Tuesday I made shepherd’s pie for dinner. It turned into something more like cottage soup in the oven. Don’t know what went wrong. Everything was runny and there’d been an increase in liquids after 40 minutes at 350 degrees. Even my thick layer of mashed potatoes I’d carefully spread on top was thin and sad looking.
After a night in the fridge, the leftovers had become a shepherd’s stew. Mashed potatoes are a great thickener. It’s that very concept that makes my potato soup so creamy. I heated myself up a bowlful of shepherd’s fail stew for lunch yesterday.
did someone upset the kobold?
I was carrying my bowl of shepherd’s fail, hot and steamy and smelling oh so delicious, in my left hand. In my right, I carried a paper plate bearing a warmed pita and a paper towel.
I was almost to my seat. It was mere steps away. Suddenly, I’m falling, falling, falling towards the floor. I can’t say I tripped over something, there was nothing there, not even a cat. I landed hard, taking a blow to both ankle and knee.
My focus was on my lunch. I was looking forward to that delicious lunch. You could say all those years of waitressing that began when I was just 14 years old paid off. I didn’t spill a single bite. What I did do was turn to protect my food.
When I went down, I struck my back on a piece of furniture. I am now bearing bruises across the small of my back all the way down to my coccyx. They spread up the right side of my back to just below my shoulder blade where they then cross my spine on up to my left shoulder. Everything is swollen and sore.
my muse may be a wee bit upset with me
I’ve been avoiding working on Once Upon a Time in Iowa. Afraid that I won’t be able to pick up where I left off when my thyroid knocked me out of commission. Worried that I’ll fail at everything I’ve dreamed for Mary and Jesse. Blocked from writing by everything I know I want to write.
It’s not that my muse has been silent. Oh she’s been screaming at me. Or maybe it’s been the characters. They’ve all been abandoned and neglected by me. It would be perfectly reasonable for somebody to be mad enough to shove me. How else can a ghost get your attention?
wrote myself a prescription
I’m not a doctor, so I suppose it’s a good thing I try to avoid using medication. Also, if I wrote myself a prescription for medicine without a license, there might be a small legality problem. So, I’m writing myself a prescription I have the authority to write. I’m settled in on the couch, laptop in my lap, a little White Collar playing on the tv for background noise.
It feels like maybe I took a tumble to keep me still so I can park myself at my keyboard long enough to get something accomplished. Or, maybe that’s just my need to find a silver lining in things.
Either way, my prescription for a tumble like the one I took is this:
Write. Write. Write. Just sit down at the keyboard, open the Once Upon a Time in Iowa file and WRITE.
Beginning at page one, word one, I am going to reacquaint myself with what I’ve already written, consider tweaking and rewriting what’s already there, and working my way towards those final chapters I’ve been avoiding for far too long.
ShldBWriting 