Why yes, it's true! I AM a huge nerd.

The scene: the doorway of my home office.

The characters: Me, a disheveled mad writer, typing away. Alyssa, a really cool lady who runs a housecleaning service and is an artist (and thus tolerates other artists’ insanity well).

Alyssa: Mind if I move this bucket?

Me: AH! You startled me. Bucket? What bucket? There’s no bucket. Where? 

Calmly, she points to the bucket right in front of me. Which I’ve probably stepped over at least 100 times in the last week.

Alyssa: Is this there for a reason?

Me: *after staring at it for awhile* Maybe? How… can I ever explain to you how little I know about what goes on in my own house? I don’t know who bought that bucket, why they left it here, or what its original purpose was. I’m plain ignorant of the bucket’s history. Its parentage, its likes and dislikes. For all I know, it’s a mysterious artifact abandoned here by an alien race, perhaps as a warning.

Alyssa: Just so you know, I’ve had several conversations with that bucket. Its name is Mortimer.

Me: Mortimer, really?

Alyssa: His father was a standard 5 gallon pail. His mother was one of those bissected construction buckets. 

Me: And does he suffer from short bucket complex?

Alyssa: You seriously need to spend more time mentoring Mortimer.

Me (eyes filling with tears, possibly a result of that new fiber wig mascara I insist on using out of misguided vanity): I’m a terrible bucket stepmother!

*dramatic music plays*

Cheery Female Announcer: If you are odd, and maybe an artist, and you live in Seattle, and your house is kind of a messy hovel because you have been neglecting stray buckets named Mortimer and maybe even worse things… Hire Alyssa.

If you loved (or hated) this post by John Scalzi, you’ll love (or hate) this one by Jim Hines even more.

“For fans of: Ghost stories and Memento, for those who secretly wish Leonard Shelby had used a memory-reviving magic potion instead of tattoos and Polaroids.”