I’m still not telling you about my various cross-country trips to retrieve my RV. Maybe I should. Or maybe I should take the story, tone it down a bit in the interest of believability, and pretend it’s fiction. Or maybe I should take a nap? Plus, I’m hungry.
[Incidentally, I’m posting this from a Roy Rogers over lunch.]
Anyway.
The RV is now parked in West Virginia. It’s conveniently placed a few minutes from the Hollywood Casino & Racetrack in Charles Town, just in case I feel the urge to play some poker. But I think I’ll do something else instead.
See…writing has been difficult-to-impossible lately. The ex-foster kid (Paul) came back to us, and we pulled our daughter (Brigit) out of dangerous-crazy-woman daycare. And I don’t do well with interruptions, or even the plausibility of interruption. My theory, FWIW: I’m not good enough at writing yet. I don’t have a trained-to-the-finger-bones competence that lets me carry on whilst my brain is yanked otherwhere. Maybe next year.
OTOH I’ve always been a serial obsessionist. Not only my best work, but nearly all my work, has actually been accomplished when I could grab some time to dive into a project and be left alone. I can produce more in a week, if left to myself, than I can manage during several months of normal social interaction. Is it that I really need the brain-space? Is it that I deprive myself of excuses? Is it just that I’m an ass? Whatever: until I get the time to myself, I don’t get work done. So should I embrace this “reality”? Or should I keep trying to change it?
Either way: now I’m in the RV, while my family is about 75 miles away. I have food. I have no internet access. Everything should be good, right?
Only it’s not, quite. Paul is (quite suddenly, and we learned this right after paying for a month for me at the RV) leaving us again…looks like he’s going to be a father. Brigit has been doing well at home—she’s proud of being “three and three-quarters” years old now, and has little patience with kid stuff.
Up till now, Paul has been helping her/us a lot (once convinced to get out of bed, of a morning). He got B to learn to spell several new words by promising to dye his hair pink if she managed it—turned out the store didn’t have pink, but the red is eye-catching. We paid him to watch her during the days, and made sure he had plenty of access to the DC Metro system so they could hit their museums & such. (B likes dinosaurs a lot, but art is okay too.)
But now…more-generic daycare for Brigit? Ick. I hope we find something better. She’s pretty independent and I think unschooling will work well for her in the long run, but she still needs friends. And…I can’t write when she’s around.
I have today, Thursday & part of Friday to get something done on The Secret. Which, if it turns out to matter, is my working title for my next book. Then I’ll be with family for the weekend, Paul will leave on Monday, and I’ll be taking care of Brigit by myself until we find somebody. Ideally someone who homeschools his/her own kids, so she can just fit in. She had that once, and it worked really well. Ideally it’d be either near Harpers Ferry, WV or in downtown Silver Spring, MD. Though Rockville would work too. No matter what, it won’t be one of those daycare factories. She’ll be in someone’s home, or she’ll stay with me.
I’ll let you know how my three days work out.
Be First to Comment