What have I been working on, WordPress?

Absolutely nothing. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The whole “working for a thieving con artist and no longer having an income” incident, combined with several other events that I may or may not eventually get around to writing about, have knocked me on my ass all spring and summer. I’m still sucking air, though, which I’m sure will disappoint a few of you who were hoping that I’d finally ridden my gravel bike into the path of a speeding TerraGator.

I’ve been trying to get my give a fuck back, but I am being hammered by executive dysfunction. I should be writing about spending $1000 in less than three days on a cat who died anyway, recreating the violations of the Geneva Conventions that Fred’s people call recipes, scouring newspaper archives for bizarre century-old newspaper clippings to transcribe, or even just digging holes in the lawn like an overgrown gopher. Instead, I sit here drinking so much coffee that I could probably thread a running sewing machine and staring at a blank screen until I end up doom-scrolling Facebook and Reddit and not accomplishing a damned thing aside from wearing a hole in an expensive office chair and eating my weight in goldfish crackers every day.

Today, I logged into WordPress for the first time in months. Fred is off terrorizing everyone in a car foolish enough to get in the path of his Peterbilt, I’ve got a Spotify playlist going which is appropriately titled, “Cat Calming Music”, and, if the neighbor’s kids would just get within coffee cup flinging distance, I could put a stop to “death metal pig squeal practice time” and maybe get something done today. Like logging into my other site and finally typing up the epic story of the sheepherder who rode his cow through a forest fire back in the 20’s. This right here is more than I’ve managed in only The Flying Spaghetti Monster knows how long, though. I’d hate to overdo it and actually write something that pays the bills.

Someone please pass the coffee pot. Also, if you’re going to Target, they’re having a sale on the giant boxes of goldfish crackers this week. Grab me two and I’ll pay you back.

Write about your dream home.

My dream home, WordPress? It’s a Quonset hut in the middle of a full section wheat field in Banner County, Nebraska. 690 people spread across 745 square miles of the Great Plains. My nearest neighbor is at least a mile away and doesn’t own a lawn mower or dogs that bark 24 hours a day, and doesn’t have 6 “home schooled” crotch goblins that I find playing in the middle of the road in front of my house at least once a week with no adults in sight. I have those fancy book shelves with the rolling ladder, a commercial kitchen for canning the produce from my garden, and a heated concrete floor. I can roller skate around the place if I feel like it (and if I knew how to roller skate).

I can write in peace, take pictures of birds, speed goats, and old farmhouses, and never see another living soul unless a Costco sized box of stroopwafels shows up from California via UPS. Hell, I can walk to the mailbox wearing nothing but my Doc Martens if the weather is decent, because it’s not like one of my nosy troll neighbors is watching me from behind their cheap plastic window blinds every time I open the front door.

That’s about it. A big ass airplane hangar looking building in the middle of nowhere. With a giant catio attached to the side for the Furbeestes.

Describe your most ideal day from begining to end.

Well, WordPress…

First, I’d spell “beginning” correctly.

Aside from that, I’d get 10 hours of sleep without a herd of cats performing a Cossack Cavalry Dance on my head at 4 am because they can see the bottom of their food dish.

Next, I would wake up to a full pot of coffee that I remembered to program the night before, and no one would call, text, or attempt to talk to me in any way, shape, or form until I’d had at least two cups. I wouldn’t have to hear for the 437th time this month how much my co-worker/editor hates their girlfriend and her mother, or their brilliant plan to fudge the numbers on the magazine that we write for, so that the tourism board writing the checks never figures out that people only come to this place to find out if you can literally die from boredom, and no one is reading anything that we write. Seriously. This place should take inspiration from The Never Ending Story and rename itself the Prairie of Sadness.

Third, my kitchen would magically clean itself and my laundry would fold itself and float from Mount Washmore to its home in the dresser. I don’t mind vacuuming, but I’d rather put out a lit cigar on my butt than do dishes or fold a pile of clothes. This is why I only own four plates, half a dozen or so coffee cups (whose population decreases by about one a month thanks to one of the cats who has a bizarre coffee addiction), and enough clothes to fill one laundry basket.

At the end of the day, I’d have an article attempting to lure people to this wasteland completed and I’d get paid for writing it for the first time in about three months. Then the cats and I would share a ribeye steak and a bowl of ice cream while watching Peaky Blinders for the 17th time, and then call it a day, where I would read a book in bed without having to get up to clean up cat barf three times or break up the nightly ritual of the 18 lb cat dragging the 8 lb cat around the house like a rag doll (the little one starts the fight within seconds of the lights going out every single time, the big one eventually gets tired of being jumped on and gummed in the face by an idiot with three teeth in her head, and holds her off the floor by the back of her head until I make him let her go).

That pretty much sums it up. Sleep, coffee, cats, no people, food, and books.

Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

Oh, WordPress. Where do I start? My entire life is a never ending “to-do list” that never really gets done. Dishes, laundry, paying bills, and keeping the Furbeestes both indoors and out alive is my adult version of The Never Ending Story. Maybe tomorrow I’ll tackle Mount Washmore, which has taken over my love seat. Last night I finally checked off the 15 minute fix on the vacuum cleaner that’s been sitting downstairs in the haunted basement for the last six months gathering dust, so there’s a win, I suppose.

I also need to find a touristy story for the writing job that actually pays the bills, even though no one really gives a flying pug about visiting Nebraska in February unless they’ve got a hypothermia fetish.

But first, coffee. Depending on how many text messages and missed calls from my editor are on my phone when I get up at 7 am, it may also include a shot of Pendleton whiskey.