Caffeinated and prone to fuss, I fixed a slow cooker meal and had a load of laundry in by 8. I swear people wave more now. I talked to a couple ladies at the park and we all stood apart like points on a triangle. And then I went down to the lake and found something in the water along the shore, a bottle cap with the Corona beer logo wedged in the muck and flickering like some queer, enchanted ring. I can’t help feel like I’m mean when I talk sometimes. Maybe it’s the east coast coming back, not this west coast namby-pamby crap we put on everything. I hear myself talk like that and think what a sap I’ve become. I get on Zoom with my old east coast friends and feel refreshed, it’s so real. Sure, we all went a little insane. Finally, for once, everyone left the house and I was left alone to play my German prog-rock records, pee outside with no one to notice. I remembered the smoked turkey we had in the meat locker from Easter and started fantasizing about eating a leg, just standing in the kitchen and taking it by hand. And I was reminded of the dog, the way she’ll grab into something with her jaws and then suddenly bear down on it like she’s about to gag. Total ecstasy, the meat between the teeth. In that dream I imagined I’d lost control of my faculties, found myself on a public bus with no pants on. The bus transformed to the insides of a large house, like a lodge. But I was wearing a pill box hat I thought I’d lost and all of the sudden, it was back. I woke wanting to stay in bed but knowing I’d feel worse and it was already 6. The cat brought a mouse in but lost interest in it and now it was trapped in Lily’s room, forcing the girls to sleep together and giggle and keep me up all night thinking about work. Dawn fashioned a cruelty-free trap using a bucket with plastic sheeting and holes at the top, a ramp made out of books and crumbled saltines for bait. I threw the cat in and closed the door hoping that would speed things up. The nights are ghostly and enchanted with the sound of frogs and the look of the moon on the clouds, an ominous light. Spring, with a chill of winter. The fragrance of beans and pork filling the house, Tibetan incense, the sound of morning rain. Everyone still in bed.

Categories: humor, microblogging, prose, writing

Tags: creative nonfiction, humor, journal writing, Memoir, prose, stream-of-consciousness, William Pearse writer