I am being attacked today at every turn, an endless onslaught that is wearing and tearing me down, making me think that perhaps I should have just stayed in bed and not even bothered with the day at all. That might have been for the best. I’m not storming a castle, by any means, or trying to create a cure for cancer. All I’m trying to do is write one simple little short story.
Just one.
Not even two.
One.
I’m at my desk and the phone rings, and I make the mistake of answering it before checking the caller I.D., thinking that it is the Cheese Man calling to say hello, or to set up a second date, or to cut to the chase and propose marriage, but it’s not him. I’m not even sure who it is to lay my curse upon, as they hang up as soon as I say hello. I see on the screen that the number is blocked, which meant that I should have never answered it in the first place.
I’m a paragraph in when something in the kitchen falls over with a crash, and I rush in to see that the Kitchen God has taken a tumble onto the floor, and I must repair him before I can do anything else. He is extremely impatient when it comes to matters of his own maintenance and well being. Perhaps if he didn’t insist on sitting so close to the edge of the counter, this wouldn’t be an ongoing problem.
Half a page later, the doorbell rings. I am not expecting anyone, but people are always dropping by unannounced. I consider ignoring the bell, but I don’t want to be rude, so I abandon my pen and go downstairs to see who it is.
Three hours and a bottle of wine later, Victoria leaves my house and heads back to her place, some of my books and a fresh pineapple stuffed into her shoulder bag. She craves booze and fruit when she is between girlfriends, neither of which she seems to keep in adequate supply in her kitchen—the booze and fruit, I mean, and not girlfriends. Although if she kept one in the kitchen, perhaps she wouldn’t be constantly on the lookout for a new one.
One page down, and the sun slips through the window and up onto my bed, which means of course that I must join it there. I can’t pass up a sunbeam, especially when I’ve had too much wine, and so I am under the blanket and asleep in very short order, dreaming of olives and tinsel and Hugh Laurie, which means that when I wake at five I am all flustered and tingling and unable to concentrate on writing anything but smut, which isn’t what I had set out to write when I started this morning. My smut is first rate, however. Let there be no doubt.
Now it is six, and I am preparing dinner, chicken and peppers and ginger and water chestnuts and baby corn and chili paste in the wok, because other than wine, there hasn’t been much in my stomach today at all. Today I am the queen of poor dietary habits.
Other than smutty dreams about Hugh Laurie, this has been mostly a wasted day, I fear.
I’ll wait until midnight and start again.
Tomorrow always brings new hope.
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