My friend Dave, one of those straight-shooters everyone should be blessed (or cursed) with in their lives, says I’ve been “coasting.” I take that to mean that my brief infatuation with Alexa stats must come to an end, and for those who’ve come here for blogging tips and the secrets to making pennies pop out your ears while you sleep, I apologize. To my indulgent and infinitely patient friends who are silently tapping a foot on the other side of the monitor, I hear you.

Dave wrote, “You have a talent, your edgy writing is so much more enjoyable than receiving a lecture on how to clean cookies.” I’m so tired that when I first read that, I had visions of dusting off the old Toll-House Cookies my daughter and I baked last weekend. Would a light spritz of Pledge bring out the rich, chocolatey luster in each gooey chip? Is that what I’ve been reduced to? Technical documentation for dusting off baked goods?

Ohhh, wait…I realized Dave meant the other kind of cookie. Gotcha.

“It has been several weeks since you’ve written something beyond an opportunistic event or about computers and browsers. I feel like you’ve gone on a diet and have turned into a wasted vegan nightmare instead of a beef-eating American girl with an opinion–like you got sprinkled with Pelosi dust or something.”

Anyone who knows me at all knows it’s a good thing I didn’t have a mouthful of coffee when I read that. Yes, the Emperor could have counted on Dave to throw him a robe and tell him to pull on his tighty whities.

“You should just grab a dictionary,” he wrote, and at that I stole a guilty glance at The Tome, sitting there gathering dust, its pages crinkling at the edges with a tired, tattered shred of dignity and a forlorn air of mildew and erudite resignation. I sighed. Whatever happened to Wordy Wednesday? I thought. I hung my head in shame.

“Randomly look up 5 words and create a fictional story about that, the first seven words of the story should describe everything–that’s what I’m used to about YOU and that’s what I enjoy about your blog.” Okay, now – seven words, five of them random, and you honestly think I can wrest deathless prose from that?  My Muse just shrunk like a golem and is now cowering behind the filing cabinet while the inner critic cackles with demented glee and dances like Rumplestiltskin.  That sort of writing prompt just makes my brain cells pop like bubble wrap in a depressurized cargo plane.

“You’ve always been able to grab something odd out of life’s air in the past,” wrote Dave – was that an allusion to my off-kilter sense of smell, perchance? “–and wrote about it with risk rather than covering the same mundane ground that others have visited.” Mundane? Oh, Lord save me… I’m slipping into the Mire of Mundane. That definitely does not have the same pleasing lilt as Mull of Kintyre, does it?

“Hope I’m not asking for too much, I know life gets in the way sometimes. I’m assuming all is well but you haven’t been writing like you used to, you’ve been coasting. I sincerely hope all is well with you and your family.” I think that means Dave’s decided one of us must be dying. Maybe me.

“Okay, Prunebutt,” I sighed, reaching past the cobwebs behind the filing cabinet to grab what’s left of my Muse by the scruff of the neck. “Time to get you cleaned up and back in action.” Ewww, if this is what the Muse turns into when you neglect it for a week, beware. It smells and it bites. It gnashes its tiny, jagged teeth and it froths a bit at the corners of its twisted little mouth. I tossed it into the washer on warm, delicate, extra rinse and squeezed a liberal dose of my son’s Axe shampoo on its withered, just-crawled-out-from-under-a-rock, mottled gray head, and slammed the door shut. I thought about turning the water up to “hot,” but didn’t think the creature could stand any more shrinkage. I’ll let you know, later, how it comes out.

Any bets? It’ll either be a sparkling wit or a drowned rat.

So…how was your day?

A brief, warm, tantalizing breath of spring fooled the red maple in our front yard – just as I’d predicted it would. Yesterday, it was in full bloom, surrounded by tiny, buzzing, air-dancing bees. Bees make me do a funny sort of dance, but I reminded myself that we desperately need these industrious little beings, and I tried to act cooler than I felt while snapping this picture:

Red Maple in Bloom

Deep breaths… Walk away slowly… See? I squinched my eyes shut and slipped into the car. If I couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see me. Right? I imagined my son, at Chisolm Trail last summer, trying to center himself and reach Nirvana:

Will Meditates

Ohhhhmmmm… I slammed the card door shut and peeled rubber.

Will, Driving the Boat

Not that William was the model of serenity the whole time at camp.  Can’t you just imagine what’s going through his head here, as he drives a pontoon boat for the first time? Look at the intensity on his face. And the sunburn. Oy. It’s not as if I didn’t send plenty of sunblock along with him.

Will, the Viking

Another day they got to experience the life of the Vikings. Now there’s an exercise in “suspending disbelief.” It had to be 98 degrees. It’s hard to imagine Vikings raiding a place like Houston. “Houston, we have a problem. There’s a puddle of Vikings in the Gulf…”

But a Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, honest…and highly imaginative. I love it. I really need to find out who has the high-res versions of these photos. Thank you, Heather, for reminding me to look for them – these were displayed on the big screen at the front of the room during the last Court of Honor – first time I ever saw my son trying to channel his inner Buddha.

Well, while my inner gole–er, Muse–takes a wild ride on the spin cycle, I think I’d best get my beauty sleep. I need it – if you take a glance over there at my sidebar, you’ll see that my celebrity doppelganger is either Diane Keaton or…Aldous Huxley? Oh, Brave New World… if Prunebutt survives the dryer (remind me, Dave, never to throw the Muse in on the Fluff cycle), I’d better wake up refreshed and rarin’ to go. There won’t be enough coffee in the world…

About the Author Holly Jahangiri

Holly Jahangiri has decades of experience in tech writing, freelancing, fiction, poetry, and editing. Writer, wife, and mother, Holly is the creator of Trockle and instigator of the Puppy-Guppy Rebellion.

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