“Don’t tell me not to fly, I simply got to. / If someone takes a spill, it’s me and not you. / Who told you you’re allowed to rain on my parade?” ~ Barbara Streisand singing Don’t Rain on my Parade as Fanny Brice in the musical Funny Girl.
So this morning all my plans got condensed and smooshed into teeny-tiny crumbs too small for a mouse. Sammy’s lovely, furnished basement flooded last night, and the poor dear spent many, many hours with her family containing it. It was muchos sad, and or plans got pushed back an hour. But I completely understood, and in her position, I probably would’ve cancelled, so I waited patiently. This morning, I decided it would be a good plan to try to work on chapter five anyway, so I was feeling good about life. I pretty quickly forgot about the brief lapse of disappointment and continued my day.
I sat down at my desktop. I really like my desktop. It’s a useless piece of crap if you want to actually do anything with it (i.e. games, internet? Slow as a snail) but for writing, it’s ideal. No distractions. I sat, crossed-legged in my office chair and… nothing. I sighed. I spun around in circles. I poked at the keys until eventually (five minutes later) I made a paragraph appear. That was about all I could handle, so I tottered off to check my email on my laptop, and eat a bagel, and play two rounds of Pokemon with my brother, and play two-and-a-half hours of Rock Band. All, naturally, incredibly productive for my writing life.
At 2:30, I left for Keene, arrived at my destination fifteen minutes before I was expected (yeowch), achieved a scoop on delicious, different mango-raspberry sorbet from Friendly’s (Free Ice Cream day for the win). I would like to take this moment to note that I could have had anything on their menu, and I picked sorbet, which is significantly healthier than Mocha Chip or whatever yumminess I usually get.
When I got back to Sammy’s things were still a little chaotic, but I still did get to spend a little time with her. It wasn’t as much as we were expecting, but I really enjoyed it. I brought my typewriter for her to play with and she seemed delighted with it, and I liked to see her that happy so I’m loaning it to her for a week. I trust her. I know it’ll be returned in tip-top shape. Oh yeah. And I got a page of writing done, too. It wasn’t the whole chapter, but it was important progress.
After that, Bryan took me to Panera Bread (yummy!) where I tried both the Cuban Chicken sandwich (not bad, but I’ll stick to my Smokehouse Turkey) and the French Onion soup (delicious). Today was a day of trying new things. We spent some time together and had a delightful evening. I felt very close to him tonight, and that was nice. Sometimes, I step back and ask myself “what the heck am I doing with this moron?” but tonight wasn’t one of those nights. We played half-a-game of Nightmare Before Christmas Monopoly and we sat on the wall beside my driveway and chatted for a while. It was nice.
So today? Today presented me with grumpy friend’s parents, a shortened visit due to water disaster, parental badgerings, heat, a troublesome too-social-for-his-means brother… and I worked through it all, had a great day, and I’m in a fabulous mood. Tomorrow I get to tell Mattie the good news that he’s been waiting for, and you know what? I’m really happy today. When everything tried to go wrong, we all made it go right.
So you know what, life? Don’t rain on my parade. Because I can capture every drop into a great big, shimmering blue swimming pool, splash around, and have a blast. Nothing’s going to keep me down today. It’s a great feeling.