My grandfather taught me how to play Scrabble.
Somewhere on the shelf with the golf and pool trophies was his masters points notebook.
But all those years ago, he’d never sit at the dining table to play.
Instead, he’d circle the table, looking over shoulders, shaking his head when my mother or grandmother would look for help, and he’d rearrange the tiles.
“Where does that go?” they’d say.
He’d point at the board.
“Oh!” and they’d smile and place the tiles.
These days, I imagine him screaming more than frowning.
I probably shouldn’t play Scrabble on my phone while driving.
Tag: personal
Blender
I love my new immersion blender.
Instead of using a hard-to-clean pitcher with blades in it that had be run through the dishwasher every time, I’m now using a stick with a set of blades on the end that I can just run under the faucet to clean.
I no longer have to go to Starbucks for frozen coffee slushes either. I just toss ice, chocolate sauce, cold coffee, and Bailey’s into a thick oversized mug, blend it for a while, and I’m done.
I still drop a dollar in a glass for a tip, though. Hard habit to break.
Rain Delay
Usually, I go straight home after work, but my wife told me that there were holes in most of my underwear, so I walked by Target to pick up new underwear.
The delay kept me out after five, which meant that Nit Noi Thai was open.
Yeah, I stopped in to eat some spring rolls, soup, and beef satay.
By the time I got my check, it was raining.
Hard.
I own two umbrellas.
One is at work.
The other is on my back porch.
I ordered another tea, sat back with my brand new underwear, and watched the rain.
The Cats Love
I wake up early for work. My wife wakes up late.
By the time she gets home from work, I’m either asleep or falling asleep.
We rarely see each other during the week.
The cats love this arrangement. It means they have someone around almost all of the time to beg for treats.
We don’t, but until we win the lottery or get jobs with better schedules, it’s how things are.
I go to sleep, hugging a pillow, and when my wife wakes me up, I hand it to her.
It smells like both of us.
The cats love it.
Scale
I keep the bathroom scale under the sink.
It’s one of those expensive scales that measures body fat and blood pressure and all that stuff. Tracks your progress on the Internet, too.
Well, every so often, my littlest cat likes to walk into the bathroom, pull down the hanging towels, and she then stands on the scale.
Ten pounds.
“Who’s a happy little kitty?” I ask her.
She arches her back, ears twitching, and blinks happily at me.
Meanwhile, the scale talks to Weight Watchers, and at the end of the week, my chart is a wacky series of spikes.
The Glop
I like to add berries to my iced tea.
Blueberries.
Strawberries.
Raspberries.
I drop them into my glass, mash them up, and then pour in the tea.
However, I get lazy, and forget to mash them.
Sometimes, I can spear them out with my straw.
But they often just go to waste.
That’s why I got the blender. To blend up the berries for my tea.
Now, I’ve got the berry slurry sitting nearby, ready to pour into my tea.
So, I pour… and it all comes out.
SPLASH!
There’s glop all over the table.
I should switch to coffee.
Morning Routine
Every morning, as I gather up my stuff and get ready to head to work, my cats like to play with my shoelaces and the cord on my iPhone earbuds.
So, I dangle my shoes and the cord so they can bat them around.
They really love it.
“I gotta go to work,” I tell the cats, putting on my shoes and my headphones.
They look up at me with sad kitty eyes.
“I’ve got time saved up,” I decide, and I call in sick.
Just as I’m hanging up, I reach for the headphones and…
The cats have vanished.
Little Bird
While walking home from the drug store, extra-strength laxatives in a bag, a bird shit on my head.
So, I pulled out my gun and flicked off the safeties.
But I didn’t shoot it.
Instead, I put the gun away and walked to the pet store.
I bought a bird.
When I got home, I thought about taking the laxatives and shitting on the bird.
Instead, I told the bird I love it for as long as it lived.
Which turned about to be five minutes.
My cats caught it and tore it to pieces.
Then I shat on it.
Get To Sleep
A friend of mine said he’s having trouble going to sleep.
His cats jump on the bed and pounce on his feet under the covers.
I used to have that kind of problem, too.
Except that my cat would jump on the bed and poke my nose.
I’d pet him for a while, and then go back to sleep.
Sometimes, he’d poke me again.
But usually he’d go to sleep, too.
I never felt annoyed that he did this, because I knew there’d come a time when he’d be gone.
Now, I sleep. Uninterrupted.
And dream of when I couldn’t.
There’s an app for that
I write most of my stories on my smartphone, tapping them out with an app called Draftpad.
It’s a simple notepad program that puts a wordcount on the top of the screen.
This is very handy for writing stories exactly 100 words long. The standard notes app doesn’t do wordcounts.
Even though it can back itself up to the iCloud, it also lets you email a story to yourself. And I can send it to WordPress and Google Plus for publishing.
What it doesn’t do is make my phone waterproof.
That’s the last time I write stories in the tub.