You can read it.
I had two choices. Change all the light bulbs to red, or take down the Christmas lights before Valentine’s day.
Upsetting the neighbors with a bordello ruby glow was rather appealing but, besides the time involved, I didn’t know where to buy three thousand tiny red lights.
I was playing with my daughter and trying to teach her how to put different shaped blocks into the same-shaped holes in a little toy bucket. The triangle goes in the triangle hole. The squre goes in the square hole. The circle goes in the circle hole. If you don’t have the blocks matched to the right holes then they won’t go into the bucket. That’s just the way it works.
Maddie works with this concept for all of about two seconds before she grabs the bucket, takes off the lid, and places all of the blocks inside without further interruption.
We both learned something.
I would love to say the writing muse is a fickle mistress but she’s always hanging around and I’m sure she’d be quite irate if I even tried that lame excuse. She shows up staring back at me on the television screen until I can flip through enough channels to lose her for a while. The new VCR and DVD player for Christmas has only made it even harder for her to catch up to me. She thinks she’s got me when I sit down in front of the computer but, being an intangible muse, she can’t delete the icons for solitaire and surfing the web - but I’m at least in my writing zone, especially late at night when the house is quiet. I’ll give her this, she’s persistent. There’s hardly a thing I do without a whisper of guilt telling me I could be spending a few minutes composing a paragraph or small poem. Heck, I’m sure she’d settle for a run-on sentence or a limerick by now. I don’t know if muses have bosses to report to, but I’m betting I have her on probation with her superiors.
I wonder what happens to an unemployed muse to a writer who won’t write? Hmm… I’ll bet I could spin that into a cute little story… Hey!
Okay, another two points for the muse.
I can almost here her snickering now.
“I’m so embarrassed. I told everyone that Soylent Green is people, but if you read the label closely, it says it’s actually made from “artificial people flavoring.” - Bob Van Voris
In the end, what’s wrong with it? I’m sure cows and pigs wouldn’t mind at all.
Garlic and hot pepper mashed potatoes are really good for about the first 15 minutes.
After about 5 hours they start to get a little old.
Hmm… I know! A couple Pop-Tarts and a big bowl of Cocoa Krispies will take care of it! I’d eat the box of donuts but that would be against my new year’s resolution. I don’t want to be bad after all.
New Year’s Day. Time to reflect back upon the previous year and make resolutions for the year to come. There are, of course, the easy ones - like, I’ll never eat the entire box of donuts by myself again, or I’ll never wax my back hair again. Sickness and pain - both good things to avoid. Then there are the tried and true resolutions - like, I’ll lose this extra weight before summer, or I’ll quit (bad habit) this year!
2002. The year reads the same looking forward as looking back. And, since most New Year’s resolutions are lucky to last to the next day, let alone the next twelve months, the upcoming year may look a lot like the previous year for most folks. Come summer that spare tire around your middle will still be there from eating way too many boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts (thanks be to the magic of Ultra Strength Tums). And, of course, without the desired weight loss, you feel like you have to do at least something for those summer swimsuit days - so enter the back waxing. Rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiipppp! Ouch!
Of course, upon this brief moment of reflection, I think this year I really will stop with the donuts and lose that weight before summer! Either that, or maybe I’ll just quit the bad habit of making New Year’s resolutions…