Stilettos, Stoli & Scribbles ~ Served With A Twist

Good morning! It’s Monday and we all deserve a little musical interlude.  Don’t you just love that song? I have a soft spot for several versions, especially Chet Baker’s, but my new fave is Leslie Odom Jr.’s* spin on this old standard.  It popped into my head last evening while kicking at little piles of the titular stuff along the block from my apartment to a friend’s for Sunday dinner.  Though still unseasonably warm, at least it looks a lot like fall is supposed to look.

Not my neighborhood

Perhaps if the weather would cooperate I could finally finish my closets. No, I’m not going to bore you with that story again except to say that my bedroom still looks like an Indiana trailer park in the aftermath of a category 5 tornado. (I can say that because I grew up in Indiana and even lived through a tornado, albeit not in a trailer park.) It’ll get done eventually.

Since returning from the retreat last week, I’ve been having trouble getting back into the swing of daily life. My circadian rhythms are off. I want a Bloody Mary at 11am and a dirty martini promptly at 5pm. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is, according to the people who keep me gainfully employed. Do we live in a civilized society or don’t we?

That looks about right

And where are the puppies? Last week I had two puppies to greet me as I came down the stairs every morning. No human has ever been that excited to see me. Not face-lickingly excited, at any rate.

Fergus and his little sister Sophie in the car. They love the car.

Oh well, it’s really just a case of PRB – Post Retreat Blues. It’s a common phenomenon, though it goes by many names, suffered by friends separated by geography, only able to get together for short, intense and far too infrequent visits.  The symptoms of the malady may manifest themselves differently, but for me, I start to miss my girlies about thirty seconds after the final hug and wave goodbye and will miss them more fiercely each day until we see each other again.

That’s why it’s so important to plan the next get-together before the last one ends. It really does help to ameliorate the condition. We have not only done that, but in the meantime, we have got shit to do! As K.R. told you on Saturday, we have entered a new phase in the life of our first novel (Eden’s Fall) and have made plans for books two (Winter’s Thaw) and three (Venus Rising) that will require shoulders to the wheel, noses to the grindstone, fingers at the keys etc etc etc.  Woo hoo! Let’s get this party started, ain’t no stoppin’ us now, and all that jazz! Just talking about it gets me excited.

We are much better writers than Snoopy

You see, it happened my friends, just as I had hoped that it would. I have gotten my creative batteries recharged, my mojo is back and I am raring to go. I hope I can sustain this level of enthusiasm. To that end I’m going to start leaving myself little motivational tools stuck to every surface in my apartment, including, but not limited to, a big block wall calendar to keep our dates straight. If I have to look at a note on the bathroom mirror that shouts, “Hey you! Why aren’t you writing?” then the answer better be “because I’m already late for work!” (Yes, I will say that out loud. We writers are eccentric types and we talk to ourselves.)

But, if I’m on a roll, climbing Mt. Laundry can wait.

* newly-minted Tony Award winner for his role as Aaron Burr in “Hamilton”. I can’t wait until this show comes to Boston!