I’m far more bothered by the misuse of a word than I am by the misuse of punctuation.

I’ve come to realize that I’m a semantics nerd.  In my creative writing I take enough liberties with grammar and punctuation to make red pencils everywhere itch for a smackdown.  Punctuation is an important tool of written language but meaning is the soul of communication.  One word can make the difference between being understood or not.  A semicolon doesn’t share the same power.

If all of us went around speaking in a completely grammatically correct way we would sound stiff and unnatural. I will admit that some grammar rules hold more weight than others but nothing bothers me more than knowing that what a person is saying isn’t actually what they mean.

I got almost no  sleep last night.  I went to bed around 1:30am and then couldn’t get to sleep and then not long after going to sleep I woke up to hear that Max was up and talking animatedly with his dad at 2:30am.  I got mad and demanded to know why Max was up again and he said he woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.  It was like a curse and I couldn’t get back to sleep either, until I finally did.  Only to be woken up by Philip coming to bed at almost 4am.  He slept very loudly all morning and when I tried to get him to turn over in hopes of making the snoring stop he would just turn his head which does nothing.  This was made awesome by Max coming downstairs at 5am to announce that the birds woke him up.  I tried to get back to sleep but then Chick needed to be fed at 6am.  Her usual time.  I just gave up.  Fuck sleep!  Who needs sleep?!

Apparently I do.  It’s 10am and I’ve been nodding off at my desk for an hour.  I want to crawl back into bed but why bother?  The train is still in there chugging along.

So I’m going to take a shower and maybe nap on the tile floor of my office.  It’ll make me look especially pretty for my visit to San Francisco today.  Unless we decide to postpone it until tomorrow.

Here’s to a wakeful produc-

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