EW

Ramblings on writing, crafting and life.

I’ve been wanting to do a serious cleanse for months now. After losing money to an Ebay scam (yes yes M..you told me so), I came up with a plan of my own. A kind of amalgam of several books I’ve read recently, it required a lot less of a financial outlay, but a great deal more effort to organize. I start tomorrow. No caffeine, no nicotine, no sugars…and to make matters truly interesting…I’m due to start my period any day now. I think M already has his bags packed.

The goal being to detoxify my system and hopefully give my metabolism a nudge. Ok…maybe less a nudge than a giant kick in the ass. We’ll see how it works.

Well, I navigated to and from Orlando without incident. In fact, the entire lost weekend occurred without incident. I slept…a lot. The first day and a half were spent doing nearly nothing but sleeping. I had known I was running at a deficit, but not that big of one. Save one bubble incident in the jetted tub, my time away was peaceful. I didn’t get nearly as much done on the book as I had hoped/planned, but the time had other pay-offs. And I returned home recharged, inspired and with a new sense of myself and my purpose.

The first day back was a bit of a jolt. Returning to the controlled chaos of my life, stepping back into that dance, I felt clumsy. Mama had two left feet for the first day. One of the most shocking things for me was the noise level. While I was away, I had entire hours of silence. I went over a full day without ever speaking to another person. I walked through the front door and it was like walking into a solid wall of sound. Not LOUD..just..constant. My youngest, my babygirl, saw me and started dancing in place and singing, “Mama..mama mama mama”. She sang my name for a solid ten minutes. Dancing around the house. It was the best greeting I’ve ever gotten.

So now, 36 hours later, I’ve been fully assimilated back into the domestic roll. Almost as if I never left. I came back armed with some major changes to the outline. Changes which make the book far tighter, better. And a renewed excitement about it. Honestly, the book had become the albatross around my neck these past several months. Lots of talk..no damned creation. But the little amount of actual work I managed, plus the outline changes, seem to have completely revitalized my relationship with this novel. I’m jazzed about it again. It may not be War and Peace, but it’s mine. And I believe it’s good.

So call off the guard, I made it. And I came back bearing gifts!

In some kind of miraculous time compression theory. The Day of Friday, last day before the Supreme Vacation Weekend, has managed to take a solid month to pass. Who knew? If I had known I had this ability, imagine what I could have accomplished! I could have written the great American novel in a month. Solved world hunger, ended war, pestilence, and the terrifying return to 80’s style, all in a matter of days!

In all seriousness, this has been the longest, most drag-assed day ever. But I did manage to procure some seriously sybaritic bath salts and votive candles to strew round the bath while I’m pruning. That and a couple bottles of good red, good french press coffee, nothing but comfy clothes and good music, and I’m ready to hit the road.

The road….that’s another issue. I am not known for my sense of direction. (read this as serious understatement) Now, while one would imagine a straight shot up 2 major highways, to one fairly major local road, to be within the reach of even the directionally baffled. I have my concerns. If I haven’t posted in a week. Send out a search party. Instead of Orlando, I may wind up in Canada. Wondering why the hell it’s so cold, and everyone ends their sentences in “eh?”

I am getting to go away for a long weekend. Alone. I’m pretty sure that this would excite anyone. It’s a cool thing. Down time. Time for me to relax, sleep when I want, work on the book without distraction. And theres a jacuzzi tub! But for me, it’s nearly revelatory. I haven’t been alone for more than a few hours at a time, for nearly three years. Yes…count them…three years. I hadn’t realized how badly I was missing that kind of time, till the opportunity sat on the horizon. With it just sitting there like some kind of mirage like tease , I realized how far down I’d had to shut my own time needs, just to be OK with the lack. As if to make never having the wherewithal, i had to completely deny it as possible and ignore it altogether. Now I can’t ignore it. And I’ve found myself short on everything. Patience. Calm. As if by recognizing its existence, I suddenly suffered all the damage that ignoring your own needs time-wise can cause. All at once…in the span of days. Which, not to put too fine a point on it…sucks.

I’ve been trying to decide how much pressure to write I need to be exerting on myself. Part of me wants to allot a few hours a day for sleeping, a few for being in that lovely jetted monstrosity of a tub, and the rest..I feel I should be for writing. The rest of me is firmly in the sloth camp. No shoulds…no pressure…no timeline or anything else that resembles real life. Complete and utter decompression. I just don’t know that if I go the latter route that come Wednesday morning when its time to pack up the car and head back to my life, that I won’t be drowning in guilt for not having given the book its due share of my time.

Perhaps as in all things, moderation is key. Not that I’ve ever been good at that. But…however it ends up working out. I fully intend spending these coming three days/four nights continually pruney!

There are some things that border on being so abysmally stupid , that you wouldn’t really want to share them with anyone unless they really loved you. None of us like to feel foolish, or worse, outright stupid. Perhaps my belief that no one reads this thing allows me to just put this out there. Three weeks, yes count ‘em. Three. Three weeks that I’ve been trying to figure out how to get into my own blog and make a post. Waits for the paroxysms of laughter to die down. I know. Believe me, I’m aware. It only became clear how bad this was when I finally figured out a trick to let me back into the log in page . Well gee whiz brilliant me, there a link RIGHT THERE!!! pffft.

Well. now that I’ve created a level of doubt regarding my ability to safely wield opposable thumbs…At least I’m fairly certain I wont be making that particular error again.