This Has Nothing To Do With Anything

I was originally going to title this post ‘Four Shoots’ but after yesterday’s hemi-demi-quasi-diatribe I decided not to, but the concept came from my drive to work: four distinct and disparate threads of thought.

It takes me a solid fifty minutes door-to-door in the morning, assuming nothing untoward has happened on the road ahead of me. That time allows my mind to wander through the field of random thought. I think of that like a big open meadow sprinkled here and there with wild mustard. What can I say about that? I like yellow.

Anyway. Yesterday, as I always do when I’m in the car, I was listening to my favorite radio station – kdfc.com. It’s a classical station that provides the soundtrack for my day. It’s easy on the ears, stimulating for my brain, not strident or distracting. There are no commercials because it’s a public station. The hosts are funny (ever hear of the cellist ‘Yo Yo Da’?). They never take themselves too seriously and make no excuses if they flub. It’s great, it’s sometimes amusing and it’s always pleasurable. Kind of like sex, without the naked part.

So, I’m in my car, driving up the freeway, the radio is on and my mind is wandering through the field of random thought. Four things sprout – the shoots of directed thought upon which I was going to title this post.

First, is The Pain In The Butt database.

For the past several months I have been less than delighted with the structure of a database that I created. Since then, I have spent weeks trying to decide if I can do better. If I can do better, how do I want to present the information?

Now, before anyone who doesn’t get their rocks off thinking about, talking about, designing, creating or administering databases starts yawning or falls asleep, I’ll let it go at that. It’s a nut. I have to crack it. I’m wrestling with the ‘how’.

Second are recent changes on the work front. One directly impacting, another that’s affecting. Naturally, being human and a selfish creature, I wonder how these changes will impact and affect me.

Third is the prompt from the Flash Fiction group on Authonomy. This week it’s ‘Irreplaceable’. A great prompt with so many different shades and connotations and possibilities that I’m not sure where to start. I fondled a few different ideas during my drive and have some concepts to try to develop. That will likely occupy my drive home.

The fourth shoot is just storyline. My post about the guns reminds me of one of my stories.  In that, the main character (MC) owns guns but they don’t make an appearance until she’s threatened one afternoon.

She’s standing in her front yard when she’s approached by a group of neighborhood ‘thugs’ who are rumored to have gang raped a high school girl, leaving her naked, bloody and unconscious on her parent’s driveway after using the girl’s cell phone to call the girl’s mother.

My MC has heard the rumor and, when they confront her, she warns them that ‘Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson’ don’t like midnight callers. It evolves from there until she shoots and kills two of them. The police investigate, determine it was justified, and pass on prosecution. Along the way, there’s evocation of guilt, effects on her psyche, how it affects the broader neighborhood, etc., and the impacts on her life (her job, etc.).

By then, I was close to my exit for the drive up and over the hill. Off in the distance was a cluster of hot air balloons – three of them risen up in the clear morning sky, drifting above the trees and hills. Their colors muted by distance but I wonder: are the colors bolder, more dashing up close? I should check it out sometime.

In the meantime, new shoots of thought and imagining. I’ll write and post my flash piece on Authonomy, and decide on the rest where I can impact it.

Have a lovely day!