This post ends in double zeros. I think I’m supposed to be a little giddy about it.
Excited? Proud?
But I’m just… nope.
This blog is due, no matter the number assigned to it. Monday’s coming.
This is what we do.
For those new here, every week since June 2018, B. A. Paul has posted something—either a free fiction short story on the first week of the month, or a blog entry like this one.
Even during the darkest seasons of the last seven years, the blog survived.
Because Monday’s coming. And because we process life through words.
It’s what we do.
We…
I suppose I’m using the plural because, well, “we” are a team.
Beth (that’s me, I think)
Little Miss Muse (the writer’s muse to rule all muses)
Stella, Malachi, and Amara (feline trio)
Trudi, Concrete Office Goose in Charge of Marketing (her title is self-explanatory)
The Jiggle Dragons (stretchy stress balls on steroids)
Zeppo and Destiny (adopted artificial birds from a Las Vegas bookstore)
So as I sit here contemplating “300” and attempt to access emotion, I decide to toss the topic for the week over to the team. (Risky, given the nature of beings and essences employed by B.A. Paul.)
Ideas are thrown about like confetti—the gang tries to rally me into the spirit of those double zeros. I appreciate their efforts, though each group demanded by-lines, even for hypothetical titles:
Muses and Mayhem (Little Miss)
Tuna Timing for Peaceful Writing Sessions (The Felines)
Swapping Your Bikini for an Astronaut Suit When You’re Cast in Concrete (Trudi)
Stretched in all Directions and Not Snapped Yet (Jiggle Dragons)
Thriving on a Bookshelf When You’re Inanimate and Your Author Goes AWOL (Zeppo and Destiny)
But the gang could tell I’m not quite on board with any of these, at least not this week. They go their separate ways, off to do what cats, stress balls, and personified fowl do when not being watched over.
Little Miss, though, starts scrolling through the photos from the weekend at Wilstem Wildlife Park. She finds one that causes her to roll off the side of the desk, choking on her grape gum.
I glance at the image she’s pulled up and smile.
“That’s it, then. Write the goat one,” she says.
“The goat one?”
“It makes you smile.”
“But it’s the 300th blog.”
“Who cares. No need to wax eloquent.” To prove the point, she sprawls across my desk on her stomach, tutu askew, wings flittering, legs bent at the knees, kicking her feet back and forth toward the ceiling. One foot in a too-big lavender stiletto. One in a purple cowboy boot. “Just write the goat one.”
So, here’s The Goat One. Because it’s my blog and Monday’s coming and writing the next one is what we do. Even if it ends in double zeros.
And because my muse is rarely wrong. Dangerous. But rarely wrong.
#
For a little background, see last week’s blog, Camel Lips and Llama Spit, in which Theater Friend and I embarked on a drive-through safari.
The one where the camel stole my feed cup right off the bat, and where Theater Friend kept control of her feed cup and, thus, had feed left at the end of the drive because she also had control over every animal that came to her window and only allowed each one a tiny nibble.
Several times, I wondered what we’d do with the leftover feed. I had time to ponder this because that camel stole my cup and I had to worry over something as I dodged emotional emus and long-suffering longhorns through the rest of the safari.
I wondered if we could recycle the cup and dump the feed… but where? I wondered if a staff member would take it so it doesn’t end up in the giraffe paddock. They have picky bellies. (The giraffes, at least, not sure about the staff.)
I wondered if we just keep it and toss it ourselves. I wonder if I’ll be questioned as to where my feed cup went because… well. Camel lips.
We drove through the bison field (you do not feed bison from your car window), and stopped at the bear exhibit—along the safari, not part of it.
I saw no place for the cups and extra feed. Why this burned a hole in my head, I do not know. My brain opens these random tabs and chooses the streaming content all on its own.
Our safari trek reached its end.
Where there are goats.
Guess all that wondering (uh… worrying) was wasted energy. The Universe and the designer of Wilstem’s safari drive-through had this “what to do with the feed cup” thing figured out long before I even asked the question. (Will my brain learn from this “don’t worry about a thing” lesson? No. It will not. It’s opened the “importance of double zeros” tab and the “pondering” has commenced… sigh.)
Theater friend got out of the vehicle and started divvying up the feed to these barnyard beggars—evenly, mind you, ensuring the little ones in the back got some too. I busied myself with photos.
I bent to get a close-up of one of the smaller critters, looked up, and Theater Friend had lined the leaders of the herd along the fence.
As if she were posing them for their very own Goat Boy Band cover art.
A near-perfect shot that ended up as the cover image for Blog 300.
“I told you. The Goat One. You’re still smiling.” Little Miss Muse rolls from her stomach, stretches her wings, and flits out of the office. Smug. She’s utterly smug.
But she’s right. Guess the Universe and Little Miss had this one figured out without much input from me.
Sometimes the trick isn’t to force grand parades or fire the confetti cannons.
It’s just… writing the next one.
One blog at a time, one Monday at a time.
Until you look up and realize you’ve lined up 300 of them (blog posts, that is, not goats…).
