without throwing up on myself in disgust.