Contemplating...WRITING!

With one kid successfully registered for--gasp--his sophomore year, and one kid to go for registration for--gasp--middle school (tomorrow), and the middle schooler's first day being Friday, my Muse is doing an enthusiastic tango of happiness.

She's been helpfully throwing ideas at me, even though I have one that must be revised and sent out into the world. "So what?" she demands, "The pickin's have been slim lately, and now you're complaining that I'm back from my sojourn in the Bahamas?"

Well, not really. I'm delighted. Except I'm going to have to stop listening to music. This seems to be the Muse's favorite channel of late. Specifically, I'm going to have to stop listening to Richard Marx. Some might wonder why I'd listen to him to begin with, but he recorded one song back in the, um, late 80's? that's been tickling the Muse for years. Decades, even. Finally, just before I headed homeward for the high school reunion and visiting the rellies, a hero demanded I name him, and told me which story was his. Okay. Sure. Let me stop absolutely everything to search for your name, you imaginary man, you. Surrounded by testosterone as I am, I must lodge a mild whinge about imaginary men adding to the Testosterone Sea I live in daily. I mean, really. Drowning, here. Thank God for the cat and the dog---to bad they're never in the mood for a girly shopping trip, and I can't exactly take either one of them to see a chick flick. And, if it weren't enough to have characters demanding I name them, one evening I returned from an outing before my folks got back from DQ with my boys. Locked out, I had no choice but to sit on the nice bench on the front porch, dodging the sprinklers to get there. Before I got out of the car, the Muse says, "Gee, since you're locked out, why not take the MapQuest pages you printed and write while you're waiting for the family to come home?" Guess which whatty I worked on? I managed a whole 6 paragraphs before my brief foray into this "newest" idea came to a screeching halt.

What brought it to a screeching halt? Voices, and not the kind I hear only in my head.

Kid: "There's the van. Where's Mom?" (They'd parked in the driveway, and didn't have a view of the front door from that particular perspective.)

My Mom: "I don't know."

Kid: "There's the car."

Another Kid: "Hi, Mom. Why are you sitting on the porch?"

Mom: "We really need to give you a key."

My Dad: "Hi, kid."

Yet Another Kid: "How long you been sitting there, Mom?"


So. Then, while throwing together tonight's dinner, the Muse pops up again. "Why don't you get out that little page you hand wrote and work on it some? What could it hurt?"

Insert boys doing whatever it is that they do that involves noise, thumping, laughter, more thumping...Upstairs, over my head. Nice. Sure. Also, I have the soundtrack to Grease playing (Grease isn't the word that you heard when applied to what's for dinner here tonight. Maybe another night.). It's really hard to type when, well, your hands want to hand jive, baby.

Then comes the knock on the door that sends the dog into a fit of barking that lasts for half a million years. One kid runs out to play with his friend. The other two go off in their own directions. Then the dog comes back, after some time has elapsed to sit up, her paws on my leg, all the better to stare at me. Seems she's been outside and thinks she needs a good girl treat. Thank heavens there are kids around, so I don't have to, yanno, get up, take 15 or 20 steps to the pantry, and get it for her myself.

Now it's, "Mom, *Grease* has ended. Want me to put in something else?"

Sure. Put in something else. I'll just put a muzzle on the Muse until I can work through my revisions and the two new WIPs with which she's gifted me.