Inventive

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An ocean going tug pulling a barge under the Golden Gate Bridge, October 2008.

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Himself: Not only did he deliver the mixer, eat a Big Mac, found some sale items (example: shorts for six bucks) at JC Penney’s, but he fixed the leak we didn’t know we had under the downstairs bathroom sink. My hero. Herself: Remembered to take camera to Marie’s, got that shirt I felt I couldn’t afford the first time I saw it at JC Penney’s (marked down from 35 to 15) in a well populated store. Yes, the shoppers were out. Yes, JCP was offering up to 50 percent off plus 15 percent. The rest of the mall wasn’t jammed. Parking lots empty on a holiday weekend. Finger not good. Keyboard worse…now draining diet coke upside down in the bathtub. I hesitate to run it through the dishwasher, but maybe I can rinse the coke out in the shower. Food: Yesterday: Toast, Big Mac and Fries, Meat loaf sandwich and slaw. WW sorbet bar. Today green beans for breakfast.

There are no big projects to hand this morning, and just for a moment I felt a little lost. Then I remembered two little slips of paper sitting next to my monitor. One tells me there’s a poetry contest to enter. Another reminds me that there’s a short story contest to enter too.

There’s menu planning and grocery shopping to be done too.

Last week I worked on photos to the detriment of any careful eating. This week I need to let go of the projects for others and do some form of food planning first. I’ve already done a little preliminary digging in this year’s stored words, and I found one short poetry piece that might do. I’d hoped for more.

Fiction? I’m not a fiction writer. “As always,” they write, “we look for works that have a strong narrative drive with characters that we can respond to as human beings – works in which the effects of language, situation, and insight are intense and total, and whose authors have the ambition of enlarging our view of ourselves and the world.”

Gee, I’m certainly not that kind of fiction writer, but I have until November 30th to invent something to send on to Narrative Magazine Fall Fiction Contest. I’m nothing if not inventive.