“I’m a haz mom,” she said.
“Oh, like the haz cheezeburger cats?”
“No, I mean I haz to wear a haz-mat suit when I talk to my kids, because most topics are so radioactive.”
Computers
Have you ever been on your computer and try to do something, and it won’t do it, or it starts doing something else, and you start yelling at it, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that?”
Yeah, me neither.
The Pile-up
A pile-up was reported this morning. Recycle to go out. Magazines, lists, and notes on the desk. Receipts to be sorted and shredded.
No injuries were reported.
Sky
You ever get up, and look out at the sky, and see endless gray, and think, “Boy, I could really use a sun shower today.”
Yeah, me, too.
Greetings
“Good noon,” the man said with a nod as he passed by.
Drawing up, she consulted her Apple Watch. He was right; it was exactly noon.
Seals
Have you ever become frustrated when removing a seal on something, because you followed the instructions, but instead of coming away, the seal split apart, leaving another seal in its place that you need to fingernail away?
Yeah, me, too.
Saturday’s Bumper Sticker
I’m not certain what the question was. I feel like I’m on the television quiz show, Jeopardy!
Decided
Anger and anxiety paraded through him. He’d heard a noise. The noise caused him to think, the fucking raccoons are back. But the sound seemed to come from the front coat closet, which harpooned that raccoon idea and punted him back to, now what the fuck? He didn’t need any more shit in his life.
With that coursing through mind and simmering in blood, he marched to the closet and yanked open the door. It wasn’t a large space. The coats and shoes crowded it. But it was an irregular shape, so he dropped down on his hands and knees to explore the left back corner.
One, it was darker than he’d expected.
Two, it was warmer.
Three, the closet was larger that he’d thought.
The door behind him closed.
“Hey,” he said. Fury amped his motion. Someone was fucking with him. He’d kick their fucking ass. Rising into a tangle of coats, he shoved them aside and grabbed the closet handle.
The door pulled him forward.
“You son of a…,” he said, not knowing who he addressed. Ready to see some idiot friend on the other side, he wasn’t prepared for what he found.
“Where the fuck is my house?” he said. Where it was supposed to be, he saw a gray shaft and wooden ladder.
He looked up the shaft. Probably a hundred feet above, he could see a faint white patch. So what the fuck was that? What, was he supposed to climb out of here? No fucking way. Screw that noise.
Firmly decided, he stepped back in and closed the closet door. It’d changed once; it would again.
That’s where one of his idiot friends found his desiccated body days later.
It looked like he’d been there for years.
What Else?
He was surprised. She had never spoken of her ex in kind terms. “Why?” he said.
She considered her words. “What else could I do? He was dying. He’d had cancer. I loved him once. We had two children together.”
It had been the third marriage for both, he knew. Each had children from a previous marriage. Lasting ten years, personal sturm and drang struck every day.
Her tired face softened. “He’d asked his children for help. They turned him down. He came to me. He said, “I don’t want to die in a little room alone.” So I took him in, put a bed in the living room, and cared for him until he died.
“What else could I do?”
To Do
You ever get up with a full list of things to do, and rush around completing the standard morning stuff, and then sit down and ask yourself, “Now what?”, even though you know you have a list?
Yeah, me neither.
Michael Seidel, writer 