WRITER’S RETREAT!

Oh, that’s long over now. ‘Tis a distant dream. T’was  2 1/4-ish days of nothing-but-revising, surrounded by foliage, sculpture/fountains and wild bunnies with super white tails. Sequestered in a simple room of my own with a nun’s bed, I emerged only for meditative walks and meals with writers and illustrators also thrilled with their sparsely furnished accommodations and nunnery beds– we could have been staying at any Four Seasons, anywhere. Seriously. That’s how overjoyed we were to write for a weekend.

I returned home to find several six-packs of glass beer bottles in the gutter before my walkway ( I had to remove them before I could park in front of my own house on my own sweet, leafy street) and an empty plastic bottle of Cuervo in our hedge. Nice! Rather than litter in front of their own house, the teens across the street dumped everything on our side of the street. Did they think they were hiding the bottles from mom and dad? Did they think they were convincing their parents that the neighbors–responsible parents of an 8 year old boy–had gone on a drinking binge? The mind boggles. Thanks, kids!

I entered the house to find our elderly cat had barfed: on the master bedroom duvet and peed: in a container in my son’s room filled with Lego people, on the kitchen rug and on the doggie bed in the living room. Thanks, cat! I love him, but the more rugs and beds he ruins as senility takes over, the more frequently I utter this: Go to the light, it’s okay, just goooo to the light.

As soon as gutters and the cat’s messes were cleaned up, my husband and son and our dogs returned. They’d been away for the weekend, too, visiting family. I thought I had an hour before their arrival, one last blissful moment in time to continue the revision I’d made such progress on, but I was too busy cleaning. My son threw himself at me, declared love and devotion and hunger pangs. My husband thanked me for cleaning. The dogs rejoiced to have everyone together again. I let the writer’s retreat go and enjoyed my family, starting by pulling up photos of the wild bunnies on my iPhone, thrilling my son.

Sacked out–on freshly washed bedding.

Update: the intensity of the write-fest has stayed with me. I’ve been working. Working! Working. Lovely! Here I go again, back to revision. Shhhhhhhhh….

Bunnies!