Coffee’s on.
Come in.
Sit down.

“SHIT!” I screeched at the top of my lungs as I found myself again seated before my keyboard. My shout scared the dog’s as they slept peacefully on the bed behind me, and they scattered, heading for the outside.

“Sorry,” I whispered through gritted teeth, “but it’s the same thing every year as I silently resolve to stop blogging.”

This time it began 21 days before the New Year arrived. On that day, shortly after waving goodbye to my wife as she headed for work yet again, I sat in the dark of our at our dining room, talking to God.

“Father God – please release me from this chore,” I begged, “I don’t think my blogging is do you any good and I know it’s not doing me any good. Besides, I’m so damned tired.”

I heard nothing, felt nothing as I held my face in the palms of my hands, thinking, “Maybe, God doesn’t hear my groans. Hell, maybe He thinks this more of a grumble.”

After a lengthy period of silence, I added, “Let you’re will be done and not mine,” and I finally got up and walked to the back room to write my last story of the year. That’s where I found myself screaming cuss words at my reflection in the computer screen and frightening my hounds.

One-thousand-six-hundred-and-fifty words later, I put the story of ‘a desperately hopeless man with an ironic sense of humor and bent on suicide,’ to bed. Done. Finished. Finito. No more. Over and out. The end. Fin.

Finally, the old year dissolved in a liquid vat of nothingness and the new one began it’s emergence from the unending void of measurements. And so, on this first new morning of a new 365-day period, I sat at the table, having seen my wife off to work once more, and I opened my conversation with Father God.

“Thank you for letting me off the hook, Lord,” I started, “Thank you for allowing me to borrow from your mind, from your talent. I’m so happy not to be blogging anymore.”

I gently put my head on my arms, resting both on the table and relaxed, slipping towards a near-state-of-sleep.

It was like a bean-bag fired from a shotgun, as two thoughts simultaneously blasted their way between the hemispheres of my brain. Two internal voices shattering my revere; one saying ‘You ain’t off the hook,’ the other laying out a flash of a memory, a story-line needing further fleshing out.

The shock caused me to pop up from my chair and come to a standing position. My brain felt like it was beginning to boil as one of the voices stated clearly: “You can quit if you want – but I trust you won’t because you fear and love me.”

“You know that I do,” I answered though no one was there. (Oh, how I hate when He uses the older definition of ‘fear.’)

Then I began to cry, realizing I was living with both the thorn and the rose, lovely and pain-filled. As I walked down the hall to the back room, I suddenly remembered, “I’m not writing for the glory here on earth.”

Seven-hundred-and-six words later, I published my first blog post for the newest year. What a frickin’ kick in the ass this lesson has been.

My facial expressions need to start using their inner voices.

A mathematician celebrates 4/20 on 1/5 because he knows how to do fractions.

Do like Jesus, if you can’t turn the tables, flip them over instead.

She danced like nobody was watching, and once they weren’t watching, she left her date, a guy she couldn’t stand and went home to her husband.

While I’m used to my night terrors, having a good old-fashioned nightmare is rare and even more unusual is the occasional bad dream. This bad dream began as a stress-test of sorts as I was unable to take a shower ahead of an important gathering.

Then…

“Eighty-eight and 89 are problem children,” said the unrecognizable man, “She had to leave to go take care of them.”

“What do you mean leave?” I asked.

“She left and is driving back to take care of the problem,” he explained,“You can stay with us and we’ll drive you back.”

Instantly angry, I growled, “The hell you say!”

With that, I dug my cellphone from my pocket and started dialing as I walked quickly towards the exit of what had now become the front-end of a very busy casino. I took the transformation in stride as the man I’d been speaking with continued to call after me, trying to get me to slow down or stop.

The cellphone gave off a busy signal. I tried again with the same results; then a third time only to realize I was dialing my number.

Even more frustrated, I finally dialed my wife’s number. It rang twice, she picked up and without giving her a chance to even say ‘hello,’ I demanded “You get your skinny, little ass back here this minute. You ain’t leaving me behind like…”

She banged down the phone as she hung up on me. The intermittent signal of a busy line followed.

Then I snapped awake to the buzz-buzz-buzz of my bedside alarm sounding-off. It took me a few seconds to focus as I fumbled to switch the damned thing off.

Then I had to laugh…

Cellphones no longer emit a ‘busy signal,’ especially one that sounds like those that I grew up hearing when all phones were both stationary and rotary. Furthermore, you’re no longer able to slam the receiver on the phone cradle like we could when younger, unless there’s an app for that.

They don’t, do they?

I watched the video of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing. The last time I saw a Commie dance, it was Jane Fonda’s exercise video in 1982.

It’s a proven fact that having sex on a regular basis helps improve the memory. Hope everyone has a wonderful 2009.

An atheist once told me that the only reason Jesus walked on the water is because he couldn’t swim.