Floating around in circles

My colorful mind spins in a circuitous path. It's as if my thoughts are spaghetti and my ideas are meatballs. For example, tonight as I gathered up a fistful of hair that had fallen out during my shower, I wondered if I could be shedding because of the scorching heat like dogs do.

And cats... which led me to thinking of the Smurf movie we saw today (very cute, by the way). The cat had swallowed a piece of Smurfette's hair and gagged it up. TMI! Such strong images for a new poem, though.

Which reminded me of our neighbors cat, one that I never knew about, but apparently he's had her for years. A few days ago I saw a decrepit-looking black cat with white paws sleeping in my front lawn like a hungover drunk in a tuxedo. Come to find out it was her. She just magically reappeared (because the caviar she was being fed from those kidnappers didn't make up for their family, or so the neighbor said).

They were supposed to take the cat into the vet, and I hadn't seen her lately so I asked Pete (after I got out of the shower), "Have you seen the cat?"

He said, "That's a good question."

"She's got depression?" I'm hard of hearing.

Which led me to my cat George. George is gone now (but the neighbor's cat is the spitting image of him, which really threw me for a loop at first). He became very depressed when we moved from the apartment to this house. He wouldn't eat and grew anorexic. Poor George nearly died. I found him curled up on his death bed in the corner of my closet one day when I got home from work. We had to feed him through syringes to make him start eating again. He was as depressed as cats come. I wish we lived in California where I could have taken him to a pet shrink, gotten him on Prozac.

Speaking of shrinks...

See what I mean?


Picture inspiration by Alias Jinksy: In Tandem #4

The Tragic Tale of Amber and Andy

Last night I had this laboriously worded story ready to post. In fact, I had saved and previewed it when on a sudden whim, I decided to switch the pictures around. Bad idea. I lost the whole thing. Here's my attempt to recreate the original piece.

Art by Margaret Bednar

Amber once was a colorful child who adored playing dress-up for tea parties and pretending to be Cinderella. She gently coaxed her twin brother, Andy, to play the part of handsome prince many times. They spent long summer days lost in another world, and during the school year they were inseparable.

As they grew older, Amber became what Andy called a "snapping turtle." She'd come out of her room, snap at the first person she crossed and then retreat back into her shell. Her once smiling face morphed into a pouty Angeline Jolie-type smirk. Whenever they were forced to come together, Amber called her little brother a "smelly oaf who couldn't even comb his own ratty hair." Once converged, the siblings drifted into a parallel relationship of animosity.

Image by Jinksy

Until the night they were forced to put their differences aside after an accident claimed the lives of their parents. Their car had careened off the winding mountain side into the ruthless water below. Through tragedy the twins discovered the bond they had formed as children was everlasting; it was the glue that held them together. Amber and Andy moved back into the cottage by the sea where they had grown up. Before long they retreated back into a simpler life of tea parties and fairy tales, the coping mechanism which eventually drove them to the rocky waves where they met their parents and lived together as a family forever more.



Prompt inspiration: Alias Jinksy

@laurie kolp