What a week ...

Last week was a roller coaster of happy and sad days.

I got to go with my daughter's fifth grade class on a field trip to the Hoover Dam. (Boulder Dam for us natives) It was tons of fun, except for the heatstroke. Kidding ... but only slightly.
July is not the ideal time of year to drive 45 minutes (each way) in a school bus with iffy air conditioning and crammed chock-full of sweaty kids and a handful of chaperones.

During the tour of the Dam, I obsessively counted the kids in my group about every 30 seconds. Unfortunately, by the end of the trip my brain was broiled from the heat, and trying to keep an eye on all 6 of the kidlets didn't help much.

By the afternoon, I noticed I wasn't even speaking complete sentences any more, I just kept mumbling under my breath ... repeating my day-long mantra ... one, two, three, four, five, six ...

But I'm much better now.

We went and saw the new Harry Potter movie Wednesday night, and then on Saturday we went bowling. I bowled a 150 in my first game ... and then my luck or skill or whatever that was went directly down the toilet. But it was a blast.
On Sunday, with the sore muscles not yet recovered from bowling, my hubby and I spent a few hours moving furniture and cleaning the family room to make way for the HUGE big-screen t.v. that my dad gave to us. We cannot wait for football season ... whoo-hoo!

Spoiled, yes. Unappreciative, absolutely NOT!!

The saddest part of our week was the passing of a very close friend's father. He was an amazing person with a memorable life and even though I only met him a few times I liked him very much. I think my sadness comes from my friend being far away, back where she grew up, and I can't do anything for her. All I can do is send her text messages or emails letting her know we are thinking of her and miss her. I don't want to call and bother her - she has way too much on her plate right now. But she'll be coming home soon and for that I am very happy.

O.K. ... now that I've done my warm-up and flexed my creative muscles I am ready to go write for a while. I got blocked this weekend and it almost killed me. I had just plotted myself into a corner and couldn't turn around. The story arc had gotten off kilter and I was lost. By the evening, I got so desperate I asked my hubby to "shake me like a rag doll and knock the words loose." Luckily - he didn't take me up on it. His casual reply was "It's no fun if you give me permission."

(And yes, those are direct quotes. I wrote them down right away. Writers are scavengers ... we're always collecting words, sentences, conversations.)

So I laughed, and stopped worrying about the block. And wouldn't you know it ... a few hours later the solution popped into my head from nowhere.

He gets me. What a lucky girl I am.