UNHEARD OF EVENT!
For once not going to work.
This is what I signed up for long ago: a seven-day-a-week writing job. It requires that I always carry a notebook—sometimes several. Typewriters have come along on many vacations. These days it’s a laptop. Much of what I created never made it to print. What did almost always didn’t change my dismal income level. Every now and then people have expressed how nuts it seems to put such monumental effort into something with such a puny prospect of positive return. Perhaps, they hint, it may even have caused my occasional cracks-ups. I can’t imagine my life any other way.
Nevertheless, for the next 10 days, I am going to follow doctor’s orders and finally attempt to take a notebook/laptop-free vacation. It’s been a stressful year, leading into what looks to be calamitous times. Months have been spent doing physically demanding lifting. (Isn’t freshly painted walls and planting a new garden worth it?) Unfortunately, nothing is quite so easy as even two years ago and my mind is completely annoyed that this body is falling apart. They’re both very tired arguing over this.
By the time you read this, my husband and I will be on a plane heading for southern Florida—not my first choice but he has friends there. We will stay part of the time at the house of my husband’s cousins, so it’ll be cheap.
This all means I probably will not have a story for you next Tuesday. You never can tell, though. My husband’s friends are fantastically interesting and generous. I’m insisting on historical side trips even though there doesn’t seem to be many. I’ll be on the look out for roadside food attractions. If you know any, I’d be incredibly grateful if you let me know! Maybe I can just put up photographs. Or, one of my eavesdropping conversation pieces. They’d be a snap.
I’m going to do my best to put down my pen and simply stare at the ocean for awhile. There’s also my husband’s threat to feed me to the alligators if I don’t.
Wish me luck! I’ll try to show up again on March 26.
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You’d be surprised what a good time you can have when you least expect it—take it from one whose epitaph may someday read: “Reluctant Traveler: Had fun anyway!” Do follow doctor’s orders, Pat, but don’t listen to those who tell you the return isn’t worth the effort. It is—just not at the cost of your health.🤗
Relax! And know that your writing is much appreciated!