I've electrocuted myself a number of times so that part of the adventure isn't as glamorous as it once was. As an aside, please note that if you ever see an article written by me about how to rewire lamps, understand it's a humor piece.
While I watched the water melt and trickle down the freezer's sides, I remembered how we used to take cups and scrape the ice from the inside of the freezer to eat like Freon flavored snow cones because we couldn't figure out how to turn Kool Aid into syrup. Not for a lack of trying, mind you, but the failed attempts always ended with ice scrapings melting into red or purple puddles in the bottom of our cups.
You could probably draw some conclusions about why I am the way I am based on the knowledge that I used to eat ice scrapings from the freezer.
Well, now that I would know exactly how to make snow cone flavoring (simple syrup + Kool Aid powder), I'm past the age where I'd find joy in scraping the frost from the freezer and spooning it into my mouth. (Please believe this!)
Timing is everything.
Why am I prattling on about this? I was going through an exercise hoping that I'd remember what I was thinking about writing as I defrosted the freezer. I thought if I put myself back in that place, I might remember what I wanted to write, but was too busy not electrocuting myself to stop and write down before it got crowded out.
And guess what? It worked!
Bokeh means blurry in the photography patois and so I give you this:
If you enlarge the photo (taken on my drive back from visiting Chloe), you'll see the reflection of Betty MacDonald's The Egg and I. I'm a ridiculously slow reader, taking weeks to finish a book. As such, I've been schlepping poor Betty and her eggs around for a couple of weeks. In case you didn't guess, I take a book with me wherever I go. You never know when you're going to need one. They're useful props for social situations allowing one to to not engage with others, for self entertainment, for swatting aggressive bees, and just in case one ever needs to MacGuyver oneself out of a dire situation. Worst case scenario, you have something to read until the factory you're locked in implodes in a planned demolition.
One of the things I've been doing to keep from losing my damn mind during this long work drought is to try to look at things from different perspectives. One way I've done this is by writing my novel from different points of view. Another thing I've found useful is to take a step back and shift the focus of how I internally narrate what's going on. For example, I wasn't laid off and have been unable to find work, but instead, so the new narrative goes, I'm transitioning careers from la di da association executive to being a published writer. Throw in a long stint as a passive aggressive hausfrau and you pretty much have the picture blurry though it may be.
And as long as I can remind myself that nothing I do is as difficult as what Betty MacDonald had to do on that chicken ranch, I know I'm going to be all right.
At Randal's place, you get the blame.
I love what Summer did with Bokeh.
UPDATED: Geoffrey goes in another direction.
