I suspect the question most frequently asked of writers is, “How do you come up with your ideas?”

I once heard a writer answer that question with an arrogantly dramatic, “How could I not?” which he followed with a wry smile suggesting his life was so interesting that brilliant ideas sprouted like dandelions in rich, fertile soil.

Although I routinely find myself knee-deep in stuff that’s not only rich and fertile, but also pungent and plentiful, I still have to sift through it several times before finding a nugget worth writing about. Unfortunately, once in a while, I get nothing but nuggets. Enough to dirty the shovel, but nowhere near a full load.
Still, by reading these nuggets, which I’ve collected in just the last seven days, you can get a decent idea of how fertile my field is.

* * *

In an email sent by my Aunt JoAnne: “Kenny went to Foodland to buy a turkey because they were on sale for just 57 cents a pound. He doesn’t even eat turkey, but for that price, he wanted to get one anyway. So he calls from the store wanting to know if I wanted a whole turkey or just the breast. Since it would be just Mom and me eating the turkey, I figured a breast should probably do it, so I asked him how big they were. He said, ‘I don’t know. It looks like about a 38-D.’”

* * *

And this from an earlier email from my Aunt JoAnne: “Mom has been having a lot of health problems lately, which probably explains why she’s started reading the Bible CONSTANTLY. I think she’s cramming for finals.”

* * *

During our monthly Girls Night Out at Rio Grande in Nitro last week: “I just bought the most wonderful little hand-held, battery-operated toy,” said Linda. “Do y’all want to see it?” Our shocked gasps were quickly exchanged for laughter when she reached in her purse and pulled out a heated eyelash curler. “You ladies have such dirty minds,” she said.

* * *

Former Nitro High classmate Leigh Shell shared some malapropisms collected from her own daily life.

“A young woman looked at me when I was having a complete meltdown and said, ‘You don’t have to go into Hispanics.’”

“Now Leigh Ann, you know we can’t prove those folks were married because as far as I know, they never constipated the marriage.”

“The performance kicked off a standing ovulation.” (I guess that was a Fallopian slip.)

“My doctor says I have a hyena hernia and now they’re going to have to clean out the corroded arteries in my neck”

“How do you spell African? You know, like the African blanket that your grandmother crochets to lay across the back of the couch.”

* * *

And this last, sent in by one of those “please-don’t-use-my-name” readers who swears the story is true. “My sister-in-law was wearing a brand new pair of pants the day of her appointment with her gynecologist. He was about to begin his exam when he noticed a little slip of paper stuck to her bottom. After reading it, he said, ‘I guess this means I don’t need to continue.’

What did the little slip of paper say?

“Approved by Inspector #23.”

Although I’ve been writing about my cast of characters for years, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to show them off.

To the right is my girl, Celeste, who was not quite 8 when this picture was taken at her June 2005 dance recital.

But this is how she looks most
of the time.

This is my husband, Geoff.

And our dog, Furry Murry . . .

Our demented cat, Squirt, and our shelter cat, Gypsy . . .

And finally, Sully, who is sort of the neighborhood cat, with us as home base. (He likes dogs, but hates cats, so he has his own room when the weather is bad.)

“Smell the Coffee” from the Nov. 20 Sunday Gazette-Mail.

From my spot on the ladder I could hear the sounds of their rakes dragging through the leaves, marked with an occasional “Hey! That’s my pile!” or “It’s not big enough to jump in yet.” It was a nice distraction from mucking out gutters.

I really didn’t mind mucking the gutters. It was a nice day to do it. Warm enough for no jacket. The air smelling of smoke. For each section I emptied, I installed gutter screen over top. Simple enough work, but it was taking longer than I expected. I could only work on a small area before having to climb down and move the ladder again. Soon, I decided to climb on the roof and work from up there. It probably wasn’t as safe, but it’s not all that high either. And, truth be told, I love being on the roof.

The house in Nitro where I grew up had attic windows that opened onto the roof so you never needed a ladder. We had a huge pine tree in front of our house, and it was easy to get on the roof, then scoot down the shingles and let the pine tree hide us so my best friend and I could spy on other friends. Usually, though, we’d just sit there and talk, watching cars pass by, watching clouds. There was something special about how the world looked from that slightly different perspective. Even the air felt different. Softer. Cooler.

After I finished the gutters on the back half of the house, I walked around on the roof for a bit, looking for things to inspect or repair, not really wanting to get down. Finding nothing, I decided to stretch out on the still-warm shingles. Apparently, the vibes given off by a mother relaxing triggered that instinctive alarm in my daughter. She had to find me that instant.

“I’m up here,” I answered.

“Can I come up?” Celeste asked.

“Not right now,” I said as I stood and brushed roof grit from my jeans. “It’s getting dark fast. Maybe tomorrow.”

“Please?” she called out. “I’ve never been up there before.”

I thought of all those times at our old house in Nitro and softened. Geoff helped her climb the ladder, and I nervously hovered nearby as she took her first tentative steps on the angled surface.

“This is cool,” Celeste said. “Everything looks so different from here.”

Our dog spotted us up there and, looking hugely distraught, started oof-ing loudly at us. I convinced her to lie flat on the roof, hoping he’d quiet. He did.

So did we.
Shoulder to shoulder we lay on the roof, neither talking for a far longer period than either of us, when conscious, can usually manage. The wind felt and smelled perfect, the neighborhood sounds were just right.

