Solitary Confinement

Since I’m somewhat of a night owl and also easily bored, I find some odd but rarely constructive ways to amuse myself:

*Jack was out of town so I got a piece of chalk and drew around all of the dog shapes that I could see in our kitchen floor tile.

*I turned out all the lights, went out on our bedroom balcony, and peered into the woods with my night vision scope. Then I creeped myself out by thinking, what if I saw somebody standing still out there in the woods looking up at me with glowing eyes? I ran in the house and locked all the doors.

*Jill and I went out to dinner and when we came back took turns walking like a zombie in the dark outside toward the person with the night scope. Jill said mine was the scariest because the dogs were attacking me as I tried to walk and their eyes were also glowing.

*I never have matching socks so I just wear mismatches—what does it matter with boots? I try to at least match seasonal themes though. I was holding one sock with Christmas trees on it and complaining that I couldn’t find another holiday scene sock when Jack said, “Why don’t you wear that sock with the pilgrim hats?” They were actually witch hats and that festive day had passed. So recently I decided to gather all of my mismatches. Unbelievable! I only found about six matches and threw away about 50 socks. There really is a place where they escape. It’s called Sock World and it’s in Gatlinburg, TN. We drove past it one day and David’s friend Dan said the store’s slogan should be, “For all your puppet needs.” Anyway, how can a person who almost never travels and when she does, never packs socks, lose at least fifty of them?! That effort took about an hour and it wasn’t as gratifying as expected.

*A world championship Tiddley-Wink tournament with myself. I won quite handily, thank you very much.

*Google myself. Pretty disappointing, but one Dr. Mary Gail Snyder must never sleep! She’s everywhere!

*Sometimes when I’m editing a manuscript that is extremely boring and I’m reading it for the umpteenth time, I read it out loud with a different accent—usually British, but sometimes German, or Japanese, even Gone With the Wind Southern.

*Talk to myself. My most common sentences are “What are you doing here?” “Why don’t you just shut up!” and “Okay, I’ve had just about enough of you.”

*Sing to the dogs. They clearly hate it.

*Take pictures of the moon.

*Draw smiley faces on the bottoms of my feet with a temporary (Do you think I'm crazy? Of course, it's temporary) tattoo pen while watching television.

*Look for frogs (a seasonal activity).

I guess I’ll stop there. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m weird or anything.