Dough Boy Blues

Funny, the things on which we become fixated ...

I am currently in a co-dependent relationship with my computer (actually, I need him far more than he needs me), searching for freelance writing jobs, scanning endless blogs, writers' forums, etc., etc., etc. Have you seen the new John Cusack movie, 1408? At one point, the main character looks at that little hotel map posted on the back of the door, and finds that suddenly his room is the only one marked, smack in the center of a vast space of inky blackness. That's how I feel sending queries, resumes, writing samples, into the seemingly endless abyss that constitutes the writers' market.

My computer and I are becoming unnaturally close. He may be all I've got.

Then again, it could be worse. On a jaunt to some downtown antique shops yesterday, in what I'd planned as nothing more than a momentary diversion, my son ran across a six-inch tall rubber Pillsbury Dough Boy. This became the center of his world. He's 10. Go figure.

Since I'm broke, I declined to pay the $4, and he spent the next several hours wallowing in dispair over the injustice I had perpetrated. "But Mom," he said, "it's a 30th anniversary Dough Boy."

This morning I woke up, checked my e-mail and found this, courtesy of my enterprising offspring: The Dancin Doughboy. I found this to be quite funny.

By the end of the day, I probably still won't have a job, but he may just be one dough boy richer.