Thursday 13 – Version 2.0

Week 2 and I’m already slacking. Hey, as long as it’s done before Friday…am I right? Of course I am. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself. So, here goes.

This week is: Worst Excuses For Not Posting My Thursday 13 On Time

1. “I Was Saving Like, Twenty Infants From A Burning Building.” Seriously. Didn’t you see that on the news today? There was a building…and there was some fire and stuff in it and since I fight fires and save people, I was sort of caught up doing that. Really. I feel awful about posting this so late in the day when no one will read it, but…

2. “A Truck Carring Orange Tic-Tacs Exploded In Front Of My House.” This is totally true. You know how I love Orange Tic-Tics, right? The one-and-a-half calorie breath mint? The ones that tast like Children’s Aspirin? Yes. Those. Well, they were all over my yard and well…delicious.

3. “I Just Got Crazy With The Keyboard And Finished 18 Projects.” You won’t believe it. I had a surge of creative energy and nothing was in my way, so I wrote the entire series of Travis & the Magic Sandbox, Goodhalo and it’s two sequels, like a handful of picture books, and started laying the groundwork for 72 other books. This blog? No time.

4. “Kool-Aid Man Crashed Through The Wall of My House.” It all started with my child drinking a simple glass of Kool-Aid. The next thing I know, I hear ‘Oh Yeah!’ and some big, fat red pitcher of sugar water is coming through the friggin’ wall. I promptly jump-side-kicked his glass behind out the wall and had to do, some, you know…repairs. Lesson? My kid is cut off from Kool-Aid indefinitely.

5. “Aliens Abducted Me…But Like Just For A Few Hours.” You hear about this all the time. People get abducted, and don’t show up again until a week from tomorrow. I got off lucky. These big-headed, beady-eyed little creeps just needed to borrow me for a couple o’ hours. They beamed me up, slapped me around a bit, asked for directions and dropped me off at my neighbors house. Yeah, it would’ve been nice to be dropped off at my house, but I was grateful to get out of there without any sort of probing.

6. “Had To Stop The Mad Genius From Taking Over The World…Again.” I know I might’ve used this excuse before, but it happened again. Dr. Roger Hamburgerstein concocted a giant Melt-O-Ray to turn the entire Western Hemisphere into glass. I had some time before lunch to head over to his deluxe hideout and pull the plug on his operation. Seriously. That’s all I did. I pulled the plug. Powered down. He’ll never figure it out. You’re welcome.

7. “There Was a Ninja Stuck In My Chimney.” You know how those ninjas have been dropping out of the trees and landing on the hood of my car in an attempt to capture me? Well, one of them tried to get cute and come down my chimney. I could hear him in there, weeping softly through his black, hooded mask. With some power tools and my can-do attitude, I was able to extract the foe. I gave him a sandwich, some worldly advice and sent him on his way. Funny thing? I don’t even have a chimney.

8. “Zombies.” You knew this list wasn’t gonna be complete without the living dead making an appearance, did you? Well, if you’re a fan of The Walking Dead (hello, Stan!) then you know that Woodbury is INFESTED with zombies. It’s getting so a fella can’t even sit down at his keyboard and hammer out a rotten list of 13 something-or-others. They’re all holed up outside my house right now, so thankfully I was able to get this list done…even at this late hour.

9. “I Fell Through A Time Portal And Just Got Back Now.” I knew I shouldn’t have been digging around in my backyard without calling the power company. The thing is, I didn’t hit a power line. I unearthed a wormhole in the space-time-fabric-thingy. You know what I mean. Anyway, my shovel and I ended up in the olden days. I had to seriously dig in about 34 different places before I found another time-hole that got me back here. You wouldn’t believe how sore my arms are. Oh, and I left my shovel there.

10. “President Needed Me For A Top-Secret Mission.” The red phone in my basement rung. Yep. It was the President again. I told him to quit calling me, that I’m a very busy man and I don’t have time to be messing around on the phone. I wish I could tell you that I embarked on another mission to save our great nation again, but I didn’t. I was arguing with him for like 8 hours or something. Maybe it was 9. Anyway, a lot of hours.

11. “I Did A Backflip Into A Dumpster And Threw Myself Away.” I’ve always wanted to learn how to do a backflip and land in a refuse bin of some sort. Well, today was the day. Problem was, when I landed in the dumpster, the lid came down on my dumb head. It knocked me unconcious, the garbage truck came and I ended up in the back of there with all the rest of the garbage and filth. I tumbled out into the stinky and stomach-churning debris with only 12 cents and my cell phone. Too bad my cell phone battery was dead. So, yeah. I had to high-tail it outta there. Just got back now. I haven’t even showered yet. I hope you’re happy.

12. “I Caught A Bottle-Rocket In My Eye. That’s Right. My Eye.” If you read my post from yesterday, you’ll see that my brother bought a bunch of fireworks for the 4th o’ July. Well, lo and behold, stupid me…trying to save a kitten from meeting it’s demise on the interstate and my brother slips and fires a bottle rocket into my eye. It exploded, I saved the kitten but lost my eye. Since then, I’ve had a bionic eye installed. It’s pretty sweet. I can read text from like 30 miles away (if I hold still) and I can also shoot fire out of them. It’s handy for things like lighting fireworks and what-not. Oh…

13. “I Took Like A Ridiculous Power Nap.” I’ve been feeling under the weather lately, so I decided to take a nap. I had no idea when I woke up it would be so late in the day and that I hadn’t even thought about doing one of these here Thursday 13 things. Actually, that’s not a bad excuse. Not bad at all. So there. This one’ll have to do.