*Sigh*

Ohhh, Deidre. What are you getting yourself into? What did you do? You started a blog, that’s what you did. And someone is reading it! Or…not. See, as I write this (many weeks prior to release) I know that someday someone will or will not be reading this. Right now, it is Schrodinger’s blog! (Not to be affiliated with any actual “Schrodinger’s Blog” out there…lowercase blog, you see.) That is until this has been read anyway, after which it will be Deidre’s blog for real. AK!

“What is this, what am I reading?” you ask, confused. This is author Deidre J Owen busting out into the world! Quietly. From my home office. Like introverts do. If you’ve found this blog then you have likely seen the I.S.A.D. graphic somewhere on my page. Well, THAT is me: a shy, weird little introverted dork. Oh, an awkward. See how I awkwardly tacked that on? I missed the d in the word “and” too…left it that way, just to needle you.

Heh, you smiled. At least, you smiled in your brain, because that’s what we do now online. (If it makes you feel any better, my inner grammar freak is screaming.)

So my name!

A bit uncommon. There are many lovely variations of this old Irish name, but I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I prefer the one my mother gave me: DAY-druh. I’ve learned to answer to just about any variant – except that one time someone called me Jessica (?!?) – but I do so appreciate when the effort is made to recognize the name that is truly mine. Thanks! Now that you know how to address me without making my eye twitch (or, how to make my eye twitch)…

Outside of the small circle of people who love me, I’m no one special. I’m a wife and a mother; a homemaker, homeowner, stay-at-home parent, and currently pet-less. I’ve got OCD and am married to a man with ADD, so that’s fun. (I’m sure it will come up again. I have stories.) I’m the hapless host of a number of minor medical disorders that are annoying and inconvenient. I have adult-onset Christianity, carrying my cross proudly and striving every day to be that better person; I study apologetics. Having grown up with sailors, I swear like one…just internally, or sometimes under my breath (see previous sentence). I do try to be a lady. And while I can present an image of beauty and grace, I need only cross the room to prove myself ungainly. Oh, well…at least my husband finds it endearing.

I like to write.

I’ve always been one to just…write something. A moving memorial yields a random essay; a broken lollipop turns into a reflective paragraph; a nightmare becomes a dark poem. I’ll be sharing all of that and more. I enjoy crafting the perfect mini-anecdote that captures the joys and humor of parenthood, sounding off about the ways of the world, sharing new insights into my faith, or ranting about local traffic (which inspired a whole book, btw). I enjoy the fine points of grammar while flexing to embrace the colloquial, and I occasionally break the rules on purpose. Sentence fragments, for example. And I sometimes begin sentences with a conjunction. Purposeful nonsense is fun!

  Caution: Rabbit Hole

I also love rabbit holes! For example, while drafting that last segment I initially wrote “pen a few lines” and thought, do we truly pen anything anymore? I’m certainly not using a pen to write this…my hand would cramp, and I probably couldn’t read it later anyway. So will an old turn of phrase like this fall away with technology, or will it be grandfathered into our language like other linguistic oddities? Dial the phone, hang up the phone, get it on tape, roll down the window…if you’re a Millennial, do you know where those phrases came from? Omg please say you do.

Okay, I’m done.   

So, I will likely find myself blogging about a hodge-podge of topics since I’m a hodge-podge of an individual. But then, aren’t we all? We wear many hats these days. Me, I’ve been a musician, a baker, a framer, a data processor, a nursery worker, a veterinary professional, an administrator, a writer, an artist, an illustrator, and more…and that doesn’t include the many hats of personal relationships! Yet that’s nothing special. You probably have a list just as diverse. So maybe you’ll like me; maybe you won’t. Maybe I’m mundane, or maybe I use too many semicolons. (There were five, I counted for you; or did I? Ha! Now there are six.) But at the very least I hope I can maybe reach into your life in some way – if even for a moment – and connect with you on some basic human level. After all…we’re all just people. (See what I did there? Shameless book plug.)

Thanks for reading. Truly.

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Segments/categories you can look forward to:

Life is as a Mother

Random Inspired Essay

Angsty Poetry

Rants About Something Dumb

Faith is Not a Dirty Word

I Actually Dreamed This