Ne’er Do Well Friday Round-Up

It’s only four o’clock and we’ve declared it cocktail hour. This decision came about because it’s 70 and very sunny on the back porch right now but is only going to be 50 tomorrow. So there is rum and coke and Dot’s pretzels, which, if you don’t know Dot’s, this pandemic must be agony for you. Same goes with not having a decent porch.

We scored two carved wooden lawn chairs and an adorable little wood table that some folks down the street put out for the junk man. I used to go curb shopping, as we call it, quite often, once finding two amazingly nice sofas which, with the help of my then teenage sons, we were able to cram into the back of an SUV. My husband was always mortified by this, taking somebody’s thrown-away stuff, apparently thinking it was low-class. But he seems to have gotten over that.

In the short story I’m writing, the protagonist, whose name is Eleanor, is stuck in a parking lot and I can’t figure out how to get her out. I took a free online fiction writing class through the public library (Gale Classes – a lot of libraries have them) and it was excellent. I learned about stories having three acts, and also about story construction: hook, backstory, trigger, crisis, struggle, epiphany, plan, climax, and ending. It is amazing writing fun to build this story – and, yes, I will get her out of the parking lot, probably tonight.

I miss meal prep an awful lot. I miss the single mindedness of it – how to make a decent dinner for sixty or eighty homeless people without breaking the bank. I miss all the pots on the stove, the oven humming, the Nesco steaming on the counter. But it’s like a lot of things that I miss right now- I think about how glad I am that I did them when I had the chance. That goes for rides on the 7-Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys and watching my California grandsons play T-ball. I’m glad I didn’t wait.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is this: want what you have, otherwise, the yearning will ruin your day. This doesn’t mean to live without goals and dreams, it means don’t live in your goals and dreams. Live now or, as my mother would say, bloom where you’re planted. Never has that been more useful advice than right here, right now.