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Monday, July 5, 2010

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? 

15 comments:

  1. CHICKENS!!! I want to be doing something with my chickens up to and including weighing them and picking one out to eat. However, in the event that I wandered outside with the scale and a box I'd remember I wanted to find the sandpaper to work on the spark plug belonging to the lawnmower with which I nearly removed my right arm (by pulling uselessly for DAYS). I would no sooner have sandpaper in hand then I'd be admiring my rider mower that starts with a whisper and I'd be about to climb on board when I'd remember that the keys are on the kitchen window sill for a REASON. I might pull up some weeds in the front yard although mostly I refuse to admit to having a front yard and then I might start digging a random hole in the event that I want to put a fence post in exactly that spot randomly and build a random fence around it (has happened before) and I'd wonder what the hell I did with the kitchen scale, wander back upstairs for the last Italian ice and then stare at the laundry some more, the other computer (for letter word beginning with w and ending with K) which REALLY needs to be booted up and, uh worked with before 9 tomorrow morning and the whole cycle starts over again. Now where IS that kitchen scale? And you thought it was just you. Hot flashes. Been having them for years but am not out of the woods yet and probably won't be for another five or six years. Hot flash in a Bikram room is, uh, stunning.

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  2. Alecto, we're so very much alike. If I even leave this room right now to go pee, I'll end up cleaning the bathroom, sorting my nail polish, carrying the wastebasket downstairs, doing dishes......yep.

    And I still envy you your chickens. Have you picked the one to eat yet?

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  3. That's funny. We have to stop our oldest from going into judge and jury mode. She's 7 years older than the middle child. And try as she might, she can't help but verbally beat them down for any misstep. But they are 4 and (almost) 2. So this happens a lot.

    I say all of that but in a few months she gets to start baby sitting her siblings. So we are going to have to tell her to turn that switch back on when we are not there. That's a small price to pay for a little mommy and daddy freedom!

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  4. I want to know if you're PG or not. That would be my nightmare.

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  6. Dang I wish I had that cleaning gene that you have. But I have made it a goal to rid something from this house everyday.

    The words will come when you are ready.

    I hope you had a good weekend.

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  7. Maybe your brain needs to be distracted today to be focused tomorrow. that's my theory.

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  8. We've always said our daughter should be a lawyer for the same reasons you said :)

    I find the Internet distracting to the point of addiction. Forcibly unplugging is a great way to reconnect with people in your life (although the Internet lets you connect with people you've never met, LOL!)

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  9. Some freaking kid who I've never seen before outside my bedroom window @ 1;30 am blowing off fireworks. His chatter w a friend & the fireworks were stirring up the neighbors dog, so we had a combo of intermittent explosions & then a period of barking.
    I get the who 4th of July pyromaniac thing, I do.
    But all the razzle dazzle explosions carried on from dusk to 11 or 12.... now it was the next day & we want to sleep.

    I saw the kid coming towards my house, middle of the street & finally said Hey! Dude you need to stop. My neighbors across the street w the dog piped up too-- double teaming him... we are trying to sleep & you are upsetting to dog-- stop it!
    I don;t know where this kid came from or why his parents let him roam the streets @ 1:30 am.... but I wanted to kick his ass.

    All week there have been blasts of fireworks going off.... last night not one explosion.

    A few nights ago someone lit off an M80 with a boom so big we must have jumped 7 inches off the bed.

    Anyway, as much as I have a bit of a pyromaniac in me, I am glad to have some peace & quiet back.

    If we don't get our sleep, we get cranky!

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  10. Preggers?!!? It wasn't me!!

    Just the thought of heat is distracting me. The temperature outside is 70. In the breezeway outside my windows, it's 80. My little apartment is 76, in spite of three fans going. And the sun just hit the breezeway, so I expect high 90s inside today. Tomorrow will be worse. :-(

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  11. Forgive my comment full of non sequiturs, it is just that I am having trouble concentrating on my thoughts and I can't come up with a transitional phrase to save my life:
    1.For a second I thought you were going to tell us you were pregnant.
    2. I can only write with the blinds shut.
    3. I do have a thing for George Clooney.
    4. I am distracted by all that I have to do this week and what happened this weekend.

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  12. People--they do it all the time too!

    ;~)

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  13. I get distracted by t.v. all the time...lately my obsession has been the show "Obsessed." I LOVE that show. :)

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  14. not only is this damned internet distracting....I'm actually starting to get some sort of weird pain in my right hand from clicking. I need to go find out what that might be...on the internet...I should be done in about...3 hours

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  15. YOU are distracting me. Been catching up. ;)

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