Okay then...I'll write.

I'll have you know, writing post-bedtime, by the haze of a glowing    desk lamp, poses a very real and slightly scary, termite hazard.  I'm not entirely sure they are termites, but it's less creepy than several other island alternatives, so we'll stick with termites.

They zip around the 40 watt bulb, smacking against the monitor and desk like ping pong balls.  Termites versus mosquitoes, scoreboard says it's a close match.  Great, all this bug talk, and now my heads itching like I just got a case of the uku's. 

I suppose the battle of the bugs isn't any less distracting than trying to write in the daytime, when my brain is fresh, but my mind displaced.  Instead of termites, I'm up against little people, who like bugs, try to  crawl over my lap and flap against the monitor, too.


And so I wait until this sleepy, but quiet, hour.  The daily brain trickle sucks the thrill or will to say anything worth preservation.  Hence the boring weekly snapshots (that might very well snap the fun out of writing altogether).  I suppose if anything, I write knowing that most of what comes out of my head is deletable.  I'm mostly okay with this; it's part of the craft.  It just happens to be the part that I don't have much time for, but fantisize that someday I might.   

This afternoon I managed to sneak away to the hardware store with, Hibiscus, alone (thanks to my awesome neighbor who let the other two hooligans stay to play).  Wooly in a hardware store, only in my worst nightmares.

It's science project week and we're on the hunt for several key items: duct tape (what's a 3rd grade project without duct tape?), screws, fans, bubble solution.  NASA would be impressed, I'll say that much.

Our hardware store adventures included a jaunt through the knob aisle, where two employees restocked little bits into little bins.  Don't ask me the names of all those bits or bins, guaranteed I couldn't tell you.  Mr. Forget-me-not could vouch for that personal deficiency.

Last night, while discussing the design of the frame that needs to be built to hold the Pulley Bubble Blower project of all projects, I suggested that he just, "screwdrive it."  Think verb, not noun.

"Screwdrive it?" he mocked.  And mocked.  And five minutes later, mocked some more.

So, yeah, me and one of my female-handicapped daughters went to the hardware aisle.  Step aside, people, step aside.  We wriggled our way around a crowded knob aisle, where restocking employees apologized for the roadblock of boxes in our path.  I barely noticed them or their boxes, while standing deep in concentration, trying to find our thing-a-ma-gig.  No need to apologize, I assured them.  I wasn't bothered by the inventory sneeze through the aisle because, and this is a perfectly believable explanation..."I have three kids.  My life is crowed. Most the time, I don't notice that either."  True story, exact quote. 

But then maybe?  Could that be the answer?  I am crowded most of the time, and do actually notice.  Here's the deal: I like, no love, to write.  But lately, I'm just not feeling it.  Creativity, inspiration, the magic spark, whatever it is that fuels my fingers to drum the keyboard, it's on a little hiatus.  Or maybe a sabbatical, I don't know?  Let's call it a sabbatical.  There's comfort in the idea that maybe my  lull, er...I mean, sabbatical, implies smarty-farty research, or at very least some mental R&R.   

While true that I have been reading more, maybe I'm not reading the right things?  Clearly good reading begets good writing.  Yet, something in that magic formula is missing.

Crowded.  I do feel crowded.  I think it's time to clean house, mental and otherwise.  And right now, it's time to turn off the light and tell the termites we'll need a rematch another night.

Always on the grow,