I Started Something

I am having difficulty concentrating today.

At first I thought it was because of that high-pitched sound coming from the water pipes as MathMan hoses down the garden, but I don't think that's the only thing penetrating the armor of my brain right now.  I'm also hot.  As in Is This What a Hot Flash Feels Like? hot.

But then no.  Because I realize my heat (I don't want to write hotness here because I really don't want you to misunderstand my meaning) is a result of the weather and the fact that we've got our a/c set high to conserve energy.  Plus I won't shut my blinds because I read somewhere that having lots of natural light is essential to a writer's ability to concentrate.

Which brings me back to my lack thereof.  It could be this heartburn which feels frighteningly like seventh month pregnancy heartburn.  (Pauses, looks down at tummy that just won't shrink the way Jorge Cruise promised it would, ponders the possibilities.)  Oh, dear lord, no.  No emphatically NO. That could not be possible.  My interuterine jewelry is firmly in place, is it not?  I am forty-four years old and besides, I haven't felt any kicking.  Well, except that bit of marital violence that happens when MathMan takes up the middle of the bed and returns fire with his knee after I announce with my heel to his calf that he's crossed into the Green Zone.

It's impossible.  That's just belly fat.  And red wine and chocolate heartburn.  It has to be.

Having another child is unthinkable at this stage in my life.  You all know I'm done being  a parent already.  Just last night I thought I might just turn this all over to Sophie right now.  You should have seen her grilling her siblings about their recent forays into things I thought (perhaps hoped) they would never try.  If she doesn't make it on the stage (as is her wish, not mine), she has all the makings of a great litigator (which sounds an awful lot like alligator to me this morning).  She wasn't going to let them off the witness stand (lawn chairs, really) until she'd heard and dissected every last salacious detail regarding their teenage hijinks.

I just sat back and watched them wither under her cross examinations.  All I can say is that when she's a teen and trying out her own experiments, she'd better hope they've forgotten the sanctimony, the gasps, the requests to know more.

At some point, I decided I should call time on her badgering of the witnesses.  I adjusted my horsehair wig and reminded her that there would come a time when neither I nor her father would be around to protect her from her siblings.  She sat back, pursed her lips and then very daintily noted that she didn't care.  She'd have a big dog to protect her.

For their own parts, the older two didn't move to kill the prosecuting obnoxious little sister.  They even humored her, toyed with her a little.  And when it was all over, they told her to expect her teen years to be hell.  They'd see to it.

Gosh, I love family time.

But I was telling you about concentration.  It's true, I was lost, unable to string together the words for the scene I'm writing in the manuscript.  So I did what I always do.  Laundry.  Picked fleas off a cat and squeezed them between my fingernails until they died.  The fleas, not the cats.  Although lately......

When domesticity failed me, I turned to my one true love.  The internet.  The internet never fails me.  It entertains with no added fat or calories.  The most it may ask of me is my email address, but I've got that covered.  My fake address is a veritable gold mine of snake oil ads and penis enhancement offers.  Finally, I saw this link posted by MathMan and laughed at how on target it was concerning my own issues.  Except, I don't have a thing for George Clooney.

And now I look again at the clock and realize that the words written here could have been in the manuscript.  It wouldn't have made a lick of sense there, mind you, but I would be that much closer to my word count goal for the day.

What's distracting you?