Visualize this y'all: It's just before dawn. The birds aren't even chirping yet. There you lay, passed out on your living room couch from watching too many Turner Broadcast Network movies (you know, the only ones without too much sex and bloodletting). You're just hunkee-doree fine. Then, your right brain just decides to not behave itself, and your left brain is saying, "Oh man, not again! Why can't you just let me sleep an extra hour?” Well, not having a job to go to your right brain feels it is perfectly normal (at least a writer's brain) to get up, convince the left brain to saunter off to the bathroom--to drain away all nocturnal fluids--and prepare your fingertips for the only aerobic dancercize the body ever experiences. Ergo, if you're anything like me, a crusader of the written word, you flip on the printer switch, salute the First Amendment, adjust your eyes to the monitor, and write. (Or you grap the first piece of anything that looks like paper and begin to scribble wildly.) In my office, there happens to be my little aquatic bit of inspiration in a vase, my pet betta, Midas. He never interupts, just sits there waiting to vibrate in his isolated territory everytime I hit the print command. He's one of those horny little bettas forever blowing bubble nests at the water's surface. Unbeknownst to this fantailed crimson wonder, he is doomed to live the life of a monk since I plan on keeping him all to myself. But this morning, Midas just goes back to the bottom of his bowl under his favorite silk flower, and sleeps. Well, so much for my bubble-blowing cheerleader. I've still got to write. My spouse comes in (not a good thing for most spouses to do when a writer is "involved" and stands over my left shoulder. For those of you who do not understand the makeup of a writer, it's like going to the bathroom with the door open. My kids learn to vacate the premises of my home office quickly. "Mom's writing. . . don't go in there!" But their father is a bit more, well, shall we say, harder to convince. Hate to say it, but I know where the spouse will be most of the time. When a thought comes into an author's brain, nothing else matters. If the house was burning down, I'd grab my hard drive and my disk before anything else. (Oh, guess I'd wake up my family too.) Speaking of waking up the family, that darn electronic rooster just went off. I mean it really sounds like a rooster. "It's six-forty-five a.m. . . erh, ahERRRRRR!, erh, ahERRRRRRH! It's six-forty-five a.m. . . erh, ahERRRRRR!, erh, ahERRRRRRH! Ditto, ditto, ditto. This happens at least sixteen times. Now stuff like this doesn't get to my spouse at all, but somebody's about to die it that alarm doesn't get turned off. He's dressed, getting ready for work, and I'm here at this computer with my overqualified self wondering if I'll ever be able to sit in Oprah's chair. Just being able to sit on a toilet in Harpo Studios would be a start. Well, there goes my inspiration. There's frost on the car and a bit on my brain. Originally, I was wanting to write about what it would be like to be a body part as opposed to a whole person. Just lay there this morning wondering what it would be like to be a big toe. Or a little toe for that matter. Which makes me wonder, “Why is it we never hear tell of anyone stubbing toes number two, three, and four? Just the big fat one and that vestigial piece of a little toe. And when you smack either one of them on the end of a coffee table leg or the edge of a door in the middle of the night trying to find your way to the bathroom, it inspires you to come with a whole new vocabulary. Well, better being born a toe I suppose than being the hand of a proctologist. . See these are the kinds of thought that happen when I get interrupted. Having prayed with my spouse before he goes off to educate the world, I grab my water bottle, take a swig, scratch my head, and look at the clock. It's now 7:13 a.m. And I doubt if anything much happened in my brain today that the Pulitzer committee would deem worthy of a prize. So much for inspiration this particular morning. I'd best just go on back to sleep.