Prattling and other nonsense

As we all know, I can definitely hold my own in a conversation and then some (uh, in the past three weeks or so since I started this blog, I've only not posted about three days and sometimes more than once a day). But really, maybe I should just hush!
I ran into a mommy friend this evening at the Sunset Farmers Market and I realized as I walked away, that maybe I should just hush. Maybe people just want to go on about their business and not listen to me just verbally meander (as I meantally meander).
Why is it that I feel this need to more than hold up my end of the conversation? Why do I worry that there will be a lull and so I just prattle on and on and on and on and on....?
If less is more, than maybe I ought to just choose my words more wisely and say less. I'm most guilty of the verbal diarrhea when leaving a voicemail. My goodness, sometimes even I think that I've left too long a message (especially when the automated system comes on and says that my message could not be saved---b/c I went over the allotted time--and would I like to rerecord). I should take a hint from the nice mechanized lady.
Darling hubby is probably my most targeted victim. He gets it on a daily basis. After almost six years of being a couple, I'm surprised he listens to me at all. It must sound like a Charlie Brown cartoon---waa--wawa--waa. He often has to tell me, "okay, enough, I heard you." And the worst part is that sometimes, I've gone on such a verbal bender that I'm not even sure what I've just told him so I don't know what he's had a enough of!
I wonder if it was my high school speech and debate training. I was a highly ranked extemporaneous speaker (go figure that I could excel at being given a topic and 30 mins to come up with a 7 min speach on a random foreign affairs topic) and part of the rigmarole of the "game" was to lay a road map. "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, tell them one more time, and then tell them that you told them." I seem to still be in this mentality.
Or is it just my own idiosyncrasy. That I just have to have the last word or that I just like to hear me or that because I have two kids under three that I just need to talk to someone so I seize any chance I get. I just don't know. If I did, this wouldn't be such a long post. I'd have figured out a way to be more concise---but here in lies the irony.
When I was a teenager, I never understood why my mom couldn't just enjoy companionable silence with me. She just always talked. It wasn't a bad thing, I just sometimes didn't feel like chattering. She used to say that she just felt the need to hold up the conversation. As a mom, am I now my mom?
Perhaps I should take a lesson from the Eastern philosophies of being more observant, less self imposing and self involved, and just quieter.
And so I just leave you with this:
Confucius says," SHHHH!"