Ideas and the Scattered Brain

"Brutus! Give me back the baby's diaper! That's disgusting!" I said sternly to my 7 year-old Boxer.

Brutus, as usual, ignored my command and pranced off into the living room, carrying the soiled, soggy diaper like a prized toy.

"Brutus! Damn it, dog, if you don't give me back that diaper, I'm selling you to the glue factory! I mean it this time."

"Honey," my husband, Wally, said, from his elected position on the couch (front and center of the hi-def TV), "they don't take dogs at the glue factory. It's horses." He ripped his eyes away from drag racing long enough to glance at me. "Besides, I don't think they do that anymore."

"Whatever," I muttered, my mind going off onto one of its "tangents," while I simultaneously chased the 60 lb. fawn colored dog (who was definitely going to glue factory--no question) around the house.

As I stalked the dog, I imagined a puppy mill where the owners, looking to create the next "it" breed of dog, accidentally mix monkey DNA with a Boxer puppy and end up with a "Moxer" or a "Bonkey." They'll call him "X," short for X29752 and he'll possess the ability bark and chase birds while swinging from limb to limb (scratching its butt, of course). Hmmm, is there a story there?

"To the victor go the spoils!" I shouted, snagging the diaper from Brutus' jowls. After disposing of said disgusting diaper, I looked at Wally, who (big surprise) was still parked on the couch.

"Are you ready? We've got to drop the kids off at my mom's in twenty minutes."

Wally held out a hand, "Just five more minutes, honey. I want to see (insert name of random drag racer here) finish this round."

I rolled my eyes. The Just Five More Minutes Honey clause is one I'm familiar with. After all, I created it in my house.

TEN minutes later...."

"Why don't you calm down?" Wally asked, loading our son into his car seat. "You're so high-strung all the time."

Oh, I'll give you high-strung.

"The reason I'm so tense, is because we're supposed to be at Mom's in fifteen minutes and it's a thirty minute drive."

Wally smirked as he slid in the driver's seat. "Did you take your crazy pills today?"

I socked him lightly in the arm. "Not funny the first time you said it. Not funny the gajillion other times."

Backing out of the driveway, he grinned. "Hey, now when I ask you if you're on drugs, you can say yes and mean it." He laughed at his ingenuity.

Folding my arms across my chest, I leaned back into the seat and thought of a GREAT idea for a story. A woman with a newly diagnosed mood disorder murders her husband and buries his remains on the 10 acre property she shares with him (this may come back to bite me in the butt should I ever decide to "method act" out this idea).

As we drove along the highway, I gazed out along the gently rolling hills and large expanses of farmland. Tuning out NASCAR on AM 1360, I imagined a farm that had been in a certain family for decades that was being threatened by torrential rains and a sudden invasion of ants.

As I looked at the car driving alongside us, I wondered, "Where are they going? What are they doing?" In my mind, they were a couple on an awkward blind date. The woman has just gotten out of a nasty marriage, and after a year of solitude, has decided to dip her foot in the dating pool again. The man has trust issues of his own and only went on the date because his older sister guilted him into it. Little do they know, this first date was going to take them into a whirlwind love affair filled with tension, inner conflict, great sex, emotional black moments for each of them, and finally, a Happily Ever After.

"Honey? We're here."

I looked out at my parents' familiar blue ranch and blinked. Wow, that'd gone quick, I thought.

My mind, of course, was still back on that lonely stretch of highway, with the couple I'd named Harry and Grace.