We don’t pay top dollar for all the streaming services we use; we like to stick with free or stay within the bottom-dollar price range.
In today’s world, frugality means putting up with commercials. Lots of them.
Ninety percent of the ads attached to our go-to genres are also very… niche.
The marketers (aka drug companies) peer through the screen and typecast their audience into the Just-Past-Middle-Aged-Evening-Couch-Potato Demographic.
Or maybe it’s simply a good guess that Yet Another Police Procedural show will draw this particular set of aging bodies.
During a recent viewing event, the marketing department queued up the same drug commercial during every break: White-haired, smiling people out for a stroll on pristine sidewalks, swinging small grandchildren through the air with glee. Walking golden retrievers. I mean… you know it’s a drug commercial.
So I zone out.
I did not catch the name of the medication (which I would withhold from the blog anyway, lest I end up in a lawsuit). I likewise did not catch the ailment that it was intended to alleviate.
I actually missed the med name and ailment four or five times during the show. I DID manage to memorize the possible untoward effects of swallowing/dissolving/injecting/inserting this miracle substance.
Among the run-of-the-mill inconveniences, such as headaches and a variety of gastrointestinal issues, this drug gives the user the opportunity to experience UTIs, various degrees of thirst and temperature irregularities, and—dah dah dah dah! Necrotizing Fasciitis.
And that’s the one that yanked me thoroughly from my zone-out.
Necrotizing. Fasciitis. Of one’s nether regions.
“Who on earth would take that risk?” I asked the Hubs, who’d also zoned out once he saw the white-haired, smiling cast and went to his phone. “What could be worse than that list?” He’d also missed the target ailment but agreed necrotizing fasciitis of one’s nether regions would be terrible.
No way one could stroll sidewalks, swing grandbabies, or walk dogs with that side effect brewing.
Little Miss Muse crashes into my office and reads over my shoulder as I write this. “Oooh. I remember watching that commercial.” She sizes me up and down as she pops a grape-scented bubblegum orb in my face. “But would you take that drug if the ailment it cured was writer’s block?”
“Uhhh…”
“Before you answer, imagine the possibilities!” Little Miss clomps onto the desk and spreads her arms in front of her. “A smiling Beth, strolling along a pristine sidewalk, a freshly completed stack of manuscripts in one hand. Yours truly, giddy and giggling, swinging from your other. Well behaved and freshly groomed…” She pauses, drops her arms, then continues, “Cats! All the cats trotting alongside, noses and tails in the air, enjoying the bright spring day—”
“Necrotizing,” I say.
She slumps to the desk. “But a cure?”
“Fasciitis.”
“Never blocked again?” She pouts. “Imagine what we could dooooo!”
“Of. The. Nether. Regions.”
She starts to protest, but I interrupt. “I’ll find another way.”
“Like…” she prompts.
“Like fresh air and movement.”
“But—”
“Like hunting for bitty bits of micro joys to fill the well.”
“That takes so much time—”
“Like my necrotizing-fasciitis-free butt in chair, fingers over keyboard, and you spritz me with that purple glitter of yours from time to time.”
She starts to whine again. “Drop this, and I’ll buy you bottle rockets.”
She cocks her head, mouth poised to smart off again, but she pauses long enough for me to slip in another bribe. “Grape soda. In the glass bottles.”
Her eyes light up, but she retains her pouty composure. Milking things now.
That’s the problem with writing muses. Once you start bribing them, it’s a never-ending cycle.
“And… that lavender tiara you were eyeing on Etsy the other day.”
She tosses her curls back and runs a chonky hand through her hair, striking a pose. “Fit for royalty.”
My little winged imp has a massive ego for which there is no cure. And the wardrobe to match.
As far as the stall-out on the fiction progress, I already know the cure.
It’s what I listed above.
And time to heal from the crazy couple of years of life rolls. One friend put it this way: “It’s like the universe has handed you two decades’ worth of crises in the span of a few months.”
That kind of seismic shift takes a hot minute to recover from. I get impatient. Little Miss gets impatient. I imagine even my Couch Lady gets impatient. She’ll start a session with well-thought-out notes, then Poof! She tosses them to the wind because we must now deal with the newest news.
She’s ordered “brain rest” on more than one occasion.
And as difficult as it is for me to consistently follow that order, I do know the side effects do NOT include necrotizing fasciitis of the nether regions.
