Squeezing Water Out Of A Turnip Truck

One mournful sigh left me like air escapes a bellows, only not as constructively. Would I ever get to sleep? Why couldn’t I control my lack-of-sleep habits? I had a bottle of pills for that, only at the late hour, if I were to take one I would sleep clear up until supper the next day, so the only real choice I had was to stretch my cramping fingers in a frantic caressing of my QuikPAD, pumping out words in strangely affectionate strokes.

I spend way too many nights just like last night. All the quiet is so deafening I have to put it somewhere, so I feed it to my word processor, then follow it around with a baggie and pooper-scooper for the next three days waiting for the payoff. Kind of like that time I caught a brief glint of gold flash as my ring careened down the throat of my daughters puppy. Messy business. I’d much rather try to squeeze water out of a turnip truck.

I blame my love affair with inanimates on a fear of commitment. That’s right, I have hang-ups just like the next person.

I’ve heard women moan about how their husband is more in love with his car or TV remote, more so than with she, his wife, or how a woman kicked her boyfriend out over a water ring on her beloved Chippendale. If a man is so into his car that he can’t remember his spouses name then let him sleep with it…in the garage. If he’s the kind to stop at nothing to maintain controlling interest in the remote for the sake of dictatorship, toss it to him and tell him to hop on top of it next time he feels frisky.

If your guy gets the boot for leaving his mark on your Chippendale, I’ve got one question for you, “If you’ve got a drop-dead gorgeous male stripper lounging in your living room in nothing but a black bow-tie what are you doing letting the inferior specimen in?“ What are you….nuts? Dump the bum and keep the stripper. You won’t even care where he puts his glass as long as he’s wearing those rip away pants.

Ah…wait a minute, if the stud-muffin just lays there while another man sets his beer on him you lose either way, if you know what I mean…girlfriend.

Let’s get back to my main topic; I’m not the only one that prefers the company of things I own outright over that of the opposite sex. Somehow, that didn’t come out right. What I meant to say was, if a man does not please me, I can’t sell him for a profit, unlike his battery operated competitor. No, that sounded really-really wrong. How about, the only words that come out of my technological companions are the ones I put into them? Now I’m making my techno-toys sound like a bad date. This is where I would usually bow my head back to my work at hand and mumble something barely audible, so that my hard of hearing companion thinks I am actually paying attention to him, so I can continue to ignore him in peace. He hates to admit he can’t hear what I say, for fear of hearing about his lack of hearing and how he should get it fixed, so he just follows my lead and retreats while making an effort to disguise random verbalizations as an answer to the question that he thinks he didn‘t hear.

With men, it all boils down to power. Tim the-tool-man Taylor summed it up in 20 minutes weekly, with common male misinterpretations , splitting hairs like a blow-drier. It just goes to show that high levels of testosterone cannot coexist within the same body mass as philosophical prowess. If anyone can point out a man that possesses both, I’ll trade in my Ken doll in a heart-beat.

My only other quiet-time diversion would be reading, which I did for a couple of hours before stuffing thoughts into my flash card. I made the mistake of choosing an intriguing trade publications to wile away the time and that’s why , at 5 am, I was still awake. I read an article on editing by a successful agent with an amazing track record and I couldn’t wait to pull out my in-progress works and start assaulting adverbs and morphing adjectives.

When the miracle of darkness began to fade, I eventually got to sleep. I was up by noon and eating at my favorite restaurant by 2pm, then wandered the grocers aimlessly, chucking things into my basket at carefully plotted intervals, so it would look like I knew what I was doing. I was freed from the yearly bonding ritual much to my relief, when John hustled off to a local truck and tractor pull with a pal this time. Not that I don’t enjoy his company, it’s just too hot out there at 90, with 80 percent humidity, and besides… I really need to polish my keyboard tonight.
7/16/2005 7:13 PM
word count 846