For nearly 17 years, I’ve been writing columns for various newspapers and now, for this Web site. To the average person – who is several, maybe thousands, of light years ahead of the average freelance journalist – this may seem like an easy task. But I assure you, it is not so easy that a first grader could do it.
But since I’m not smarter than a fifth grader, it does appear that I could be easily replaced by a fourth grader.

Each day, the trouble starts as soon as I get up.
By Viv Sade
My typical freelance, work-at-home day goes something like this:
6 a.m. – Wake up as the hubby and youngest son are leaving for work. I should get up and write a column or a couple of chapters in my Long-Anticipated-Garbage-So-Far-No-Plot-Yet Book.
I roll over and go back to sleep.
7 a.m. – Still early in the day. Could get up and write that column.
7:30 a.m. – I finally get up, but must have coffee before I can breathe. Make a pot and read a magazine while it’s brewing. Can’t write – or even swat at a pesky mosquito that somehow got inside and buzzed around my head all night – without caffeine … it gets the creative juices flowing.
8 a.m. – Sit down at the computer and prepare to be brilliant.
Nothing.
Need more coffee.
10 a.m. - Back at the computer. Got distracted by the pile of dirty laundry and dishes in the sink and ordering the newest luminescent lipstick in pale winter hue rose with real flecks of 24K gold from my Avon lady. Also had to sort the pile of mail into To Be Paid Later, To Be Paid Someday, To Be Paid Before Disconnect and Good Luck Buddy.
Need to write something.
Anything.
Nothing.
Crap.
I surf the Net, typing in a search for “Symptoms of Celiac Disease.” I read it and instantaneously acquire all of the symptoms.
I check out the Celebrity Mug Shot Web site to see who’s been arrested in Hollywood.
I see a link to Plastic Surgery Gone Wrong With Incredible Photos … I spend the next hour looking at people who can’t blink or frown. Some of the E.T.-looking creatures have been permanently disfigured after the silicone they were injected with “moved,” creating moon craters and little Rocky Mountain ranges across their faces.
That reminds me.
I search the Web for “Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, symptoms of …”
Good grief, I have every symptom.
12 noon – My sister calls and wants me to meet her for lunch. Well, I tell her, I should be working, but okay. We gotta eat, right?
3:30 p.m. – Back home. Ran into an old friend at the coffee shop and we sat and talked for hours after my sister left and returned to work. I’m a freelancer. I don’t have to go back to work. Which brings up one of the top cons of freelancing — intense, undiluted poverty.
I have lots of time to go out with friends and family for breakfast, lunch and dinner; I just can’t pay for my meals.
I need to WRITE!
What should I write about?
I search my head – a vast wasteland of bygone mommy memories and useless knowledge like where the condiments are located in the refrigerator.
The mustard is in the door, where it’s been for the past 19 years of your life, I tell my youngest every time he asks.
Nothing.
Nothing.
What is wrong with me?
Oh yeah, I have Celiac disease AND Rocky Mountain spotted fever. How can I possibly be expected to work?
Maybe if I turn on the TV, I’ll get inspired.
5:30 p.m. – Wow. That Real Housewives of Orange County is addictive.
But not a single one washed dishes or did laundry. Real housewives, my @$$.
I flip back and forth between RHOC and Sex Change Hospital and Mystery Diagnosis – where doctors are analyzing a patient who looks a lot like my first puppy, Scamper. Dark tufts of hair cover her face and neck and arms.
I run to the bathroom and examine my face, fiercely plucking any stray hairs.
All of the shows are peppered with lots of those annoying commercials where the Oxi-Clean man yells at me.
I cower in my living room, wondering how the Oxi-moron knows about my spotty carpet and dirty whites. He screams at me to GET RID OF IT! ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Sex Change Hospital shows the transformation of a male to female, a female to male, a straight male to a lesbian female, and a transvestite street walker to a bilingual chimpanzee.
Although I’m very confused, the filmed surgeries are mesmerizing.
At the end of the 30-minute show, the woman on mystery diagnosis is told she has Werewolf Disease. Duh. I had consulted with Web MD, and was way ahead of them.
I take a break and shave my legs.
Crap!
I still need to write something.
I swat at the mosquito, but miss.
Just as I sit down at the computer, I notice it’s time to start thinking of dinner.
I do a quick search for “African Bamboo Hut Lice Disease … symptoms of …”
but I am distracted when seven other diseases crop up with similar symptoms – all of which I have.
Lymphatic filariasis, also known as elephantiasis, is best known from dramatic photos of people with grossly enlarged or swollen arms and legs. The disease is caused by parasitic worms, including Wuchereria bancrofti, Brugia malayi, and B. timori, all transmitted by mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes?!
My legs look larger. I know my butt is. Could they be swollen?
Crap! I don’t have long to live and I still haven’t finished my first book.
Crap! I haven’t even started my first book.
10 p.m. - Was going to do some writing after dinner, but some friends stopped over to play euchre.
I told them I couldn’t drink beer because I may have Celiac disease and/or limp-emphatic-feel-all-our-arses disease. They said no problem because they had brought two bottles of wine.
Could stay up late and write, but the wine has lulled me into that soft, fuzzy and slightly scary place where dreams turn into hallucinations and my black, furry slippers morph into grizzly bear cubs who grin and dance on my toes and sing old Doobie Brother hits in unison.

I shouldn’t have drank the whole bottle.
Crap.
I sit down at the computer and type in a search for “alcohol poisoning, symptoms of …”
I knew it!
Every symptom except death.
I look over my shoulder and around the corner. Yep, there’s death. Lurking.
I shouldn’t be writing – I should be enjoying this time with my family.
I pop some corn and we all sit down to watch a late movie.
I fall asleep halfway through. As the husband rouses me to go to bed, I jump and scream.
Then I remember something else I had seen on the Internet that day when I was self-diagnosing my writer’s block and lack of initiative, and I scream again: “Crap! Crap! Crap! Crap!”
Jumping frenchman disorder: weird reflexes: The main characteristic is that patients are extremely startled by an unexpected noise or sight. It’s not just twitching when someone sneaks up behind you. Patients with this disorder flail their arms, cry out and repeat words. First identified in some of Maine’s lumberjacks of French-Canadian origin, the odd reflex has been identified in other parts of the world, too.
My hubby calms me down and tells me I’m a whack job.
As I fall asleep, I turn into Scarlet O’Hara and whisper, I’ll write tomorrow … at Tara … after all, tomorrow is another day.
(Viv Sade was the recipient of the first place Best General Columnist award from Hoosier State Press Association in December 2007. She hasn’t been out of her slippers since. Web MD diagnoses it as “anottoocute creativitisis crisis.” There is no cure. If she can keep that and the Jumping Frenchman Disorder at bay, her book may be published in 2009.)