You know you’ve got writer’s block when you start doing weird things when you should be tapping away at your keyboard . . . things like pulling at the skin on the back of your hand to see how loose it is; or counting the new freckles (why do they call them liver spots?!!) on your arms; or putting everything aside to go fetch the tweezers to get at that one stupid little hair that keeps growing back just inside your left nostril.

You’re sitting there trying desperately to think of a subject you haven’t covered before and preferably one that isn’t too depressing or downright morbid because that’s all there is in the news these days; and nothing seems to catch your attention. So you head to the kitchen to grab some ice cream from the freezer, and on the way you stop to play with the dog for a while, which makes her happy but doesn’t do a thing for your brain.

And after you’ve polished off a half pint of Haagen Dazs (that’s a made-up name, you know — maybe I could do an article on words that don’t mean anything), you glance down at your hands again, but instead of focusing on the chicken skin, you notice how prominent those big blue veins have gotten and you remember how pretty your hands used to look back in the days when you took the time to polish your nails.

So you turn on the TV, surf through the listings for a couple of minutes, and realize there isn’t one single thing on any of those 250 channels that you haven’t seen or would waste your time on for any amount of money, and you know you have to get back to work. I did watch one of those Jane Austen 18th-Century romances the other day, which was fairly entertaining except that all that bowing and curtsying started to drive me crazy.

Why does the skin on a chicken pull up like that? Is it only after the chicken has been killed, plucked, and cut into its various parts, or is it like that under the feathers when the bird is still alive and clucking? I’d really like to know.

Time for a fresh bottle of soda from the fridge, with a quick side trip to the bathroom to wash my hands after playing with the dog again . . . if only she wouldn’t lick so much! But she’s sweet, and . . . Hey! I never noticed that before, but my left eyebrow is thicker than the right one. Just like my left leg is 5/8 of an inch longer than the right one. But I’m right-handed. Does that mean anything?

Someone once suggested that I try my hand at writing fiction — a nice juicy mystery novel, for example. The truth is, I have tried . . . and failed miserably. I don’t know why, but my descriptions end up sounding like one of those old detective stories — you know, “She oozed her way into the room, her hips swaying from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock” kind of thing. And my dialogue? Well, let’s just say that Jane Austen sounds more believable in today’s world.

So it’s back to the drawing board. If something interesting doesn’t occur to me soon, I’ll have to start waxing rhapsodic about that one funny toe on my right foot.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
9/8/24