When Michael Phelps Gets Performance Anxiety

Here's what Suburban Correspondent said about the Matron signing on for NaBloPoMo:

Hello? You seem to post twice a day already! Your doing NaBloPoMo is like Michael Phelps joining the community swim team.

Why, thank you, honey. The Matron is flexing her biceps. She is buff, all that typing!

And underneath all that bluster and brawn? Your poor little Matron signed up--made a commitment--to post every darn day and instantly got NERVOUS! Instead of standing confidently on top of those 486 blog posts in 396 days, both buoyed and well-grounded by such verbosity, the Matron is feeling a little bit, well, wobbly. Imagine all those posts on top of another, like so many loose dominoes. Down, down, down goes the Matron.

So she's afraid NaBloPoMo will somehow render her silent. Cause her to forget about her blog. Eliminate Idea, all. Fell her, completely.

In honor of her unflagging pathology, her uncanny ability to uncover yet another neurosis--NaBloPoMoPhoBia--little known to the rest of humanity but plaguing the Matron like, well, Plague--in honor of this new Phobia and her incredible Neurotic Talent, the Matron will lift the veil on a few of her current companion anxieties.

• Rabies. This summer, brought two bats into the Matronly homestead. A man in northern Minnesota recently died of rabies; he didn't even know the bat he caught had bitten him until he started foaming at the mouth. Literally. Toss in two weeks ago, when the Matron stumbled across the tiniest little mouse, asleep in the house. Why, she got within a centimeter of that cuddly creature. It was a BAT. So the Matron has spent some time engaged in the following internal debate: "Should the whole household get rabies shots, just in case?" "Should Stryker get shots, just in case?" "What if (fill in name of loved one except for Satan's Familiar) gets bit and doesn't know it?"
  

• Squirrels. These creatures are rats with tails. Rats are not cute. The filthly scrub brush attached to the butt is not enough to render the rat that is a squirrel, cute. The Matron is certain that one of these greedy, malicious little monsters will one day not run away from her, but run up her pant leg. She's positive this will happen.

• Rabies + Squirrels

• Transportation, all sort, but with a technicolor focus on automobile, school bus and air plane.
  

• Transfats. Sigh. Her poor children! Picture the Matron in the bustling chain grocery store with her reading glasses perched upon her prim little nose, scanning every last delectable nummy treat they might get for the goddless chemical. Worse!!?? The Matron herself, indulging in Holiday Fete, might inadvertantly pass this toxic waste into her OWN PRECIOUS SELF. Ugh! She's shaking, just thinking about it.

• Head lice. Hang on--she's gotta go check her head again.
  

• Escalaters. The Matron gives her mother a win on this one because when the Matron was a Wee Bit of a Miss and scared that the end of the escalater would just grab her shoe and SUCK Wee Bit of a Miss right down with the rest of the disappearing stairway, well, when Wee Bit of a Miss asked her mother if this would really happen? Her mother said, yes. "I know someone who lost two children that way." To this day, the Matron grips tight and her gaze doesn't waver from the end game, that hop off the stair.
  

Happy November! NaBloPoMoPhoBia. Just in time for the flu season, which is sort of like the State Fair and a free shopping spree at Neiman Marcus for hypochondriacs. Not that she is one. . . .