Time, She Does Fly

Yikes - so much for my internal mental promise to write everyday. Of course, said promise might be easier to keep if everyone who shares my house wasn't earnestly trying to liquify my brain. And too much work -- not the good kind that is fulfilling and leads somewhere, but the other kind, the one that pays for the macaroni and cheese and the cap & gown fees and the college applications and the kitty litter. Which of those is most important? Ask Spike - although to the list including kitty litter he would add, "And unlimited cream cheese, and not the stupid bars, but the fancy whipped stuff."

What else? I managed to read a short story. Not write one, mind you, but read one. In the bathtub, in between the cat opening the door -- no doubt looking for cream cheese -- and the 3-year-old following the cat in, asking why I didn't have more toys in the bathtub. You know what I miss? (other than being able to take a 10 minute bath unaccosted) I miss short stories. Why when I was a kid you could go down to Duckwalls and buy a paperback copy of Year's Best Horror Stories off the spinning rack by the cash register for a buck. It was literally like $1.65. Man, I loved those things. The lack of speculative fiction anthologies readily available in any local shop is a sure sign of the decline of civilization.

I am working on a story. I even have the beginning and ending all typed up, but the middle still resides inside my head. I know it all, I even review and revise while I'm chauffering or moving laundry from the washer to the dryer or trying to scrub the spilled maraschino cherry juice off the shelves of the fridge. I just can't seem to sit down in the quiet and finish it off. Maybe becasue there is no quiet, or if there is, it's the dark and lonely hours of the night when I'm too tired or still working to buy that cream cheese. I've been trying to convince myself that I really don't need the 3.25 hours of sleep I'm currently getting a day, but the body rebels.

Anyway, that's my goal for this month, small and timid as it may be, finish that story. We'll see.