What I'm Doing On My Summer Vacation

Well, I quit my job and I am home for the summer with my trusty dog and other assorted animals including Napoleon the frog and Lloyd Christmas my gerbil (see picture below). Also have an offspring here with me. She hasn't offered to help me clean the place up because I think she has an allergy to cleaning or some kind of evil aversion to cleaning solutions.

Anyway, when you think of me, picture me sitting under that tiny little umbrella on my patio. The green and white one that you can hardly see. I spend a lot of time there. Yesterday I started reading UNLESS, a book I ordered in 2003 because I was hot to read it. Obviously, not THAT hot, but I got to it in less than three full years, so I'm doing good.

I really like this book. I'd call it reflective fiction. I like that style. It's about a woman whose daughter of 19 has taken up sitting on a street corner in Toronto holding a sign that says "GOODNESS". She lives in a shelter, won't come home, won't talk to her parents and I don't know why yet. But the poor mother is reflecting upon her life, and also, of course, the loss of her eldest daughter.

My eldest is nineteen. I can't imagine losing her to a street corner. Or anything else, for that matter.

But what I really like about this book is the whole reflective thing. Not lots of action going on here. The main character is just thinking her way through her days, probably the way I would if my daughter had taken off for a street corner. I think this is the kind of novel I'd like to write next, when I finish the one I haven't touched in 7 months. I may get to it this summer after I'm doing cleaning the house and pruning the yard. That's about 2 more weeks of work and then I can get back to my writing.

I've had a love/hate relationship with writing. I love to write. I hate to have to produce. I hate that I don't write the kind of stuff that sells like M&M's and soda pop on a hot day. You know, flavor of the month stuff. Lots of that out there. But I love it that I write about deep issues that mean something to me. To each his own, I guess.

Anyway, I'm living in my big shirt and my capris. I look like hell. My hands are dirty. The house is looking better. How did I ever let it get this bad? I think it was the 7 years of writing 12 hours a day most days, 7 days a week. I forgot that I had a life. I got that life back last year and now I am catching up.

So think of me.