About last night

Last night was bizarre. I met a small group downtown to review a few pieces of writing. A couple of us planned to attend the spring workshop reading at Grubstreet afterward. A friend of mine dared me to read a flash fiction piece and after a few beers, both of us decided to go for it.

The reading went really well. It was amazing actually. Afterwards our instructor lavished us with praise and I experienced some sort of literary euphoria. Smiling, tingly, and a little sweaty. Like a first kiss. But before I could really soak that in, a man approached me.

I didn't quite put it together at first, but he was someone I'd met awhile back. He was trying to start a writing group near my house. He turned out to be a little aggressive, alienated the entire group (12 or so people dropped out, more than half before our first meeting), and had his meetup group officially removed, twice. Red flags all around. I was starting a new class at Grub, so I politely told him that I couldn't work it out.

Except he showed up at the reading. It felt like he hung out a while near the elevators, so I'd have to talk to him. It was weird because while the thing is technically open to the public, usually the event is just for people who've taken a class that session. He followed us outside and then proceeded to chat us up on the sidewalk for awhile. Puffing away, asking about the classes, commenting on the readings, etc. I urged him to take the novel class and extracted myself. He'd likely take the same train as me, so I left with a friend and waited it out at a nearby bar, we needed to go over some things anyway. He's probably a harmless enough guy, he owns a business near my house and has for many years. Still. Not sure if that will be the end of the story.

So finally I head for the trains and they are all late. I am waiting and waiting, texting the sitter. I get on a train and it stops twice. Lights out, no explanation. At one point the train expresses to the final stop and I have to get off and catch another train. By this time, my sitter is not going to make her train home, so I call her a cab before I even get there. Cab, sitter, killing time at the bar, I've spent a small fortune on this evening.

She leaves and texts me to say that the cab got pulled over. I stay up to wait for her and Little Guy wakes up with a nightmare. It is now past 1 AM and I am downstairs when I hear his feet hit the floor. He runs to my bedroom looking for me, but of course, I am still awake and in the kitchen. I head up there, walk him back to his bed and he says, "Mommy can you just be in your bed now?"

So it was one hell of a night, both awesome and weird, but he was right, at that point I really just needed to be in my bed.

Lockdown

Girlie came home yesterday and mentioned that there had been a lockdown at her school. She told me this over lunch and only after I asked how her day had been, a good twenty minutes after she arrived.

Apparently, the bank down the street had been robbed and the guy escaped on foot into the neighborhood. While no one at the bank saw a weapon, the man said that he had one. The school is less than a mile from my house, and just a block from the bank, so the police contacted the school and the staff was told to issue a lockdown. The doors were locked, blinds pulled, and the kids had to sit along the wall, away from the doors.

I asked Girlie how it all went down. She said the principal made the announcement over the intercom system, stating that the request was not a drill. She said her teachers were very calm and the students had been quiet and orderly. She said she wasn't really scared.

At the end of the story she shrugged and said "It's not like anything could happen."

I ate my sandwich and let her believe that.

Motivation

There is this little nook at the top of my stairs where I fantasize that my desk will be when I am a "real writer." You know, when both kids are in school all day and I sit down to write my second best selling novel. Right now, I have a dresser in that spot, because we need the extra storage and also because the nook is next to the bedrooms and I could never get any work done up there in the wee hours while the kids are sleeping.

I like to imagine that the kids really hold back my creativity, that I'd be such an amazing writer if they were a little older or I was a little younger.

The truth is, given an entire day with no interruptions, I'd probably squander it. As it stands, I get more passionate, more motivated, in some ways, because there is so little time to do it. I have to make it happen.

And because, let's face it, this is all I've got going on right now.

Need some A's and Z's

Starting the week exhausted. Had my dear friend in for the weekend and it looks like I might be too old to even get away with a few days of good clean (relatively) fun.

The laundry is sky high and my writing is in the ditch.

I think I will stick with the laundry.

Mother Writer

Yesterday I spent the afternoon making homemade spaghetti sauce. We planned to celebrate Girlie's 9th birthday with cupcakes and presents after dinner and she asked for spaghetti, so I wanted it to be special.

It had already been a busy day. It had also been one of those days. Little Guy was literally hanging on me every second. Laundry was getting washed but not folded. The dishwasher was full of clean dishes, but not unloaded, so the new dirties were stacking up. I had only just wrapped Girlie's presents minutes before she got home from school. Hubs texted me that he had to work late, so he'd only arrive just as dinner was ready. There were emails to answer, an assignment for a class I am taking that is still, even now, incomplete.

When Hubs came home and asked how my day had been, I almost said, "Fine, but there's some woman killing chickens in our basement."

What I meant was that my laptop was sitting down there, with a story half baked, one that had been burning in my head for the day. But it was one of those days. So the story sat half written, just at the part where the woman picked up the first chicken.

Such is the life of a mother-writer. Lots of stops and starts, and squeezing it in. Heaps of neglect of either the writing or the family. Or both.

So now I have to get back to that woman. I hope I can remember why she's killing the chickens. Maybe she was thinking about dinner?

Or maybe that was just me.