Dead Rats Don't Sprout!

We were looking for a box of rice in the pantry. George noticed that behind the open shelving in the pantry something was growing. Not arms and legs, but vines, leaves and sprouts. He couldn’t get it out from behind the Gorilla shelf and finally realized whatever it was had grown into a new, unused electric fly swatter. He grabbed the handle and out came a dead rat.

When George said to look at it…well, let’s just say the conversation could be used in a court of law to have me committed.

“Honey, look at this!”

“Don’t worry I’ve got it.” I grabbed the fishing net from the hook on the wall, swatted it over the dead rat knocking the swatter out of George’s hand and trapping the vermin on the ground under the net.

“What the heck are you doing?”

“I’m saving you from rabies, dysentery and gonorrhea.”

“It’s not alive.” George rubbed his hand where I hit it in my hurry to save him.

“The host may not be alive, but it’s sprouted and its progeny could be one step from attacking you.”

“With what?”

           

“They’ve attached to the fly zapper and are planning to use it to electrocute you.”

“It doesn’t have any batteries in it.” George said.

“You can’t know that for sure. They may have stolen batteries from the other shelf.”

“Give me that net.”

“NO! I’ll hold them prisoner. You get something to put them in, then we’ll incinerate them in the burn barrel.”

“Are you insane? Dead rats don’t sprout!”

“It could be an alien mutant rat.” I said confidently.

“IT’S A POTATO!”

I looked at the shriveled up dead thing sprouting everywhere. I took the net off the “rat” and poked it with the end of the handle. “A potato?”

“It must have fallen out of the potato bin.”

“Look at it. It gave its life trying to sprout a family of potatoes to carry on its lineage. That’s so sad. Do you think we should give it a decent burial?”

“I’m going to ignore the irony of that question, and throw it and the zapper it destroyed in the trash.” George said.

“That’s mean.”

“A minute ago you were ready to burn it alive.”

“I may have overreacted.”

“Really? I find that SO hard to believe.”

Sometimes the hardest part about being a writer is reaching the end of the workday and feeling like I wasted my time.

I had a very productive day: wrote 11 pages, did some key research, outlined another project and even organized the top of my desk…yet when I stopped work for the day I felt a sense of incompleteness.

As authors we are encouraged to feel satisfaction and accomplishment from showing up every day at our computers and putting even a few words on the page. I wonder if there are other authors who often leave their desk frustrated or filled with fear they are wasting their time and cheating their families from a “real paycheck?”

I stood in front of our family room window after work today, sipping decaf coffee watching a new neighbor building their home. Excavators were digging a septic system. Concrete workers prepared the garage floor to be poured, while others sealed the concrete basement so it could be backfilled.

Watching these hardworking people I knew they would go home feeling they accomplished something. The house wasn’t complete, just like my novel wasn’t complete. So why can’t I feel their sense of having worked hard today.

My conclusion is this: First, they are being paid every day for their accomplishment. Second, they have bosses and co-workers telling them (hopefully regularly) job well done.

I love what I do, but I enter each day not knowing if the work I do today will ever generate interest or income. Quite frankly, most of us need income. And that income is also a validation of our efforts, paid to most, daily, weekly or bi-weekly.  Even writers earning a decent income can’t be sure what they write will be accepted as payment worthy.

And honestly, the only “person” telling me good job at the end of the day is my cat. He feels MY day is worthwhile if I allowed him to sit on my hands while I attempt to type, and if I let him walk all over my notes and mix them up. Today, he gave my chin an extra head bump reward because I successfully kept typing while his tail moved across the keyboard and his paws stepped on the mouse pad.

I’ve read the books telling writers if you write 500 words each day you are succeeding. Plus, all the other seminar-style, ego boosting statements to help writers feel good about our production, and not beaten up when we can’t write anything more than our name at the top of the page. My intellectual brain buys it; but my Xanax eating, wine guzzling, brain doesn’t.

Some days we just need an atta-girl and a paycheck. This life definitely isn’t for everyone, which is where the Xanax and wine come in really handy.

How to create your own earthquake sensor.

After our recent encounters with numerous small quakes I got the bright idea to invent a cheap and effective quake monitor for personal home use.

All you need is a 24 case of can beer.

First, drink the beer.

Then, make a pyramid.

If you aren’t too drunk from drinking the case of beer, you’ll notice there are only 21 cans in the pyramid. The other three cans I used for target practice. Nothing goes together better than beer and bullets. This combination is also where the genius inspiration for my at-home-quake-sensor came from. (Before some of you get your britches in a bunch, let me assure you I was using an air pistol…also known as a BB gun. Therefore, no animals, transportation signs, terrorists, or lawn furniture was injured in the making of this device.)

I’d also like to thank McCollum Hall at the University of Kansas for inspiring this idea. God rest your P.O.S. (thank-God-they-imploded-you) heart; you showed freshmen for years what it was like to live in a prison cell and inspired us to greater achievements.

