Maybe My Pen Name Should Be Corrigan

I am kicking myself in the butt right now. It's kind of hard, even though there's that ample target. I have balance issues. A one-legged man in a butt-kicking contest could do a better job of butt-kicking than I. IF he showed up on time for his butt-kicking contest. Which is my problem.

There were two contests I had planned to enter. Neither of them was a butt-kicking contest. I had my topics all picked out. A rough outline in my head of the points I wanted to make. A plethora of humorous references to include in my manuscripts. But I did not make the time to complete my great literary works. Surefire Pulitzer prizers. Left clinging to the sides of my brain like Stove Top Stuffing left to harden overnight on the stove top by a husband and a low teen.

I should scrap that proposed handbasket factory, and form a business called The Road to Not-Heaven Good Intentions Paving Company. I will need to hire burly, fit-fat, barrel-chested men so that our company name can be easily read on their neon green work T-shirts.

Seriously. I am barely treading water with this writing business. I'm good at actual water-treading, though, thanks to my college Swimming and Diving Techniques teacher, who made us all pass the drownproofing test in the deep end of the indoor pool. Fifty minutes keeping your head above sixteen feet of water without touching the sides pretty much prepares you for keeping your head above sixteen feet of water without touching the sides for fifty minutes. Just in case you ever fall into the middle of the pool and the lifeguards are really inattentive.

I always have ideas percolating like spurts of Folger's in the clear glass stopper top of a 1960s chrome coffeepot. Sometimes I even jot these ideas down in my trusty tiny flip-top spiral notebook. But I am unable to bring them to fruition. And I only watch TV two nights a week! The evening flies by so fast, what with slicing the occasional onion for Hick, and warming food in the oven or heating it in the microwave.

I have only written one letter to Genius at college. I know that boy lays on his jacked-up bed strung with blinking Christmas lights which he sells on the side at a profit using my Amazon Prime membership, tears dripping into his ears while pining for a letter from Mommy dearest. Sure, I have my personal secretary, The Pony, send him one-line texts on occasional mornings from the seat behind me in T-Hoe on the way to school. But it's not the same as getting mail out of the box. At least his grandma sends him a card every week.

I don't think it's the blogging that's slowing me down. I can whip out two blog posts in an hour every night. It gets my creativity oozing. To sit down and try to write my Pulitzers before blogging would be kind of like shaving your legs while they're dry and crusty. Not that my legs are dry and crusty, of course. Or hairy. We're talking about your legs, not mine. Maybe if I spent more time writing and less time talking about your legs, I would get to the end of my point and my stories sooner. I seem to have veered off from my special purpose.

Distractions find me like weirdos at Save A Lot.