#224 - Mother's Day and Assignment Day

We were jolted out of bed at nine-thirty when kiddo #2 burst into the room with a tray of eggs and bacon for Robyn. A lovely Mother’s Day treat. If she was still stuffed from last night’s meal, she still put on a good showing of finishing most of the meal.

If it had come an hour later it would have been perfect, but we can’t discourage these acts of kindness from an eighteen-year-old. They are normally prone to selfishness, and it’s great to see thoughtfulness in this budding young man.

We spent the morning in bed relaxing and watching Netflix’s “Man on Fire,” which is an action thriller and did a good job f keeping us entertained. There are plenty of action scenes a la Jason Bourne or Jack Ryan, and I think it’s a wonderful addition to that category of characters.

I took a break and fetched myself a chicken Caesar wrap our friends gave to us on Friday. It hit the spot for lunch. By 3 p.m. we had watched the entire series, and it was time for me to get up and do some writing.

But doing some writing meant I first looked around the garden and inspected all the fresh shoots and blooms, as well as picking dandelion heads so they wouldn’t turn into seed pods and further infect our grass. The plants all looked unmolested by squirrels and skunks as far as I could tell.

In the front, the Mount Tacoma tulips look like they are just about to burst open with their frilly white peony-like blooms. The chicken wire fence has done a good job in protecting them this year from rabbits and skunks taking bites out them and quashing their premature growth.

This might be the first year they all get to bloom naturally.

I took my laptop outside to do a writing session. It’s a little bit cool outside, but when the sun is out, it is marvelous. And with the back canopy up and covering the deck, it’s my favourite part of the house and I space I really enjoy writing in. It will get even better after next weekend when the weather gets warmer and we get all the deck planters filled with colourful flowers.

There is a massive silver birch in the back center of our backyard that provides a great deal of privacy from the neighbours directly behind us, so it’s great to see the leaves appearing on the branches. I think our neighbours like the fact that it is there as well, giving them the same sense of privacy.

I set myself up outside with my computer and a drink and played a quick game of chess to keep my daily streak going. I quickly realized that my laptop screen terribly needed a cleaning, as the sun shining on it was interfering with the smudges to make it almost unreadable. A quick jaunt upstairs and I had a microfiber cloth to get things back to the way they should have been.

I grabbed a blanket as well to keep the chilly breeze off my legs and extend the amount of time I’d be able to stay outside and write.

I started this blog as a warmup to writing my assignment today. It’s good to get the fingers moving a bit before you start in on the work. It’s an old writer’s trick that seems to work.

But now it’s time to get on that assignment, and I’ll return here later to write more if there is time. These assignments always seem to take me until three AM, no matter what time I start them.

Back in a bit.

Well, it’s nine thirty, and it has taken me all this time to really get into my story. I figure out what the gist of the main through line is, and I needed to do a little research to refresh my memory of my old hometown, a house friend lived in with his girlfriend, and all the other important things in the late nineteen eighties period.

Things like popular songs, movies, books, toys, and international events. Who was in government and what countries was the US mad at? And then there is all the other news items of the day like AIDS, global warming and Atkins dieting. And all those neon clothes!

Turns out there was a lot going on, but way less than there is in a week with Trump in the Oval Office. The eighties look quite modern in respect to the here and now.

But this new assignment has been giving me trouble for weeks, so it feels great to have it moving along. The first-person viewpoint, set in my hometown in the time I went to high school, really made it hard for me to write something fictional. I kept making about something in my life that happened at school.

And that would have made for a boring story!

Turns out I am borrowing a bit from my real life to write this. The location is one my friends from back home would all recognize. The event never happened, at least not like it will in the story, but maybe we all wished it would have. Hard to know, because I haven’t even got through the story’s opening yet. I can already tell it’s going to be a bit off-the-cuff and a little humorous.

At least I hope it will read that way.

One thing I know for sure is that I am going to be up very late again tonight.

Robyn tried out the double batch of Chicken Ruby, and it passed the wife test with flying colours. I feel like if I make a double batch I’ll do it in two pots to make sure I get all the ratios right. Sometimes when I double a recipe, I mess up some amounts. Seems like I got away with it this time, though.

I moved the writing back indoors to the recliner in Kiddo #1’s room. It was getting a bit too chilly for me out there, and I was down to thirty percent on my laptop battery.

The writing continued with a few breaks to get a drink and stretch the legs. I took a fifteen-minute nap around eleven forty-five to recharge the batteries.

The story I am writing has a bit more humor in it that normal.

I typically don’t write in first person either, and that is a bit of a new thing for me. Not something I am enjoying at the moment, but a skill I need to expand on.

Overall, it the story turned out alright, I mean it’s not going to win any awards. Any practice is good for my learning of the craft.

I’m going to spend the next forty-five minutes going through it to see if I added in enough setting and sensory details related to the time period and location.

It was set in June 1988 in my hometown of St. Catharines, and the setting was a home my oldest friend rented with his girlfriend in the early nineties. It was fun to revisit the old place where we made some glorious memories.

But my assignment has been sent, and it’s three AM, and I need to go to bed.

Night all!