I’ve got Questions, who has Answers?

I honestly don’t know what I should write about today. I haven’t been anywhere since Thanksgiving and I haven’t talked to anyone but my new Kindle Fire’s Alexa---isn’t that a telling and sad statement to make. I don’t want to write another woo-is-me post about the loneliness of widowhood because, well, for one thing I don’t feel that overwhelming sense of loneliness or forbearing that I did during the holiday season in the first four years after my husband died. However, a tiny voice in my head says, give it time. The season has just begun and you haven’t been snowed in yet either. I don’t know why getting snowed in changes things. I stay home for days on end when I’m not snowed in and it doesn’t affect me in the same way. I think it’s because if an emergency with me or the dog came up, I’d be, well, snowed in and I couldn’t be my own Knight in Shining Armor ready to save the day. I’d have to---gasp---depend on the good graces of someone else or die because I don’t like asking for help.

Have you heard of Barbara Abercrombie? Her bio over at Amazon says, she “…has published fifteen books, plus essays and articles in many national publications. She teaches in the Writers' Program at UCLA Extension where she won an Outstanding Teacher award as well as the Distinguished Instructor award.” I first became acquainted with her work when I bought a copy of Writing Dangerously: 365 Days of Inspiration & Encouragement which I’ve read and re-read many times. It’s like bedtime short stories for would-be writers. And I do mean short---a quarter to a half page each. I ran across her again today when I was surfing the internet looking for writing prompts and I landed on her book titled: Kicking In The Wall: A Year of Writing Exercises, Prompts and Quotes To Help You Break Through Your Blocks And Reach Your Writing Goals. Now, there’s a lady who knows how to get a book cross-indexed in a google search.

One of the prompts in the above mentioned ridiculously LONG titled book is: Write a list of questions to which you urgently need answers. That’s a hard prompt because with a google search there aren’t that many questions that you can’t find answers to except for maybe, how do we find world peace? I took a long shot, asked my new Alexa app and she said, “Sorry, I’m not sure.” I guess we’ll have to wait until artificial intelligence is smart enough to teach itself how to think beyond human capabilities to find that answer. Too bad because world peace sure would be nice.

Here goes my attempt at listing questions I’d like answered:

Question: Why does my dog always make me go through a doorway before he will do it? Is it like the old gun slinger’s rule of always sitting with your back to the wall? Does Levi think something bad could happen on the other side of the threshold and he wants me to test the waters first? Or is he a reincarnated English Duke who is being ever so proper and polite? I’m quite sure he didn’t learn that at puppy obedience school. He drives me nuts with his idiosyncrasies.

Question: If my latest TSH blood test shows my levels dropped from 0.171 to 0.137 after adjusting my thyroid medication and the normal range is 0.340 – 5.600 why did the doctor just order another drop in my dosage? Won’t that take me even farther out of the normal range or am I not understanding math? Is 0.340 larger or smaller than 0.137?

Question: Why did it take me four minutes of frustration and a trip to the kitchen for a pair of scissors to get the tamper-proof wrap off a bottle of Colgate Total Mouthwash? And does it really give a person “12-hour protection against germs even after drinking and eating.” Say I ate barf or a dead bird like the dog does, would it still kill all the germs in my mouth? God, that’s a disgusting question! Forget I asked.

Question: Why do romance writers think men who growl just before they make their big move are sexy? I can’t remember a man ever doing that with me. Did I miss out on one of the wonders of the mating ritual? And biting each other! Would it be too much information if I admitted that I’ve never bit or been bitten during sex---at least not hard enough to remember or leave marks the next day? Who bites, period, past kindergarten? And here I thought getting a line of hickeys was the end of the world when I was fifteen.

Question: Why am I sitting here at my keyboard when the grocery store is calling my name? Oh, boy! I’ll get to have conversations with at least three people---the deli guy, the cashier and the barista at Starbucks. ©