I haven’t always appreciated my husband’s sense of humor, but yesterday when he left for church, he said, “Hope you feel les miserables.” His play on words evoked the slimmest of grins.

A die-hard morning person, I never go back to bed, but this time, I did—twice. Like a longsuffering parent hearing one too many shrieks from the back seat on a long trip, after five days of toying with a sore throat and aching muscles, my body put on the brakes.

I spend most of the day horizontal. At eleven, I summoned the energy to take a hot Epsom salts bath—they say it helps remove toxins. That wiped me out for another couple of hours, but when I got up to heat a headache pack in the microwave, I noticed tiny, moving dots along the windowsill.

At first I thought I must be seeing things, but on closer inspection, you guessed it—ants. The last I knew, the ant poison sat on the highest shelf in our basement cupboard. No way.

When my knight came home, I mentioned the plague in our kitchen, and heard him descend into the abyss.

“I couldn’t find any poison,” he told me after a while.

“So what did you do?”

“Sprayed ‘em with WD-40.”

“Seriously?”

“It smells bad enough, maybe it’ll kill them.”

When I had an energy surge strong enough to carry me to the kitchen, there sat the telltale blue and yellow can—he hadn’t been joking this time. He had sprayed the stuff, and it did smell lethal.

Epilogue: A couple days later, I’m happy to report that I’m upright. Also, most of the ants have fled. And what does this have to do with writing? It’s all about creativity. We do the best we can, and sometimes we “make do.” My critique partner and I co-wrote a flash fiction piece this week, and it was fun letting the creativity rip.

One of the characters revealed his bad guy skills, and at the last minute, a power woman showed up to show him up. Actually, the denouement turned into a murder, complete with theological overtones.

Ahhhh . . . creativity!