Writing Tips

It's time for lunch, and my baby wants to make her own grilled cheese today. She's young, but she's been watching me cook, helping out here and there. It should be fine. It's just grilled cheese. She needs to learn to do things for herself.

She gets out the cheese and bread, puts on a nice coat of butter, and lights the stove. Frying pan is on the back burner, cool after pancakes this morning. She starts to put her sandwich straight on the burner grate, and I say, "Honey, if you..."

"I can do it, Dad."

"... OK, babe." It's just that the frying pan is right there.

She's seen me heat tortillas or roast peppers right on the grates. That's probably what she's thinking, and she'll remember when it starts to scorch. I mean, the frying pan is right there.

Butter starts to melt & dribble on to the burner. Little flare-ups and some smoke. "Honey,..."

"LET ME DO IT!"

Sigh. I turn on the vent, though. The frying pan is Right There, and she's sure to get it. Soon.

I can tell there's a ring of bread charring in the middle of the cold cheese. She's struggling to work a spatula between the bread and the grill grates. I breathe deeply.

The frying pan is RIGHT fucking THERE!

You wake slowly, feelings seeping through the fuzz of half-consciousness. Cotton mouth. Minor aches so everywhere that they feel like one. Dawn light filters through the Venetians, and your sleep-encrusted eyelids, somehow both dim and harsh at the same time. You groan and roll on to your back. The constant tension in your shoulders from work seems to have gotten worse overnight. Fuck mornings.

You work your eyes open, and lie for a minute, staring at the ceiling. The bland white expanse is broken only by the dust-encrusted fan, and a similarly dust-coated spider web slowly waving in what ever eddy currents are moving through the otherwise still room. You probably should clean more.

It's colder than you expected this morning, must have been a front come though in the night. That just makes it harder to convince your unwilling body to get out of bed. You wilfully ignore the phone amongst the junk on your bedside table - if you start that you won't get up, and then you'll be even later for work than you always are.

You steel yourself, and toss back the heavy covers, feeling the chill bite. You reach for the pyjama pants you'd removed in the night when you overheated, and find the waist band. As you push your foot down the leg, your toe catches in the small hole in the knee, and rips it into a much bigger hole. "Ah fuck," you mutter, frowning. But you don't have anything else to wear right now, so you pull it on anyway, followed by slippers and your hoodie. You look down. Guess you'll have a cold knee this morning.

You put the kettle on, and pause for a minute, staring out at the grey winter morning, then turn and open the door of the fridge for some bread and eggs. Some unpleasant smell wafts out and up your nose, as you bend over. You gag, and rush to grab the eggs and bread, and grab the milk as well. You don't have time to clean now, so may as well minimise your interactions with it.

You throw some bread in the toaster, and chuck the frying pan on the stove and add some oil. While that's heating up, you make a quick tea. Cheap bag, dash of milk. Chuck the milk back in to the fridge as fast as possible, nostrils blocked. You grab an egg and crack it in to the pan, and catch a waft of smoke, just as the toaster pops.

The toast is completely black. You sigh, and check if it's salvageable. Probably. You scrape what you can off over the sink, until last night's dishes look more like your bedroom ceiling fan. Chuck it back on the plate, and grab your tea, which is getting cold, and take a large swig. Too late, you realise that the off-smell in the fridge must have been the milk. You spit the whole mouthful into the sink and stick your mouth under the tap to rinse the foul taste out. You manage to get greasy toast ash on your face and in your hair in the process.

You take a deep breath, and let it out, and turn back to the toast. You grab some butter on a knife, and go to spread it, but you're not concentrating, and the cold butter rips a hole straight through what's left of the toast. You stare daggers at the toast, but the toast does not flinch. And then you realise that you forgot about the egg.

It's burnt. You must have had the heat on too high. You can see black around the edges already, even though the top isn't cooked. You scrabble in the utensil draw for the spatula, and flip the egg. Just a few second should do, over easy. You grab the plate with the mess of toast-butter, and as you go to lift the egg, it sticks and splits, yolk spraying over the frying pan.

"For fuck sake," you growl. Chalky yolk is the worst, and now you can't even separate it from the burnt underside. After a few seconds of enraged glaring, you give up. Grumbling, you scrape the egg in to the bin, along with the toast, and throw everything in the sink.

You look up at the clock. 8:30, and you've still got a 25 minute commute to get to work. Maybe you can at least make a coffee to take with you. You grab the portafilter and jam it in to the grinder, which manages to grind for half a second before the rising whine tells you that the beans are out. You turn to the shelf with the coffee bag, but you can see before you even pick it up that it's empty. The last couple of beans rattle as you throw the bag in the bin.

Fuming, you give up on all semblance of breakfast. Maybe you can grab a muffin and a coffee when you get off the bus. You don't even have time for a shower now, so you just head back to the bedroom and quickly get changed. You stuff your phone in your pocket, guilty eyeing-off the pile of clothes on the floor and your unmade bed. You grab your backpack, and toss your laptop in it, and head out the door.

As the door clicks closed behind you, you pause. With a sinking feeling you slowly reach down to pat your pockets. Empty. You immediately remember seeing your wallet on the table, right next to your keys. Fuck mornings.

Pretty new to this fiction thing. I don't really know if I managed tension here, but there is definitely no satisfying resolution 😅 And it has a frying pan.

I think the thing I most want to work on is actually well resolved endings, so this probably isn't really the right exercise. Fun though. Definitely some elements of "writing is my therapist" in here.