i love cheese - and it shows

I've been trying my hand at some short stories. I'm hoping with lots of practice, they will get better. Right now they have all the cheese factor of the Star Trek TNG episode "Up The Long Ladder" or Star Trek Animated Series "Bem" - the idea had great potential ... but, well... maybe you should watch the episodes to understand what I mean, as I'm not posting any of my stories here yet! Other great cheesy shows to watch include "Eerie, Indiana" and anything with William Shatner hehe :)

Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport

When my brother and I were little, I'd guess around six and eight years old, he had a bunk bed in his room. His room also had two large windows that looked out across our driveway with an excellent view of our next door neighbor's back yard. Every so often we'd convince mom to let me camp out in his room. Then we'd sneak in some papers and pencils, and each lay on our respective bunks next to the window and watch across the driveway to the yard. The yard consisted of gravel and a generic assortment of grasses and weeds and wasn't very interesting in and of itself. The neighbors, however, were interesting - at least to a couple little kids who can't imagine being outside past ten o'clock at night. There were always people stopping by just for a few minutes, then leaving quickly. Occasionally someone would go in, never to be seen again (or not to leave until after we'd fallen asleep on our pages).   The mysterious guests would always pull right up to the back step, and we'd write down their licence plate numbers and the time and other details, like "wearing plaid shirt" and so forth. Once, they even moved a ratty old sofa onto a decrepit trailer. Imagine our disappointment that there were no license plates to be seen - they backed the trailer in at an angle. The thing is, I don't remember what started all this, and what we did with the note pages. I'm just glad I didn't wake up with a pencil in my nose, falling asleep writing like that. Decades later, I still remember wondering WHAT was the point of moving the couch so late at night? For all our sleuthing, we never discovered the Mystery of the Ratty Couch Transport.

Telling Myself: I am Energetic

I did this for a while. I reminded myself, "I am an energetic person." This would trigger thoughts of the most energetic, get things DONE person I know, and I'd realize I hadn't even come CLOSE to what she could accomplish with all the energy. This kinda sounds like a downer, putting it all out here in blog land, however, it was a real motivator for me. I kept myself on my feet, getting a ton of things accomplished around my house that I'd been putting off in my lethargy. Then there was an incident with my pantry: I decided it was completely unacceptable. I emptied the entire thing, threw out anything I couldn't justify as good enough to feed to my children, and made a big donate box of all the random containers, dishes and thingamabobs that I couldn't remember the last time I had used. Sounds great? Sounds energetic? I ran out of steam about 10 days ago, about 87.3% done with the task. The last bit is piled up on a folding table in my kitchen, being a real hassle to get around. Turns out I'm energetic with a bad memory for reminding myself that.