Flagging & Fired

I’ve been quiet of late, my creative energy flagging as writing ideas evade me like two consecutive days of decent weather here in Alabama.  The Polar Vortex that dared plague my home state as if it were Minnesota or a Dakota has finally moved on for good, but it’s wet here with temps in the 30’s and 40’s for several hours every day.  I’m ready to get on with the business of complaining about how it’s too hot to move around outside down here.  I need sunshine, people!   I’m not getting sufficient vitamin D for my brain to come up with a grocery list much less the necessary 25,000 words or so left to complete the book I’m supposed to be writing!

There’s another reason for this hideous episode of writer’s block I’ve found myself up against.  Brace yourselves.  Little Sister has fired me from the job I loved so much!

After LS and my brother-in-law sold their business recently, LS decided that she could no longer afford to pay me copious amounts of money to fetch her lunch and pretend to pore over sales reports while secretly writing my blog and a novel or two.  Talk about a creative buzzkill!  (Please note that I am utilizing the literary device of satire here, Mr. or Mrs. Future Employer who may be Googling me as part of an interview process.  I am happy to supply a reference from my sister the Boss, or my aunt the Administrative Director, or my cousin the Operations Manager, or my other cousin the Store Manager.  They’ll all say I’m a fabulous, highly dependable and steadfast worker…or my momma the Consultant will whip them.)

                                                     [PhotoSource:  www.marriedtothesea.com]

I’m finding it difficult to sit in a room all alone at my own home and come up with words to string together in entertaining ways.  I’d much prefer to sit at my mahogany desk, looking at a patch of drywall just to the right of Little Sister’s head while brain storming as she talks to me in that voice all the adult characters in the Charlie Brown cartoon use.  “Wha, wha-wha, wha, wha-wha-wha.”

LS may have put me on the road…with a few tears shed over another Honey Baked Ham Tavern Club sandwich she wouldn’t have spread out before her by her favorite big sister and a generous severance package…but ol’ girl forgot to take my key!  Shazaam!

So, here I sit at my old desk flanked by a wall of windows, the thermostat set at a comfortable 68 degrees as my fingers dance over the keyboard, happy as a pig in the Alabama sunshine.  I’m alone here, too, but every hour or so I call Little Sister and put her on speaker phone and it’s almost as if she’s back down the hall in her own office asking me, “When’s lunch?”   After this post I plan on tackling a couple of chapters of Solomon’s Bell.  I’m back, peeps.  And the lease doesn’t expire until August!