Here’s what an idiot I am:

My monthly SJ-R column ran today, Mother’s Day. Did I use the opportunity to thank my mother for all she did in raising ten kids, and all that she continues to do today? Did I look into my heart and express the words that describe what the mother of my children means to me? No, I wrote about bird poop. Bird poop!

In my limited and ultimately failing defense, I was ignorant of the fact that my column would appear in today’s newspaper. It wasn’t that my editor failed to tell me, I just didn’t think to do the math and figure out that Mother’s Day would fall on the second Sunday of the month, my usual publishing date. So instead of a tribute to the all of the mothers in the community, I wrote about how much it sucks to have to hose bird dung off my car in the mornings.

I guarantee you that Julie Kaiser wouldn’t have written about avian defecation patterns on Mother’s Day. She’s not an unsentimental twit. My only consolation is that Dave Bakke didn’t write about mothers either, although even his story about a 37-year-old doughnut ultimately told an unlikely tale of friendship and good-hearted hi-jinks.

Perhaps it’s time that I abdicate my monthly column so that someone with at least a shred of graciousness can do right by readers by writing about things that they matter in their lives.

Shame on me.

UPDATE

The high-winds and rain are probably some kind of cosmic comeuppance for my writing about scatological matters on Mother’s Day. Sorry.