⚡ March 18, 2014
Summer Day Sing Along 🌻
Summer day, kicking the clouds away. Or was it sunny day, keeping the clouds away? I was a mom with laundry to get done when that song was on and I never bothered to learn what the real words were. I was going to hear it again. Tomorrow. Any. Way.
Slam the dryer door. It won’t stay closed, otherwise. We – the dryer and I – designed it that way so that the family would take some door-slamming in stride. It – the family – would also learn to walk on the side of the stairs nearest the wall because I was using the other side of the steps to the attic for alphabetizing my flattened boxes for refunds.
And I am just now realizing, as I enter a new week of unemployment, that I sort of naturally tend to write in a more creative form – call it the next novel, if you will, when I am left to my own devices. Suddenly, this is all that matters. Not lunch or breakfast, not cleaning up or running errands – just this. Blissful writing about what really matters and is true at this moment.
But I have written so much already! What should I do with it all? I keep buttons and lids and oh so many things, so of course I’ve carefully kept every word I’ve ever written. Well-published or not.
A collector is only as good as his organizational skills. If you can’t find it, you don’t really own it. So I’m wondering what I should do with all the novels and such that I’ve already written. I haven’t actually completed all the steps necessary if they will ever be seen or read. Some of the steps are quite steep and grueling, let me tell you, as one who has climbed all of them up and down and more than once.
But here’s the secret to success: Beware of the subtle steps, the ones that are just slightly off by an almost imperceptible hairs-breadth – those are the ones that will trip you up, of course. Missed opportunities and unreturned voice mail and those troublesome gypsy curses. And once you’ve tripped in full view of your audience, it’s then awfully easy to pretend to fall off the ladder of success altogether.
In order to take a breather, you know. Gather one’s thoughts in private. In reality, I got off because I had to stop defending my place on my rung if I were ever to write another book.
So here we are, today, and I wanted to put up some prose to let you know that I am working away and will one day have things to sell again. I have to do that, or I won’t be able to eat. Literally. We get serious when our food is threatened. In other words: When you get fired, you get worried. When you get worried, you start to imagine the worst. When you’ve imagined the worst, you start to think it’s real. And then you start making plans.
In Mafia movies, it’s called “going to the mattresses,” a phrase I just love. Even when our circumstances are dire, we do get to throw this fun phrase around, and we know what we mean. I’ll bet each one of our four kids know this phrase because they must have overheard our nervous parental laughter.
When they detected that certain sound in their parents’ voices, their hearing turned supersonic and they could pick out our words in spite of the crystal-thin sound screen weaving out of the TV and blanketing the room. They were webbed to the TV, and we thought that was just fine. Electronic babysitter: thank you very much. The kids are just fine.
Sadly, they are now hooked on shows about people with special powers while the laundry continues to pile up on Gaia Prime. So for now, another pretty picture while I get back to work. I am creating a startup, composed of the elements at the bottom of every page here. I am learning to program it in Ruby, so watch out! Fireworks will ensue. My stories will fly free! But first, I must alphabetize them! 🐔
From My 1970s Scrapbook of Family Fun Times
