Tag: personal

The opposite of a muse

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What is the opposite of a muse?
What do you call someone who sucks all the inspiration and creativity out of your soul?
Or drains the soul right out of your body?
I need a word for what’s on my couch right now.
It’s been there for days, and I can’t rest. I can’t think. I can’t create.
I can’t write.
I keep trying, but the page is just as blank as when I pulled it out of my drawer.
I pour alphabet noodles across it. Scrabble tiles.
They slide off.
Without words, I have nothing to scream.
Only silence.

Too Many Cookies

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The only number of cookies I eat are too many cookies.
I get really sick from eating too many cookies.
I wish I could eat just the right number of cookies, but I don’t think that number exists.
I tried to keep track with graph paper and a clipboard, but it’s covered with cookie crumbs and pink pepto bismol stains.
Maybe there’s something on the label?
The package has a bunch of nutritional data with a suggested serving size: one cookie.
Ever have just one cookie? Only one cookie?
Hardly the right number of cookies. Hardly a number at all.

Shedding

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We have a black cat and an orange cat.
Despite both being short-haired cats, they shed. A lot.
Every time I lay out a black shirt, the orange cat lays on it and sheds.
Every time I lay out an orange shirt, the black cat lays on it and sheds.
I know what you’re thinking: don’t lay out any shirts. Hang them up as soon as they come out of the dryer and the cats won’t shed on them.
You’re not the one carrying a pile of shirts around and the cats looking so cute, you have to pet them.

Weekends

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When I was young, time crawled.
Now that I’m older, and the schoolweek is now the workweek, things feel a whole lot faster.
And it’s a good thing that the workweek goes by so fast. So much crap I just want to just get through.
It’s the weekends that matter to me. I live for the moment I can walk out that door and I’m free until Monday morning.
The problem is, if the week goes by fast, then the weekends go by even faster.
Sadly, Friday to Monday is a lot shorter than Monday to Friday.
When’s retirement again?

The Black Spot

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I dropped a can of root beer on my foot.
When I took off the shoe and sock, the middle toe was dark red.
No blood, just bruised.
A day later, the swelling went down.
But there was a black spot on the nail.
Over the past month, it’s been slowly growing out.
In another month or two, it will be at the edge, and I can clip it off.
As if it were never there.
All the while, the spot tells me to save it.
“Please cut off your toe,” it begs.
Every day, it gets louder. Desperate. Angrier.

De-inspiration

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Inspiration means to breathe life into a creation.
But what happens when you want to take that part of your life back?
Especially when your creation wants more, and is sucking the life out of you?
Always waking up breathless, needing to do more.
No more.
You step back, close your mouth, and hold your breath.
Your creation begins to turn blue and suffocate.
It begs for air. It begs for life.
“I need it more than you do,” you think to yourself.
It’s hard to watch your creation die.
And once you kill it, you feel empty yet again.

Peanuts

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If there’s anything I do that has me pegged as a Southerner, it’s the fact that I put peanuts in my cokes.
You’re supposed to put them in the bottle, but nobody drinks out of bottles anymore.
People drink out of cans, or they use a glass.
Either way, I still put peanuts in my coke.
The peanuts soak up the coke, and when you’re done drinking the coke, you rattle them around and chew them up.
My grampa taught me to do this, but he told me to do it with the shells still on.
Grampa was an asshole.

Errors

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The error messages this system spits out are frustrating.
They are just a bunch of meaningless code.
“Can I get some meaningful error message that tells me what I did wrong?” I ask.
The developers say no. They are too busy getting rid of the bugs that cause the errors.
“In the meantime, I’d like to know what the errors mean.”
They shake their heads.
“How about some error messages that are even more meaningless, filled with profanity and racial epithets?”
The developers think I’m being silly.
So I grab one by the throat and give him a few examples.

Belt

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I could not find my leather belt this morning.
It was not where I had left it – wrapped around my neck.
My belt is usually on yesterday’s pants, but I didn’t wear pants yesterday. So I wrapped it around my neck and went to sleep.
When I woke up, it was gone.
I only own one belt. It’s a black belt, so it goes with everything.
Maybe I will go buy another belt? I should buy two, but in all my life, I only own one belt at a time.
Because I only have one neck to wrap it around.

Perfect Potatoes

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The potatoes are perfect?
Good. I’m glad you like them.
You know, I always kept things in the oven just a little too long.
So, I had the temperature turned down just little on the oven.
Things turn out just right now.
I could have just set the timer a little quicker, but I’m such a stickler for time.
Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes. You can measure it with a clock or by counting.
But temperature? Can you really tell the difference between three hundred and fifty degrees and three hundred and forty degrees?
Thought so.
So, want more potatoes?