Harold gulped down the strange breakfast cereal Greta had insisted was his favorite as he studied a row of snow-covered shapes in the backyard. “Where did the flower beds go?” he asked. “Those shrubs weren’t there before the storm.”

Greta’s impatient fingers pulled him away from the frosted window. “Let frozen dogs lie, Harry. You’ll be late for school,” she said, whisking his bowl away and rushing him into the hallway.

“Sleeping,” Harold corrected as he pulled on the strange coat she shoved at him. “I think it’s ‘let sleeping dogs lie.’” He reluctantly shouldered the unfamiliar, well-worn backpack she held out.

Greta shooed him to the front door. “Whatever. Remember, your mother will pick you up this afternoon.”

Harold froze in the open doorway. He might have been mistaken about shrubs or his backpack, but he knew without any doubt that his mother had died when he was six.

---

• That’s right, I used 150 words up there, almost three times the amount I usually prefer for nanofiction. The luxury! The splendor! The almost unimaginable bounty of it all!
• My schedule has been disrupted for a couple of weeks, so my posting schedule has also been weird. Sorry! Stuff keeps happening. (At least we have a new air conditioner! Maybe I will only dwindle to a quivering mass of semi-gelatinous muck next summer instead of fully melting into goo.) I expect to skip this coming Friday, send a post over the weekend, and then get back to regular weekly posts. (Fingers crossed.)
• I’ve been doing a Lynda-Barry-inspired daily journal that includes at least one doodle, and last night’s seems appropriate to share with this tale, though its subject matter was unrelated. (I was thinking about signs with maps, like at the mall or the Arboretum.)

Okay, have a great week!