It's time.

My son has thrown down the gauntlet. He has accused me of not completing a project. I've also never lost the baby weight from carrying him around, and he will be 20 in October.

One of my few remaining friends from the newspaper biz has challenged me and made me face a hard deadline by asking me the launch date for this blog. Of course she offered to shoot my book jacket photo 15 years ago and I never sat down to write the book.

My daughter -- who is also going to be my IT gal for this venture -- has started to make fun of me for saying "this would be good for my blog and that would be better."

For years I have "talked" about writing a book. Its not-so working title is: "Someday I'm Going To Write a Book." For years, despite encouragement from my very supportive husband, I have been away from the creative keyboard. We'll see if editing our children's elementary school's yearbooks, creating flyers for cross-country team pancake breakfasts and proof reading a collection of our rabbi's sermons has kept me from atrophying.

After batting around ideas and thoughts of going back to work as an editor/writer, I am sitting down to do this. Truthfully, I wanted to find something to do that wouldn't disrupt my incredibly-blessed-life. All the better if it helps to stave off early onset Alzheimer disease.

Worst case scenario, I will finally set down in type some of the stories and experiences that have left people in my life laughing and sometimes crying (mostly from laughter).

Fine if Depends wants to sponsor this endeavor while you are all pishing your pants from laughter. And it's okay if Kleenex wants in to wipe a few tears away. I am completely open to selling out. However, I am going to retain creative control. I am going to write when I want (most likely when there is laundry washing or drying in the laundry room), what I want and how I want. And someday I might figure out this Twitter thing before the next big thing comes along.

Of course there will be rules:

No animals will be harmed in the writing of this blog. 

I will change names to protect people I still want to talk to me.

I will try to only mention Oprah once in each blog.

Unlike many bloggers I will not be mean-spirited. 

Like The New York Times, I will write at a third-grade level so everyone can read and understand the contents. I am saving 25-cent words for my Words With Friends games.

I'm also going to check spelling and grammar, like the rest of you with Spellcheck.

This is a big thing for me. I put my career on hold when gauntlet-throwing son was 3 years old and our family moved to a new city. And, since Oprah didn't give me a reality talk show for her OWN network a few years back, I have a lot of stored up material to share.

Besides making fun of me, my IT gal/daughter gave me a really big motivational push as she rolled her eyes when I asked her to remind me what the blog password is. She told me if HBO decides to pick this up as a series, she would have them cast Julianne Moore as the lead. I can't imagine myself thinner.