The Life Imagined

In my "What Is Your Faction?" blog, I promised to follow up on comments that I made in it in future blogs.  I covered the "Mom's Night Out" comment in my last blog. . . in this one, I'll explain why I think I was so grumpy that day. Besides the fact that they're famous American authors, what do Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Zora Neale Hurston have in common?  All three of them wrote what most would deem now great American novels ( Moby Dick , The Great Gatsby , and Their Eyes Were Watching God ) that didn't sell all that well during their lifetimes but were rediscovered later and became widely praised and often studied classics.  I was never sadistic enough as an English teacher to assign more than an excerpt of  Moby Dick - most print versions are over 500 pages - but I did teach and love the other two.  And I always found it sad that those authors poured so much of themselves into what they felt was a great accomplishment. . . and f...

This afternoon, I'm getting some WiFi writing time while my mom is at the dentist in Martinez.  Not surprisingly, this means I'm sitting at Starbucks and sipping a cinnamon dolce latte as I type away on the laptop. . . I've concluded that my best place for creativity is Starbucks and that my best time for creativity is between midnight and 2:00 A. M.  (That's part of the reason that I'm trying my best to finish The Best of Times , the follow-up to Time and Tide , before school and pre-7:30 departure times re-enter my life in a few weeks.)  I'm doing this without any sense of guilt whatsoever this afternoon because I'm being a dutiful daughter on this trip away from home and kids.  Other trips when I'm out just for a mom's day or night out?  Not so much. I mentioned in my last blog that I'd clarify later why I think I'm avoiding the movie Mom's Night Out :  for me, there's really no such thing.  Even though I do breathe that deep sig...

I woke up in a profoundly grumpy mood this morning.  Okay, to be fair, I don't ever wake up feeling sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows because I'm the antithesis of a morning person, but I usually do become friendlier after I've had time to gain consciousness.  This morning, though, my mood didn't improve as the morning wore on.  I have to admit that I sort of snapped at Claude when he suggested that it might do me good to get out for a little while. . . but then I asked myself, "What do you  do when Claude is showing signs of the grumps?"  Answer?  I sweetly send him off to see a movie and eat wings or something.  Thus, I took him up on his offer and went to Augusta. When I mentioned going to Masters (read: all tickets $2.50) to see a movie, he mentioned Mom's Night Out , but I opted instead for seeing Divergent for a third time.  (I'll save why I think I'm sort of avoiding  Mom's Night Out  for another blog.)  Why, you ask, d...