November.
In Denver there is sunshine and crunchy leaves. We have candy for breakfast and hot tea in thick mugs at night. Tomorrow we celebrate 13 years of marriage with dinner in a renowned restaurant. I will see a friends play and watch Oliver eat pizza to celebrate the end of his brother’s soccer season. We will canvass to get out the vote and watch the election returns with popcorn on the big bed. Still the kids tumble past blooming roses wearing shorts to school but soon there will be sweaters.
We will host a close friend on a stop of her families’ year long road trip. We will take them to museums and parks and bakeries. We will issue humble brags about how we have one car. We will head to LA to battle traffic and be tourists. Steve will have a work trip and the boys and I will eat dinner with our fingers while reading Harry Potter. When it is the four of us their will be games in front of the fire. We dig our toes into the white sand of the Gulf of Mexico and brave Thanksgiving airport misery to visit my mom and her siblings for turkey and pifecta in NYC. We will go to Central Park and hunt Pokemon. When we get home we will only have a thin wisp of November left. Not really much at all. Just enough to squeeze in a lunch outdoors where 95% of our conversation is expressing amazement about the Denver weather.
November…It looks good, it sounds good, it even smells good…it just doesn’t deliver good work time.
It’s early to write off a whole month of writing but I think I am up for the challenge. I am going to be too busy. Things are going to be too fragmented. I am going to host and guest and fly and drive. I am going to meet and eat and probably something like greet as well. Whatever these things are they will get in the way of my mornings with my computer. I know they will.
I am telling myself that my life is too full to write but I have a sneaking suspicion that writing has left me before I left it.
Steve has tinnitus. The ringing in his ears is a result of hearing loss. His brain is missing out on sounds, so it creates its own. He says it sucks. This is what my brain is doing as well. Where I usually have opening sentences and strands of quotes that I can grab hold of and ride to some sort of story I instead have PTSA websites and grocery lists. It is my own version of ringing, and it too is pretty damn annoying.
November is telling me No. Or I am telling November no. Neither of us are admitting that the words left before the calendar changed.
It is easier to blame the on No-vember.
You might not see me around here for a while. I will be in California and Florida and New York. I will be in the middle school cafeteria. I will be ringing doorbells and building websites. I will being doing everything except writing.
See you in December. I hear that is a great month for words.
