Sunday Morning Snapshot

My husband usually gets out of bed before I do on Sunday mornings. I hear the slam of the screen door as he walks out to the driveway to fetch The New York Times. He shuffles around in the kitchen, and says, "Okay, okay," to our two cats, who are getting underfoot and meowing at him. I snuggle deeper into the mattress. He loads up the measuring cup with dry food and dumps it into their bowls.

I call from the bedroom: "Coffee! Coffee!"

"Okay, okay," he says. He makes two pots of expresso--mine with steamed milk, his black. I move onto the living room couch (under the blue duvet you see in the photo). He reads to me from the Times--essays, book reviews, sometimes news stories. We talk about what's happening in the world and about what he has just read: does the writing work?

He reheats my now-tepid coffee. I read some more of the paper to myself.

I stumble off the couch and into the kitchen to make him a cheese omelet and me some toast.

Some days we take a walk after breakfast before getting to work. Today I'm walking alone because he's tearing his office up looking for a lost gadget.

What do you do on Sunday mornings?

Breaking Up The Old Patterns

After a workshop the other day, a woman approached me. We had made a list of 5 things we're grateful for as part of the session's closing--I like this as a send-off.

The woman told me she keeps a gratitude journal by her bed. Every night before she goes to sleep, she records 5 things she's grateful for and writes five more on waking up in the morning. She says this activity has changed her life--made her so much happier and more aware.

Another woman came up and told me she has a 27-year-old son with aspergers disorder. He lives on his own finally but can't work and has time management issues. She said she gets so tired of hearing his same stories over and over again--it's a huge stressor for her. She had written about this in the workshop. But she wanted to tell me that she and her son have started exchanging emails, writing to each other about what brings them each joy. This has helped him break out of his ritualized stories that she has heard over and over again.

Note from the Week

Here's a prompt from workshops this week that brought out all sorts of truths and odd anecdotes and revelations:

"Rules I Live By"

Try it and see where you go.

Are You Writing?

Today's Writer's Almanac tells us that Augusten Burroughs, Running With Scissors, was born today. He stated the obvious, the truth some writers--count me in--have to hear over and over again:

"The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work."

The kitchen timer ticks. I am in my office--alone, locked away. And this is writing time. Is posting to my blog writing? I'll think about that later. Meanwhile, I'll reset the timer.

It's On: the Countdown

I am going to finish a draft of a book this November. Here's how.

Note: NaNoWriMo can work for NONFICTION writers too.

Back to School List

Prompt: Make a list of supplies you needed for school. Lists can evoke a lot, in so few words.

List:

A new pen, yellow number 2 pencils, and a clean pink eraser.

A new sealed bag of 100 sheets of ruled white paper.

A new small metal pencil sharpener if I'd lost last year's.

New colorful subject dividers for my gray-blue linen-covered three ring notebook.

A new box of sticking three ring hole reinforcers--they looked like Lifesavers but tasted bad.

A new zipper-opening soft plastic pencil case with three holes--it fit neatly in the front of the three ring notebook. (I loved the pinging noise the metal rings made when I opened them.)

New white Keds for gym days. (They smelled like rubber.)

Two pairs of white anklets. (They smelled like starch and bleach.)

A new royal blue gym suit with bloomers. (Did we buy those or rent them from the school each year?)

It was a first

Writing Prompt: The first time I . . .

For the first time in my life, I have looked at a puppy and said, "No, I won't take it home with me."

Here is a picture of the puppy, a papillon I visited in a pet store in Narragansett, Rhode Island. She is a 14-week-old female.



She is adorable and probably good-natured, but I've fallen in love on this vacation with another dog, Roo, who belongs to my friend Jessie. He too is a papillon--and the cutest, smartest, most mythological-looking and fascinating little dog I have ever seen.

Roo fetches tennis balls from the pond, snuggles in my lap, has the cutest trot and little ears that stand up straight--hence the name, papillon. I want him or a dog very much like him. In French papillon means butterfly; the erect ears look like butterfly wings.

Butterflies are highly symbolic for me.

Until this trip, I had sworn off more dogs--I've had enough. But now. hmmm. Roo is pure joy. Who wouldn't want that?

Meet Roo:



My husband Bill said, "I've never seen my wife-- who claims she's just 'going to take a look at a dog'-- not come home with it. And we'd have to fly this one home with us."

He sighed, resigned, knowing he would eventually love any pet that came into the house. He looked at the puppy then waited outside the pet store, wondering what I would do.

But this female I saw yesterday simply did not grab me. Her ears don't stand up, for one thing. We didn't connect. I walked outside.

"Surprise," I said. "I don't have a puppy with me."

Don't think, however, that I haven't contacted a papillon breeder in North Carolina. I have.

But it was a first for me, the first time I ever said no to a dog.