…I want to leave home.
So with the stress of The Current Circus, even the Purge, Paint, and Regress failed to do its thing. Not because that process is necessarily flawed. No. It’s more that This. Circus. Just. Keeps. Going.
My clowns are all bald now because the monkeys, freshly infected with rabies, snatched the crooked wigs right off their heads and, well.
Here we are.
Not a pretty circus. Even the poodles are protesting, their little unicycles' wheels spinning eerily. Not a rider in sight.
A while back, I talked about one of our catchphrases: This Is New.
We’ve said that a few times this week.
Amara figured out how to “door surf.” Two paws on the tip top of my office door, and two paws barely clinging to the top of the door trim on the wall. She was about to do the mid-air splits, and the hubs had to grab her down. I don’t know if she’d have landed on her feet, but I definitely didn’t need another round of vet bills for a broken leg after a wicked virus of some sort worked its way through all three felines the week before.
She was evidently feeling better, though, and trying out some new acrobatic tricks for, well, the circus.
On a positive note, though, we did get the whiteboard paper hung in my office (which was what got Amara excited to begin with: packaging and new things and something shiny on the wall). I intend to use this board to outline and keep track of my would-rather-be-writing life.
On a realistic note, the whiteboard is still pristine. All because of the (and everybody reading can chime in here) CIRCUS!
“That was new,” the hubs and I almost said in unison after he put Amara on the floor and she went careening off the hallway walls, working out a bad case of zoomies.
One night this past week, after a particularly grueling few days of family crises, my body decided to try its own new trick.
Particularly my left foot.
Very particularly, my little piggy toe of my left foot.
Now, I’ve had muscle cramps, spasms, and Charlie horses in the past, especially during pregnancies. Eat another banana, take a potassium supplement, and those tended to ease.
But on this night? I was minding my own, tired business, chilling on the couch, when a cramp started in my left arch. No biggie. I wiggled it around and hoped it would calm down.
It didn’t.
My left little piggy toe did a ninety-degree departure from the rest of the herd. All my pigs on that foot started to contort and curl without my willing them to. Looked like something out of a horror movie.
And. The. Pain.
Wee. Wee. Wee. As in squeals of agony, not joy.
This was new.
Ten minutes and a small hot flash later, I was still sore, but at least all the pigs were back in the “pen,” and I could walk.
On a positive note, for ten minutes I forgot about my circus, and I saw this blog taking shape. The title.
The snark.
The ending.
And even Little Miss Muse taking the credit. (She’s so bored, by the way. It’s hard telling what will come out of my fingers the next time I have a writing session. I may need to devote a few hours to the most incredibly ridiculous short story ever to allow her room to play after all this drama and trauma I’ve made her sit in time out for.)
In the meantime, you can click on the links in the first few paragraphs to get an idea of life in the Paul household and why most writing endeavors have taken a back burner. And go read Four Seconds — it’ll be up on the blog until the end of the month.
On another positive note, I have a couple of fun writing things planned. And I’ve refreshed Little Miss’s supply of bottle rockets (my stress causes her stress, which needs a release of some sort).
We may even wiggle in a tiny three-day escape from (everyone, all together now…) the CIRCUS.
Perhaps the refresher will help me holler “Wee, Wee, Wee” all the way home…
…and be happy about it.