By the way, I haven’t shown George my invention yet. I sure hope that patent comes through before the next quake, I’d hate for it to activate (read fall down) and scare the bejeezus out of him.

Jane! Stop this crazy thing!

I’m so overwhelmed that I feel like George Jetson stuck on the dog walking treadmill at light speed.

As a writer, this feeling grinds my creativity to a screeching halt. My brain crashes like overloaded circuits in a computer. I start pacing through the house since I can’t sit still. I call this insanity the Fidget Fungus. Once it starts it keeps growing like mold and is very difficult to get rid of.

This latest fungus started growing after George had been sick for a week and I’d spent the week herding him to the guest bedroom and hosing the house with disinfectant. Once he was on the mend and I’d avoided (as my dad called it) the epa-zootick we were on a social whirlwind. By week’s end we will have attended an early neighborhood Thanksgiving party, a birthday dinner with friends, entertained the neighbor’s kids with an afternoon of making wood crafts and riding the 4-wheeler, and hosted dinner for out-of-town friends. Somewhere in the middle of this George is catching up on work he missed while sick, we’re finishing before-winter-on-the-property chores, and after finally finding myself (see last week’s post about getting lost in your own book) I can’t make my brain write another word.

The Fidget Fungus has overtaken my life and it’s time to bleach that crap clean!

How do you do that at 9 a.m. when it’s too early to drink? Honestly, it’s never too early, but I’m trying to set a good example here…therefore, let’s hit the Xanex!!!

Pills popped, it’s time to write.

            First, you write an email to the cable company telling them you’re upset that of the 400 channels you have, only 300 are porn channels. Now drive to the post office…ah crap, procrastination was so much easier before the speed of email…okay, hit the send button!

            Second task, you write Grandma a letter telling her every detail of the last week. She doesn’t have email so voila, you now get to drive to the post office and mail it. While out you might as well do some grocery shopping, browse the hardware store for a new color to paint the bathroom and grab some lunch with a friend.

            Third task is put your butt in the chair and write 500 hundred words before dinner!

There is no magic cure for Fidget Fungus. The best you can hope for is containing it. It’s going to escape on a regular basis and sometimes you’re simply going to have to let it grow unchecked. That’s life my friends.  Once I learned that demanding an 8 to 5 grind from my job as a writer was dumber than digging a hole to China, the creativity and words came easier.

I quit 8 to 5 because I hated it! Any job with time structure made my blood pressure and heart rate soar. I was physically marching in their step to an early grave.

I still have days where twenty years of structured 8 to 5 brainwashing makes me feel like a writing failure. Instead of giving up, I lace up my hiking boots and climb to the top of the mountain across from our house. From the top, I can see the other side of the mountain where thousands of people are punching a clock. I take a deep breath and with a smile on my face, turn and start the journey down my side.  

I like it on my side of the mountain, and it doesn’t matter how many outbreaks I have of Fidget Fungus I know the rewards are worth it.

The Ghost in the Rafters (No alcohol was consumed prior to this vision, however plenty was consumed after.)

The day started like all others. I wake up, trip over the cat as I run to the bathroom, then trip over the rug on the way out. I make coffee, feed the cat, and stoke the fire --- however today, after that everything got hinky.

The cat was sitting on the arm of the couch, meowing and pointing his head upwards at the 12-foot beams in the family room. I mistakenly ignored him, so he jumped on an antique table and tried to jump up the wall onto a beam. As I watched his aerial acrobatics I saw a large black diaphanous figure float along the top of the wall and disappear into the entry hall. The cat, feeling vindicated gave me his best, “I told you so” look and proceeded to curl up on my lap, burying his head in the corner of the couch. Chicken! Wimp! Pussy!  (That last thought got me a quick dig with his claws into my thigh.)

George of course, being the rational member of the family asked what size the “apparition” was and could it have been a bat?

A BAT! Is he crazy? The mention of bats requires at least three therapy sessions for me.

“NO! It wasn’t a bat.” I said. “I would have heard it fly by and it would’ve needed to be four feet tall.”

“Maybe it was a ghost owl?” George asked.

“Maybe you’re sleeping in the garage tonight.”

“I’m just trying to help.” George said. “And what the heck are you doing?”

“I’m bobbing and weaving,” I said as I moved to the kitchen to get more coffee. “I’m making myself a harder target to attack, in case it was a giant mutant bat from outer space!”

“Would you like the bug zapping fly-swatter for protection?”

“Great idea!” I got my coffee and picked up the Lysol spray sitting on the counter, making my way back to the family room.

George looked up from his I-pad. “Are you planning to disinfect the intruder before or after you zap it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m using the Lysol like bear pepper spray. If it tries to attack me, I’ll spray it in the face before it gets me.”

“The more I think about it, I bet it was the ghost of Aunt Betty stopping in to say hello. And she wouldn’t hurt anyone.

Two hours later the cat is curled in my lap with his head between his legs; while I’ve upgraded my line of defense to a baseball bat and am typing with one hand and holding an umbrella with the other.