To be frank, one of the reasons Laura is having trouble motivating herself to write in her brant every day, if not every other day, is the same concern she revealed to her readers (both of them) months ago when the brant first began: the nagging question of whether or not anyone was actually reading the brant.

Laura knows she’s expressed this concern before — the sense of futility and, even more importantly, the sense of ridiculousness she feels when she thinks of writing a long entry that no one, save maybe one or two of her closest friends, will ever read — and the last thing she wants to do now is re-express it. It would leave her vulnerable for unflattering thoughts and comments about neediness, and narcissism, and branting for the sake of being seen and heard and getting attention rather than branting purely for the sake of branting.

So Laura’s not going to ask yet again whether or not anyone’s actually reading her brant. Nope. Instead, this time she’s going to ask her web guy if there’s any way to install a plug-in (blog-speak for little extra blog-feature) to count how many people have read each post. That way, it takes the pressure off Laura’s readers to leave comments and boost her ego but still addresses the real issue and true philosophical question at hand:

If someone brants but no one reads it, is it still actually a brant?

Okay. Obviously Laura has serious issues about maintaining her brant with any regularlity. Her last entry, if you recall (does anyone recall?) was New Year’s day, and Laura hoped and assumed she would be getting on to a fairly regular branting schedule of every day or every other day starting on January 1st.

But here it is, a full week later, and while Laura is writing, she is not branting.

Branting, again, means that Laura should be providing the link to the short but very nice New York Times Book Review review of Piece of Work that ran on Sunday, November 26.

Branting means that she should be providing the link to the December 17th New York Times Sunday Styles section piece, “Chick Lit, The Sequel: Yummy Mummy,” in which she is quoted and then writing a long entry detailing her feelings about constantly being labeled either Chick Lit or Mommy Lit — or both (one review of Piece of Work this fall said it was “Mommy Chick Lit,” whatever that means).

Branting means that she should be providing the link to the piece from the Orlando Sentinel Blog, “Domestic Dramas or Mom Lit?” that was posted on December 19th.

But for some reason, Laura just isn’t in the mood for the Big Self-Promotional Brant Entry.

In fact, she’s much more in the mood for writing about her newest NBF (identity to be revealed in a subsequent brant entry) and the history and progression of all her previous (though still active in some form or another) NBFs….

She wants to write about her latest crush — on Ina Garten, The Barefoot Contessa — who she’s been watching for the first time throughout her recovery on the Food Network and who couldn’t be cuter and funnier and more, well, crush-worthy…

She also wants to write about her Pill-Swallowing Debacle that happened three weeks ago and which is truly worthy of retelling here in detail….

Laura even has other topics she wants to write about but she just can’t do it right now. She’s too tired, but she hopes to start back-branting tomorrow.

A friend — Wendy H., the afore-lauded braint of Laura’s brant — sent this to Laura yesterday in a desperate attempt to get Laura to brant. (Please note that Wendy H. addressed her email to Laura, The Branter, as opposed to Laura, The Person. This means that Laura has succeeded in convincing her readers (both of them) of her dual personae!) And so, while Laura is usually 100% responsible for the content on her website and especially on her brant, her need for something funny to throw at her starved fans — and her agreement that this news item is really funny — this one time she is allowing herself to be “pitched” and “used” to “advance another person’s agenda” by posting something suggested to her by someone else. (Another note: this gets dangerously close to how P.R. people and journalists work which makes Laura very very nervous, but rest assured that this will never happen again.)

Scruples and brantilistic ethics aside, here’s the pre-written item, completely written by Wendy H.:

“So, perhaps Laura could brant about this, the amusing part being that they arrested a naked man ‘on suspicion of indecent exposure’… like they couldn’t tell for sure.”

“A man was arrested on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon after police found him outdoors — naked — and he told them he had a tool in his rectum, authorities said.”
(From Boston.com: “Naked Man Arrested for Concealed Weapon”; November 4, 2006.)

Laura just wanted to say hello and assure her (1 or 2) rabid brant-readers that her procrasti-branting has been unintentional. She has tons to brant about and will be branting shortly (by tonight, she hopes). A lot has been happening in Laura’s life lately — some good things and some not so good things! — and Laura is going to share a ton of stuff as soon as she gets a minute to do anything (that’s one of the not so good things — brantstipation!) Just to sweeten the tease even more, Laura has lots of photos to include, so look forward to not only several very long brants but several very long photo-illustrated brants!

Laura just posted her first brant entry with photos and graphics and she could not be happier and more excited by the results! It’s a whole new world for her and her brant — being able to communicate her thoughts and feelings even better than she did before through pictures!! — and she’s tempted to go back and add photos to all the non-illustrated entries in her archives. But that would be tampering with BackBrant, and Laura is a true believer in the immediacy and spontaneity and in-the-moment-ness of her bragging and ranting, even if her postings could be vastly improved retroactively with visuals.

Wow. Laura just read the posting about adding photos to her brant and she was shocked to see that without realizing it she switched from third person to first person and then back to third person during the course of that very short posting. As always, Laura chose not to edit out the strange inconsistencies of voice — she believes strongly in keeping her brant entries immediate and wholly honest no matter how psychologically revealing they may be — and she knows this leaves her open and vulnerable to analysis from every dimestore armchair psychologist out there. As always, Laura welcomes any and all comments — as long as people are writing about her and thinking about her and discussing her to her face, she is always interested in what people have to say.

(Laura wishes that Wendy H. — the managing editor, copyeditor, proofreader, and all around bradvisor — were awake now to instantaneously provide Laura with feedback about typos, content-problems, and any inadvertent and accidental references or links to swingers or swinging. But considering the fact that it’s almost 1:45 a.m. — even with the extra hour to be gained after turning the clocks back in fifteen minutes — Laura understands that Wendy H. is, like most normal non-branters, sleeping now. However, Laura would like to request that as soon as Wendy H. is awake and functioning she get her corrections and comments emailed to Laura post haste.)

Laura just came up with a word for what Wendy H. is: a braint (brant + saint = braint).

Laura wants to thank her good friend Wendy H. (another modest person, this one, who doesn’t want to call attention to herself) for

a) reading her brant religiously;

b) teaching her (or trying to teach her since Laura never actually figured out how to do it without Wendy H. standing right there next to her telling her what to do at every step) how to use the check-out scanner aparatus at the Williams School library where both of them volunteered last year during their sons’ weekly Kindergarten visitation;

c) catching a major glitch in one of her posts tonight: the link to Laura’s sister-in-law’s- radio show “The Good Stuff” which she’d just added to her blogroll.

“The Good Stuff” is on the Lifestyle Talk Radio Network, and Laura mistakenly entered the website address as “www.lifestyletalk.com” instead of “www.lifestyletalkradio.com.” Unfortunately, “www.lifestyletalk.com” is a WEBSITE FOR SWINGERS which Laura certainly wasn’t intending to link to.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with that).

(But for the record, Laura thinks swingers are kind of gross.)

(Again, not that there’s anything wrong with swinging.)

(But Laura feels a need to express her rather strong opinion and clarify her position on the matter.)

(Just in case people think her “mistake” was a cry for help — OR a sneaky way to find other swingers to swing with.)

(But all joking aside, Laura wants to make it VERY CLEAR that she and her husband DO NOT SWING, HAVE NEVER SWUNG, AND DON’T INTEND TO SWING IN THE FUTURE.)

(Again, not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Her (negative) opinion of swinging notwithstanding, Laura is hugely grateful to Wendy H. for catching the embarrassing (but neither intentional nor sub-conscious de-lidding of her id) mistake within minutes after it was posted.

Every branter should have a Wendy H.!