My writing sprint begins in 3:35, one minute from now.
Nope, now. Right about the time I typed “35” it became “35.” I’m magic that way.
I haven’t had a thing to say or type or poeticize or blog for months. I still don’t. So you’re going to sit here with me, on the striped bedspread, and listen to my house and watch my remaining cat, The Grey.
(Do I miss The Cat? I do. I imagine I see him at night, though he’s really an empty reusable shopping bag in Market Basket blue or a dark green towel inappropriately discarded and immediately forgotten after a shower on Saturday.
When we sit down to focus on son’s math homework, we miss The Cat sitting on the homework, obscuring equations.
When we play Life, which is beginning to bore us mere weeks after Christmas, we miss The Cat strolling across the board, knocking six-seated cars full of growing families off colored spaces and under the couch, where our tiny peg representatives cower in the shadows of monstrous dust bunnies.
The Cat barely got to know the game. We want him back, please.)
Anyway. Listen to my house. Hear what I hear. A child pouring colored gumballs into a plastic container, likely small colored IKEA-ware. I bought my daughter a clear tube of chewy, carcinogen-colored balls at Marshall’s, which we housewives are required to pronounce Mar-Shawls, emphasis on the Shawls. Similarly, we say Tar-jay. It’s completely obnoxious, but we all do it.
We had to, in order to stay home with our kids.
We all sign forms in the hospital, we women with children. After the Social Security card lady leaves, the Life lady comes in to talk to us and to coo at our new pegs.
(I have one blue peg, one pink peg. I married a blue peg. Last time we played Life, my daughter married herself a pink peg named Charlotte and noted “I can do that because I live in Massachusetts.” Love the daughter. Love the Massachusetts.)
The Life lady asks, “Will you return to work?” If we say no, we’ll stay home, we're forced to promise to hilariously mispronounce the names of big box home goods stores, write four Facebook posts a month about needing or drinking wine, and wear yoga pants at least four out of seven days a week until our youngest child is 3.
If we agree, the Life lady offers us three extracurricular choices: take up seriously regular exercise; transform skill in a domestic art into profit; or write a blog, long on snark and short on solid content and editing. With cats.
Lazy. No domestic wizardry. I blog!
And, today, listen to the faint sounds of Pinky Dinky Doo and the surprisingly loud sounds of my son. When his 60 pounds charge the pantry for popcorn downstairs, upstairs I hear a gorilla charging a Fossey posse carrying bananas.
(I meant Dian Fossey, but how funny would a troupe of gorillas dancing a Bob Fosse number be? With a group of anthropologists, led by Dian Fossey, carrying bananas? Probably only a little bit funny. If one of the anthropologists was played by Louis C.K., hesitantly hoofing and goof-tripping over his own feet, maybe. If Dian Fossey was played wild by Sarah Silverman, possibly. But even still, not very funny.)
These are the ramblings of a crazy woman. But you know what? My writing sprint is over. I’m done. I rambled and I writled and I listened and I looked at The Grey, who conducted a thorough self-cleaning at my feet while I wrote.
Her sweet head now rests sleeping atop very clean paws. Deep in her gut a hairball grows. Downstairs my primate son stomps back into the pantry for another nutrient-weak carbohydrate. I will go crush his chipster dreams, unpack my daughter’s Tupperware-filled lunchbox, and make meatless stuffed peppers for dinner.
Tomorrow? Tar-jay.
