Author Archives: didofoot
Full House
I did some cleaning today. Just vacuuming in the living room and some stuff in the bathroom. I don’t need new speakers, but I do need my computer to be able to control the ones in the living room as well as the kitchen. If I can get a full-house sound, I might clean the … Continue reading
Bob
We have a thirsty ghost and his name is Bob. I knew Bob in life. He lived on the top floor of our building. He had a hard time getting up the stairs and used to rest in the lobby before making the climb; sometimes I’d be passing through and I’d carry his laundry up … Continue reading
The Wart
My jaw joint (located just in front of the ear) is inflamed. You can’t tell from looking at it but I sure can feel it. Apparently, I’ve been grinding my teeth in my sleep. The inflamed joint was diagnosed a week ago, and since then it’s spread to the other side of my face and … Continue reading
Help!
Now that I’m trying to write short stories, I think I need to read more of them as well. I’ve read Nabokov, Wodehouse, McKillip, Thurber, Gaiman, Saki and Salinger: who else should I read? Your help will be highly prized.
Custer’d
A few days ago, Gene and I were floating the idea of buying a place, like a paper boat in a bathtub. We take the boat out and play with it from time to time, but just for fun, and it always ends with an agreement that in order to buy a place as nice … Continue reading
About writing
Samuel R. Delaney, in his book About Writing, says “Writers are people who write.”* My heart sinks immediately whenever I read that old truism, thinking of the short story that’s been stalled in my fiction folder for three weeks now, thinking how little fiction I’ve written at all. I forget that I write every day, … Continue reading
Clean living
Sometimes I rather plaintively ask Gene why we can’t have a house cleaner come in a couple of times a month, and then he says “Would a house cleaner cost me as much as you do?” and we both laugh and it’s all very cute*. But anyway, a few weeks ago I finally hit saturation … Continue reading
Pleasant
I’m dog-sitting in Pleasant Hill for a couple of weeks. When idly checking for something to do out here, I was surprised to find a motherlode of options. It’s like there’s this whole, awesome Stars Hollow town under the featureless suburb I remember from my younger years. For example, on Saturday, I will be attending … Continue reading
You are spearing that tomato and I don’t want to hear another word about it
I hate authors who do that dippy routine about how “the characters tell me where they want to go and I just follow,” invariably followed by a specific example of that time when the author wanted to do one thing and the characters wanted to do something else and they had a long argument and … Continue reading
Smell
A few weeks ago, our top-floor neighbor’s sink overflowed and all the apartments below him, including ours, had water damage. Ours was pretty minimal, though the port-a-potty smell of wet drywall did linger for several days. Today I began smelling the faintest whiff of port-a-potty again and notified both the upstairs neighbor (who is also … Continue reading