Someone (you know who you are) expressed frustration at my lack of recent blog posts.  To humor said person, here is a wordy post.  Next time, maybe you should specify what you want me to write about.

Once upon a time, there lived a fruit fly named Maybelle.  You might wonder how a fruit fly came to be named Maybelle.  Well, this is how it happened.

Maybelle’s mother, Fizzoula, ran out of fruit-fly-appropriate names by the time Maybelle finished going through metamorphosis.  That’s naturally when a fruit fly is named, you know.  Fizzoula had a very, very large family of fruit fly children, and she was just plumb tired.  After running across a cow named Maybelle a day earlier, it was the only name she could think of to save her life.  Which it didn’t.  Fizzoula died of natural causes soon after the naming of Maybelle.

And that was the sad start to Maybelle’s adult life.  Every time someone called out to Maybelle, other flies would look around, wondering where in the world the cow could be.  It wasn’t Maybelle’s dream life, to be sure.  All she wanted was to be like the other fruit flies and live out her days inconspicuously.

Then one day Maybelle found herself flying over a field outside of her normal corner of the world.  She didn’t remember how she got there–probably took a wrong turn while she was thinking about all of the names she would rather have.  It happened sometimes.  But while flying over this particular field, she saw actual cows.

There weren’t any cows where Maybelle usually traveled.  The presence of the cows isn’t what caught Maybelle off guard though.  The real surprise was that she didn’t feel any animosity towards them.  For the first time in days, she didn’t feel animosity towards her mother, either.

Her mother’s tiredness at the end of her life didn’t seem so important, and neither did all of the taunts she had to endure at fruit fly school and fruit fly socials.  She was proud to be associated with these giant, furry animals.  They looked nice, and they looked like they would make an agreeable resting spot for a fruit fly far from home.  And they did.

From that day on, Maybelle made a point of getting lost in the general direction of the cow pasture.  She visited her cows and thought happy thoughts about where her name came from and how she was glad to be just a little bit different from all of the other fruit flies.  When her own fruit fly children finished metamorphosis, she named them all after cows, too.  She told them her own story and her mother’s, and they were proud of sticking out from the crowd.

The end.

See what happens when I’m forced to write and I don’t have anything to say?  Fruit flies live out entirely improbable (more like impossible) stories along with cows and sickly mothers and bad names.  All I can say is that I’m really glad my parents decided to name me Hannah instead of Gertruda or Brunhilda.  I would have to move to Germany to live that down.