Oh What a Crapfest

Christmas is a difficult time for me. It doesn't help that my lovely wife had an opportunity to go home for the first time in 20 years or so and just couldn't pass up the chance. Therefore she has gone and the house feels really empty.

The weather sucks. It's snowed, sleeted, iced over, and we've had record low temperatures for this time of year. The kids haven't been going to school because of it and its wreaked havoc with my work schedule.

Dammit!

Even my poor dog has been depressed. At the time my wife was trying to say goodbye to her our beloved dog was too caught up in licking her crotch to notice. Now she wonders the house looking sad and trying to find my wife. Look who's sorry now.

But life goes on. I stood in line at the grocery store today for 10 minutes, watching in utter fascination as a young lady went through the self-checkout line and acted like each article must be carefully inspected before attempting to scan it. She bagged each can of ravioli like it was precious glassware that needed cushioned support before it could be placed in a bag for transport. I certainly appreciated her thoroughness, but the whole thing was surreal.

But when I'm not noting the idiosyncrasies of strangers I'm trying to cope with my own issues. I was thinking that while the missus was away I'd get to read and write much more than usual. So far I've written nothing. I'm too tired to muster up anything more than a passing thought of trying to produce some prose. Of course I am reading, currently I'm working my way through a short story collection that has as its theme the Fermi Paradox. One of my favorite distractions in life is to ponder the mystery and try to come up with my own solution. So far my best possible solution is that Alien civilizations are actively trying to hide from us. They've seen the whupass we can unleash when we feel like it.



But so far the book has been a pretty big disappointment. I'm nearly done and only a few of the stories stand out as exceptional. There was even one or two that I thought were embarrassingly bad  - how does stuff like that get published?

Anyway, I'll try to shake that melancholy mood and get back to my chipper self. I think it'll take me a few days to get in the mindset of being alone and then I'll start feeling all creative again.

Cheerio