Knots I’ve Got Yet to Untie
Friday has surreptitiously slunk in while Thursday wasn’t looking, regaled in shades of gray and a cold, autumnal cloak dappled with rain. And I surrendered to the entropy with which it embraced me. I overslept (again). I was wired from talking with the folks over in the Beautiful Brains Chat last night and Wiggy (of Triple Ace Games) and I talked shop for awhile after, so I was up past my bedtime. And then, there’s that thing living in my room. And I mean that literally. During my break between work and the show, I was catching up on Star Trek: TNG (thanks, Netflix!) and I thought I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I dismissed it because I was watching the Phantasm episode where Data has waking nightmares, dreams, and hallucinations. I went, hmmm, I’ve been running tired, maybe I just had a visual hallucination. Interesting. You see, I was channeling Data there for a moment. I honestly didn’t want a creature in my room, so was trying to rationalize the incident away. However, two minutes later when I see this thing running along the baseboard behind the television, I knew it to be a physical, tangible, entity with which I’d have to contend.
You know I write a goodly bit of horror and I have this imagination which decided to run through various myths, legends, and scenarios where I would later go to sleep only to awake with a rabid rat gnawing away on my tongue. Oh, THE HORROR! Right? So, I went back in the house trying to find this thing after the chat with Wiggy concluded and couldn’t. I banged loudly, hoping to lure it out. No luck. So, I went to bed in stages. First, I sat on the love seat in my clothes with an umbrella and all my clothes on, determined to not sleep or to fall asleep on the love seat, prepared to do battle should the need arise. I finally took off my jacket, my shoes, my socks, dressed for bed, and went upstairs, and to sleep. It was a restless sleep. I did reflect on how the dread of a small creature could transfer over and inform my future works in some way, shape, or form. Write what you know. Still, not an experience I hoped to collect. More than anything, I find this rodent layabout an annoyance of the higher order. Such is life. Right? It can’t be all sunshine and daffodils.
So, today, I got up and the thing had gnawed through a bit of carpet to the baseboard. Yippee! It’s got giant fangs. I’ll deal with it. I left the attic door open and I hope it goes back the way it came rather than going back inside later to find the house has become a winter resort for a nest of nasties. Thing is, I’ve NEVER seen a rat in Memphis. In Charleston, absolutely. Wharf rats could be saddled up and ridden along The Battery.
Where does that leave things? I planned to take half a day off to get an iPad2 and just chill a bit. That’s still the plan. Looking forward to it. I got a lot of response from my post yesterday where people were taken aback by the amount of work I do and there have been friendly offers of help. I may take some of you up on them. I do know that things are caught up for a bit, and I probably need to take a small break, so am going to disconnect for a few days and let the batteries recharge. Thanks for the reality check, folks!
There will be knots yet to untie on Monday. This is the real world. There will always be knots of varying qualities with which to contend, whether they are of the writing or rodent variety!
Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!
8 Notes on, Knots I’ve Got Yet to Untie
Kurt Schneider
It’s not PC, but there are few sounds as satisfying as the snap a mouse/rat trap going off, followed by a rapidly diminishing scuffle, followed by absolute silence.
Then again, I grew up down south, where farmers would buy you pellets if you’d use them shooting the rats in the barn…
ewetterman
Dude….get a cat! Geez.
LOL
Ed
Peter
I had a whole nest of rats in the crawlspace under the house I lived at in Nashville. Trust me, rats aplenty in the south. I did, however, also learn that dogs can be as effective as a cat when it comes to mousing. They demonstrated this fact by, both of them (70 pounds each), decapitating one of the mini monstrosities on my driveway.
Norm Hensley
iPad2?!?!?
The GIT!
>I sat on the love seat in my clothes with an umbrella and all my clothes onI finally took off my jacket, my shoes, my socks<
But not the bloody umbrella? Now I'm having waking nightmares, dreams, and hallucinations thanks to this horrendous image :( Quick, someone help me scratch my eyeballs out!
The GIT!
“I sat on the love seat in my clothes with an umbrella and all my clothes on”
You see, I understand you wearing clothes but I don’t see how wearing an umbrella really helps :)
“I finally took off my jacket, my shoes, my socks”
But not the bloody umbrella? Now I’m having waking nightmares, dreams, and hallucinations thanks to this horrendous image :( Quick, someone help me scratch my eyeballs out!
Lord Mhor
My wife lovingly bought me a nice flax pillow once. It was neglected after the first few weeks, alas, and had its revenge. I was sitting watching TV one fine night and a tiny THING flitted past . Then another. And another. Assorted colors. Shooting across the carpet. Cute. Tiny. Very fast. The flax pillow had become Mouse City.
Poison – now that did the trick, oh yes. Nasty mouse-killing poison acquired from OSH – several fine little plastic Chambers of Death sized to prevent the inadvertent intrusion of larger mammals. There was grim satisfaction in knowing that the blasphemous unauthorized denizens, cute though they might be, would froth, heave, writhe, and undulate in a horrific convulsive spectacle of fluid-spewing chemical suffering before their inevitable spasms of expiration. Such was their fate.
Perhaps I’ve been playing Realms of Cthulhu a bit too often lately.
Sean Preston
Wow. I step away from the computer for a few day and there is UTTER CHAOS around here. I’ll go through these posts in more detail on the morrow and respond accordingly. :)