The Hiatus Clock Is Broken

Grandpa used to always say that a broken clock was right twice a day. I said, "What? How can something broken ever be right?" And he pointed out that when a clock is broken the hands are still pointing to a particular time. Say the clock broke when it was 9:40. The hands are going to keep pointing to 9:40. Then on any given day when it is actually 9:40, as it is in the morning and again in the evening, the broken clock will appear to be showing the time. But it's not strictly true that a broken clock has to be right twice a day. Because you could be sneaky, and just before 9:40 you could pull the hands off. Then it'd be broken and never right.

Grandpa certainly knew about broken clocks though. It was funny about the cars we had back when he was around. They always had broken clocks in them. You'd drive a '57 Chevy or a '62 Chevy off the dealer's lot and immediately the clock spring would go BOINNNG and that was it for the clock. I think Detroit had a contract with the county home full of halfwits somewhere to make clocks. The body may have been by Fisher, but the clocks were by Morons. But at least they were still right twice a day, whatever actual use that really is.

Anyway, to this day, I'm always interested when the old car show come to town. I'll be down at the park looking at them. Sometimes the owners think I must be some kind of expert, the way I'm peering inside like I'm really focused. But I tell them, I'm just trying to figure out if the clock in this old car still works. Because I've never seen one that worked. Immediately I know, if it works, that it has to be a replacement.

Well, friends, I've been "driving" this '09 Hiatus for quite a while now. And guess what, the clock must be broken because I've lost track of how long it's been. Must be over two weeks, maybe a month, I really don't know. When I pulled it off the dealer's lot, I didn't know if it'd be a day -- I figured it'd be more than a day, I guess. But as far as I knew it'd be over with in a few days. At that time I still had "friends" and "followers" on the blog and subscribing to my newsletter. And I was pulling in a fairly decent income simply from Google Ads.

But since then, I let the days drift by, I didn't put forth much effort, and everyone basically went away. Where they went, I'm not sure. But there are some competitor blogs I know about -- Grandma Swisher has one -- and they're off adhering and aligning themselves to those imitators. But you know the whole "Grandma" fad started right here at Grandma Slump. But because of my hiatus, as far as everyone's concerned, I've given up, gone by the wayside. They've written me off. It's like I'm AWOL, but this is my business, right? Am I right? Am I really under some obligation to keep everyone else happy?

I don't mind losing a little money if I really do need the time off. Yes, some days I regret the fact that we can't afford the luxuries we had before. That does hurt. Some of the expensive paintings we bought, I had to sell -- at a loss -- just to pay the bills. A lot of my bling I had to pawn. But most of it was just weighing me down and not really doing the trick anyway, because girls kept passing by the house without stopping. It must not really be that appealing, as far as they're concerned, to see a 50+ year-old balding man with his shirt unbuttoned all the way and 75 pounds of bling reflecting everywhere, waving a cane and trying to get them to pull over.

So, that's it. The hiatus clock is broken. Maybe it's already been a year. I don't know. But this is one clock I don't care about. If I sit here and vegetate for the next 15 years or until I die, it's all the same to me. You don't care that I've been putting forth a great effort on the internet or with the newsletter? I don't care either. I still have my back issues. I can reread them myself and enjoy whatever wisdom I was the writer of there for a while. Sometimes I sit and reread my stuff and just shake my head ... Did I really write this great stuff?