Pet Pages

Some mornings, my thoughts greet me at the door like an excited large fluffy dog, licking and jumping all over me before I can open my eyes, leaving drool all over the page.

Other mornings, they tiptoe in like a cat on quiet soft pads, slyly approaching and rubbing against my legs before finally jumping into my lap where it sits purring lovingly all across the page.

Then there are the mornings where my ideas are like my bearded dragon lizard that has found a good hiding nook. I go room to room calling out to no avail. I look under the tables, sofas and chairs. I pull out the couch and move the large Amazon box that arrived last week (the one filled with that thing I just had to have – but now I know not what's even in there.) I look behind my planters and inside my closets. Finally, I see the tip of its tail sticking out from behind a shelf. I grab it and drag it out with its claws scraping the floor. The cold blood that runs through him has paralyzed him motionless. He lays there waiting for me to put him under a light so he can warm up and come alive and finally fill my page.  

The View

All of my  blogs used to be funny because I love to laugh at myself and make others laugh in the process. However, tonight I was going to write about the  deplorable treatment of my mom in her nursing home, and I stopped. It is far from funny. It would depress me, and you would not want to read it. Besides, I would not have enough time to write about it anyway.

Then I decided to write about my son, there always used to be some funny scenario to share about growing tweens. However as I wracked my brains, I realized that there is nothing funny because he has reached the start of brooding teenaged funks! He mopes past me and grunts barely audible answers to any question I pose.

Lastly, there’s my husband, I am sure that there is a story there however, I am so busy teaching, taking care of mom, going to class, and grading papers or creating lessons that I scarce see him enough to experience anything funny. (Though I will say that my newly retired husband had the audacity to nudge me in an electronic game of scrabble because I had not made time to make my move.)

Which brings me to my final thought on this situation which is quickly becoming the norm and beginning to overtake my weekly submissions.

Last week, I couldn’t find the time to write at all, and the week before that I wrote a poem about… well, not having anything to write about.  The week before that it was a short paragraph about not having time to write… and the week before that I squeezed in a very short paragraph after school and before the parents arrived on Back to School Night.

And now here I sit basically filling this blank space with more banter on not being able to write due to time constraints as I watch the big hand near the 12 on the clock and my grad professor turning on her presentation.

Sadly, as I perch here straddling this window sill called SOL Tuesdays, looking out at all the other wonderful writers running past my house, I feel like Esperanza’s grandmother in House on Mango Street, who “looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” Life has a tight grip on my leg pulling me back, so it can board up the opening through which I have been trying my best to escape these past few weeks since finding you

https://twowritingteachers.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/slice-of-life_individual.jpg?w=300

Uncle!

The teacher who wanted to write

Said this taunting blank page will I smite!

She stared down the screen,

Tried looking real mean,

No matter, it still won the fight!

https://twowritingteachers.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/slice-of-life_individual.jpg?w=300

Leaving a Glass Slipper

I made a promise to myself that I would write every week. After all, it is the least that I could do for myself. You see, I love writing. However, I tend to put everything and everybody from classwork to housework, ahead of myself, so there is no time left for me. So tonight, as I sit here pounding out a quickie just to satisfy my goal, I ponder the usefulness in this act. This  writing falls way short of my normal pages long cathartic pieces that also double as euphoric endorphin releasers. Instead, I race the clock and hammer out perfunctory pieces that waste my time as well as that of other SOL readers. I said I would be ready this week, yet, as the clock nears 10:50 pm, I sit here once again, tip tapping away. I suppose, the flip side to not writing with depth is that I am writing, though I must admit, I feel like Cinderella coming out for just one dance at the ball before the clock strikes twelve leaving you with this glass slipper.