“It looks like it’s getting dark from the ground up,” she said. The sky was still light, but the woods had gone black. She slipped her hand into mine.

It was one of those perfect moments, and as we were lying there, I wished on the first star that this would be something she’d never forget.

Geoff made certain of that. His one small contribution guaranteed neither of us would soon be forgetting our time on the roof.

He’d taken our ladder.

When Gazzman Doug Imbrogno asked if I’d like to start my own blog, where my weekly columns would be reprinted but I’d also get to blog new stuff, I was excited by the idea. It didn’t take long to lose my nerve. I put so much of my life out there already with the “Smell the Coffee” column in the Sunday Gazette-Mail. Why would I think anyone would want to read more?

Right about then, I ran across Dilbert creator Scott Adams’ website, where he wrote:

“The beauty of blogging, as compared to writing a book, is that no editor will be interfering with my random spelling and grammar, my complete disregard for the facts, and my wandering sentences that seem to go on and on and never end so that you feel like you need to take a breath and clear your head before you can even consider making it to the end of the sentence that probably didn’t need to be written anyhoo. If that doesn’t inspire you to read my blog, I don’t know what will.”

Hmm. I have many rambling, incomplete thoughts that aren’t meaty enough to develop into columns. (Actually, the almost non-existent meat content of my columns has earned them the Vegan Seal of Approval as Acceptable for Consumption.) I’ve been wastefully allowing those many rambling and incomplete thoughts to simply fade away, gone forever, never shared. How shamefully selfish of me.

Like Adams, I was seduced by the freedom to write whatever I liked without the newspaper’s ridiculous restriction that it be true. Bah! Who needs to check facts? It just slows you down. (gazzman editor’s note: Ha! We’ll be editing you still in gazzblogs! Ed.)

Adams also said, “The only reason I dare writing this blog is because I have absolutely no sense of embarrassment. Most people would be horrified at the prospect of proving their ignorance to thousands of readers. My attitude is more along the lines of I have thousands of readers? Cool.”

Like Adams, I have pretty much no sense of embarrassment left. I’ve spent 41 years as a klutz extraordinaire and eight years as a columnist, where desperation for material prompts me to reveal my every humiliation and stretch — or confine it — to fit my weekly space in the Sunday paper. After awhile, you get numb to it. I passed numb years ago.

Finally, the astute Adams (my role model, my exemplar, my liege) penned this observation: “The blogger’s philosophy goes something like this: Everything I think about is more fascinating than the crap in your head.”

Being so well acquainted with the crap in my head, I really hope that’s not true.

Smell the Coffee from the Nov. 13 Sunday Gazette-Mail

As we neared the propped-open doorway on South High Street in Morgantown, I could tell Geoff was taking me someplace special. His excitement was palpable as we started down the marble stairs, and he appeared pleased when I noticed how the stair’s edges were worn wavy and grooved from thousands upon thousands of shoes.

“How old is this place?” I asked.

“1920s,” he said. “At least.”

When I got my first good look at the cavernous old pool hall where he’d taken me, I was speechless (a condition I’m rarely rendered for long). I understood why he’d been excited about bringing me there. It was my kind of place.

Funny how a pool hall could be my kind of place considering that I’d never played pool, but it was. Geoff knew I’d like the feel of the place, that I’d like how it wasn’t make-believe old or deliberately kitschy, with the walls decorated with things that were never meant to be hung on walls. It was an honest-to-goodness pool hall. The Met.

Although a few years had passed since Geoff’s last trip to the Met, he said nothing had changed. I have a sneaking suspicion little has in the last 80 plus years. It once was men only, so you’d think after women were granted admittance, a second restroom might be required. Management sidestepped that problem by simply posting a sign, “The Men’s room is through the big open door at the back of the room. The Women’s room is the Men’s room with the big door pulled shut.”

Another posted instruction advised, “Don’t place drinks on tables. The tables are older than your grandmother. You wouldn’t put a drink on your grandmother’s head, would you?”

Geoff got a tray of balls from Bill Bonfili, a long-time behind-the-counter Met fixture, telling him we’d play for an hour or two. It was early in the afternoon, so we were nearly alone. A lone man had claimed the front, center table, and from the rap-crack sound his cue ball made as he popped it against the others, I guessed he was a regular there.

We chose a table in the back of the room, selected our sticks, then started to play. For a while, Geoff was totally rusty and I was totally green, then it started to click. I couldn’t gage how hard I should hit, but my aim and angles were good. I sunk more than a few. Sometimes, I even sunk the balls in the holes I meant them to go in.

I had my camera along, so I snapped a few pictures. Mismatched chairs and bar stools, low hanging lights, exposed pipes and ductwork. Budweiser signs. A row of old theater seats below a framed advertisement of a pretty girl in a sailor’s hat promising “Things go better with Coke.”

Geoff had been right. It was my kind of place.

Best of all, though, was that he knew that it was. That he knows me that well.

Since our first anniversary was on Halloween, we postponed celebrating until we had a day to ourselves. When that day came, we spent it walking around downtown Morgantown, eating hotdogs at Gene’s, playing pool at the Met.

I’m not a romantic sort of person. I don’t lust after jewelry or expensive perfume, don’t much care for cut flowers or store-bought cards. So only someone who knows me extraordinarily well could’ve planned a day as perfect as I found our day to be.