Clarifying, Smoothing Over, or Digging a Deeper Hole?

Unlike graded college essays in which I intentionally stated a thesis and then reread the entire paper to make sure that every paragraph supported that thesis cohesively, my blog posts often run willy-nilly through woods and streams of consciousness like the meandering of a brook in summer.

Such was the case with my most recent post, I do believe. My intent was to say this:

To list a fact such as "We cloth diaper" on one's blog profile comes across as petty and potentially divisive to the casual first-time reader who is both a mother and a guilt-prone woman (which may be redundant). That reader was me (or, to be grammatically correct, "That reader was I").

My intent was not to make a case against cloth diapering. (Cloth diapering has indeed come a long way, baby. I'll grant you that.) My point was that this blogger's three-word fact, though probably intended to draw in mothers of the same ilk--or should I say "cut from the same cloth"?-- managed to drive me to ponder the power of words.

From three little words came a plethora of memories--the worst being of heavy guilt (heavier than wet, poopy, bleachy diapers) from soiling the universe to failing to keep a lid on my pungent temper.

The stream of consciousness did, however, lead to a few pleasant memories.

1) thankfulness for that baby boy who was born on the first day of spring 22 years ago, thus ushering in more blessing and guilt than I was capable of imagining
2) all the times I heard "what a happy baby!" and I believed it was 50% because I changed his diaper so faithfully and cared for his every need (ahem!) and 50% because I was always smiling at him, which is where he learned his social networking skills early on (ahem again!)
3) my sensitive husband who can stretch a buck farther than any man I know, but who took my mental health into the cost analysis (or was it his mental health?) when he blessed me with the liberty to switch to disposable diapers (as opposed to heaping more guilt on me).

In conclusion (oh, what a terrible way to conclude a paper!) I will say that the blog-profile statement has raised my awareness yet again, of how words, by their very nature, include and therefore also exclude, certain meanings. Therein lies the rub-a-dub-dub.