I’m Following a Mug on Instagram

Today, I’m going to be candid with you. Creatively speaking, the past two months have been rough. It’s like I have a vat of strawberry jelly knocking around between my ears, and no matter how I try to zap it into action, it remains an amorphous blob of goo.

I wouldn’t say it’s been a total bust, but my imagination feels stale, like some kind of derpy little pug, only capable of thinking one or two seconds into the future. Reality keeps interrupting my daydreams, and frankly, reality is disappointingly boring.

Like, right now, it’s 12:28 a.m., it’s pitch black outside, and instead of carefully drafting this blog post, I’m scrolling through photos of a mug with a face on Instagram (@haroldchugmug) and all I can think about is the people I can hear yelling on the lake. There’s a little piece of me that’s worried some drunk guy could be wrapped up in his own fishing line, but I’m not curious enough to go check. And even if he is, the probability of me attempting any sort of rescue mission this late at night is extremely slim.

Does that make me a bad person?

No. It’s more likely that some drunk guy is just sitting on the shore and calling out over the valley for the company of his own voice. At least, that’s what I’ll tell myself. I mean, he doesn’t sound distressed.

Wait, did I just give this as an example of how “disappointingly boring” my reality is? I guess I need a reality check. Hell, drunk dudes conversing with their own echo is at least entertaining enough to be a song, if not a full-blown mystery series . . .

Pause.

Literally. I needed to stop typing for a moment, so that I could stuff an Oreo in my mouth and contemplate ways to abscond with a pair of my husband’s underpants. The nights have been getting warmer and warmer, and it’s too hot for sweatpants, but I can’t find my summer pajamas. I mean, I guess I could go commando, but the last time I did that a spider bit my ass, and now I have an actual scar. It’s ridiculous. What kind of Upstate New York spider is powerful enough to leave a scar without requiring asscheek amputation?

I mean, I know we have black widows and brown recluse, but I feel like they’d do more damage. So, is there some kind of lesser spider that I don’t know about?

Google it.

Oh, god. Don’t Google it! Command Z! Command Z!

My husband just called out from the other room, ‘Honey, come to bed!’

My response: ‘It’s too early.’

He said, ‘I’ll have to marry someone else.’

. . . Now, I’m definitely stealing his underpants.