Murphy Can Take His Law and Suck It

Our air conditioner died last night.

We aren't really sure what the problem is yet, but it certainly isn't working. The husband had to rush out to Home Depot to get a second window unit for the back of the house, so we have a chance at being even moderately comfortable in the 90-plus degree weather.

Anyway, my brain is fried, possibly both figuratively and literally. Not how I saw this weekend going, that's for sure.

This Might Make Sense Someday

I refuse to give up less than a week in, but I am really taxed for anything today. I woke up with a monumental sinus headache and decided to combat it with cold meds. Which worked, but has left me loopy and sloppy all afternoon. My department (the two of us left up there) got early parole for good behavior, so at least I'm home with my loopiness. Also? All three of my children are with my mother-in-law.

I could just sit here all evening and ramble, but the spousal unit just informed me he's going to Schlotzsky's. That means I need to go prepare to stuff my face.

I Don't Even

So, I was trying to figure out a term to use for bizarre reproduction methods, and thought, "Oh, hey! Earthworms do something weird, don't they?" So I looked it up. WHATTHEHELLIDON'TEVEN. I'm deeply disturbed, is what I'm saying.

I can't even remember why I was looking that information up in the first place, I was so nonplussed by that image.

And now this whole thing has been sitting here in the post box (what do you call this thing?) for about four hours. Because my brain is stubbornly refusing to shift into drive today. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's stuck in reverse.

Betawho?

I’m sitting here in my cubicle, before the day starts, looking around at various prompts and what-have-you, to see if I can come up with something to write about. So far, nothing is proving to be very inspirational. It could be because I’m still feeling half asleep. I’m having an extremely hard time shaking the groggies off this morning, and it’s making my wonder why I have this pathological need to get to work 40 minutes early, instead of using the time to get a little more sleep. How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop? The world may never know.

The other day I was having a conversation with co-workers about things we remembered from our childhoods. I brought up the Betamax, and one of the girls gave me a look and said, “What is that?”

“You know, VHS vs. Betamax. Before it was VHS vs. DVDs. LaserDisc was in there for a while, too, but that never really took off here.”

Still with the blank look.

“Tape cassette vs. CDs?”

I could see the light bulb starting to turn on, but it was still pretty dim.

“Sony HD vs. Blu-ray?”

Bingo.

Christ, do I feel old. Thank god I didn’t bring up eight-track, I might have lost her completely.

This whole post may seem like one giant non sequitur, but I had that Tootsie Roll commercial flash into my mind, which brought the whole nostalgia conversation to mind, and…nevermind.

Death to Smoochy Writer's Block

I used to write. Silly stuff, day-to-day stuff, opinions on important matters, random babbling, poetry and even the occasional short story. I wrote. I wrote all the time. But then something in my head went dry and the ideas, even the most inane of them, stopped coming. I’d sit down and stare at my screen, willing something, anything, to come to me. But nothing ever did.

I might get lucky, and get a paragraph or two out, just like this. Whining expositions about how I wanted to write but couldn’t. Writer’s block. The death of writing. I’d write about that, and then stare at the screen some more. I’d get annoyed with myself for whining, highlight everything and hit delete.

It’s a shame, because once upon a time I think I was pretty good at this kind of thing. Not all the time, maybe not even most of the time, but sometimes I could really hit it out of the park. I could be funny, I could be smart, I could be sentimental, I could even occasionally be deep. And it made me happy. To get the thoughts out there on paper, plop them onto a blog where I knew a few people would read them and be entertained, or given reason to stop and think for a moment about an opinion that differed from their own.

Hell, even getting ridiculous, pointless ideas out of my head and on paper felt good, just because I was still writing.

I’m not going to whine about it anymore. I’m not going to toss up a post saying, “I want to start writing again, but it’s just SO HARD.” I’m done with that, and honestly? I am done with writer’s block. Come hell or high water, I’m going to start writing again.

So, I’m proposing a challenge to myself. I’m going to write something every day for a year. Even if it’s just a couple of sentences, I’m going to shake the dust bunnies out of my head, and get something resembling language out. I’ll use prompts, quotes, pictures, whatever…I’ll find inspiration somewhere. If that doesn’t help kick this case of writer’s block out the window, I really don’t know what will.