What Happens When I Can't Write

This past week has been rather stressful, related to the caregiver responsibilities I mentioned in an earlier post, and sometimes this stress and upset affects my ability to write worth a dingdang. Yesterday morning was the first stretch of time in a while when I could sit down at this machine and take a shot at the next Donaghue and Stainer short story, but naturally nothing happened. There wasn't anything there.

As I floundered, my wife started the vacuum cleaner upstairs. Our border collie, Cody, has recently developed a very deep and passionate hatred of the vacuum, as some dogs do, attacking it rather violently. When he heard it start up he left my side, where he generally lies when I'm working here, and flew upstairs to take on his hated enemy.

Since my brain was at least partly functional, it inspired the graphic you see on the left, which I photoshopped in about 15 minutes from an online jpg file. My apologies to Russ Manning et al. Thank goodness the universe has Cody to defend it from those hated, evil machines!