Can anyone say autobiographical? It really was more amusing than frustrating (although the mentioned sibling wasn't as impressed or fascinated as I).
Sometimes she would wake in the middle of the night and struggle to see the moon, but between reluctant lids she could see only snatches of the Hunter and maybe the twisted tree outside of the window silhouetted in silver. Sometimes the moon, but few times and far between wells of dark and fitful sleep detestable for the interference in a matter far more important because it was the Full. And then, at other times the Muse held sweet sleep at bay until the early hours of the morning, but never on the Full and always when clouds spread their insulating cloak over the sky and held in heat while keeping out the cold vastness and shivering stars she loved. But those nights it mattered little because in a short red book she scrawled in fevered script, wrapped tightly in a blanket of her own and absorbed in a mind that would not, could not allow sleep. What a nuisance, the Muse.
But She came at other times too, like the quickening from a cookbook hazardously opened in the store and casually perused. The cookbook, and the Muse, came home in a brown paper bag and then refused to sit on a shelf but had to be dog-eared and Post-It Noted, and finally, Lady forbid on a school night (and the week before midterms, goodness), reopened after an emergency trip to the grocery store and bothered. The little red book, the saucepan and pepper. Harrumph, what difference did it make? Neither would let her alone and both provided a lovely, intoxicating sense of fulfillment and joy (in spite of the glowering school books unopened, un-dog-eared and un-Post-It Noted).
Hmmm, yes, angel food cake. Fitting, perhaps, and delicious (but with some sense of duty to the parents who paid tuition she deigned to buy the cake and simply create the sauce), but what of the garnish? With taste paramount and appearance always second (she had never mastered it, and generally the plate looked sloppily assembled and slightly sad in its neglected appearance as she cut neither orchids nor even herbs to spruce it nor spice it) garnish became a necessity. And what but chocolate to keep to the theme? Bittersweet (and what do you mean, her siblings enjoyed it? They must be kidding, she thought, befuddled. Or flattering.) and dark, already cut, shaved, knocked about, gnawed on…
Who would have anticipated the nuisance of grating it? It leapt and jumped about, escaping the Tupperware she desperately attempted to contain it in. It had a certain, obnoxious affinity for the counter and an odd attachment to her slowly browning fingers (and what about the béchamel sauce? How in that obscure Holy Cow's name—Nundi, really, she tended to attribute an exclamation to him every once in a while drawing raised eyebrows from the less informed, did it turn out so well when it defied the recipe so obstinately? And did anyone know just how hard it was to find a two-pound eggplant? Really. How impractical—and then the lady in the store said it didn't really matter when she knew it really did but finally gave in because though the display was aesthetically pleasing, for pity's sake, how did one conceivably root around to find the perfect hue of purple in the perfect globular mass because really vegetable shopping based itself upon the hunt, not upon picking the topmost plant and giving a satisfied, well I've found it. Harrumph again. She'd have a vegetable garden on a sunny patch of shaded land one day and the problems would be over—because having chickens for years and then planting eggplants in that ground later had proved three-pounders did exist. Pity they had let the grass grow up—the eggplants had been better appreciated).
In the elapsed time the problem had not solved itself, although a fine layer of chocolate dust was raising itself all about the plastic (comparably less within). With a sigh she continued grating and grating until she might have enough (as aforementioned, her specialty did not focus on garnish, but on taste), and just then a little sibling had to come along and peer over the counter and ask what the chocolate was for and she tilted the container to contemplate the shavings along with curious eyes and, lo and behold, Holy Nundi and Shiva be blessed! Her hard work for naught as chocolate shavings inexplicably charged by an excitable force (probably the self-same Muse who apparently delights in mischief now and again to keep things lively because, frankly, existing from the beginning of Time is quite a job) leapt out of the container to join their companions on the counter. Holy. Nundi. Really.
That it should not happen inanimate things begin transforming themselves into grasshoppers (which do not jump mountains according to some beliefs, but apparently jump Tupperware containers) briefly crossed her mind, but she attributed it to the strange creatures that enter the circle of thought under the direction of the Muse. Why not? More carefully this time, she tipped the container again, and, accordingly more tentatively, the minute, brown grasshoppers thumped into the sides of the containers with barely audible plunks. Huh. Put it down with exploding pea soup that drips from the ceiling and leaves a stain after blowing the thermos apart with the force of a bullet. Put it down with the béchamel sauce that, who would have thought, did not follow the directions, rebelled in the face of the all-powerful William Sonoma and still came out looking and smelling like alfredo (but with only 1 milk—someone at sometime in the past possessed ingenuity and genius). And please put chocolate down as a relative of the Mexican jumping bean (or, more probably, merely a result of convergent evolution—see, she was studying for the biology midterm, as, though chocolate and Mexican jumping beans may have been acquainted in the distant past as apparently they shared geography of some sort, their only apparent relation is a permanent jitteriness that for one must originate from caffeine and from the other, perhaps, a beanstalk awaiting its chance for golden Grimm glory).