Keeping Marilyn Company

Before the Playfriends left the country, they asked our kind readers to keep me company while they were gone. And you guys have really stepped up to the plate. You've popped in daily to read the travel posts and commented accordingly. A few of you have emailed me offline to say hi.

Lately I've been bemoaning my lack of focus for writing. I have managed to write 13 pages longhand but that's only about 1/3 of what I need for a full story. And that's only the first draft. Then I have to edit and polish and have this ready to submit by July 15. Well, July 9 actually, because I leave for RWA Nationals on July 10. And before then I have to find a dress and figure out which clothes in my closet still actually fit. I need a new pair of comfy black shoes. I did buy some new undies from Victoria's Secret Monday with part of my last check from Dorchester.

So while I've been running around in at least partial chaos, one of our readers took the time to send me this wonderful email with advice on how to deal with some of my problems. Here's what she wrote.

I'm passing this on to you because it definitely works, and we could all use a little more calmness in our lives. By following simple advice heard on the Dr. Phil show, you too can find inner peace. Dr. Phil proclaimed, "The way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started and have never finished." (Note from me: Does the man have a clue about how many unfinished stories I have on my hard drive?????)

So, I looked around my house to see all the things I started and hadn't finished, and before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of merlot, a bottle of white zinfandel, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a bottle of Kahlua, a package of Oreos, the remainder of my old Prozac prescription, the rest of the cheesecake, some Doritos, and a box of chocolates. You have no idea how good I feel right now!

Please pass this on to those whom you think might be in need of inner peace.

How many of you are suffering from unfinished-itis? Let's all take Dr. Phil's advice and tie up those loose ends. Hunt down those unfinished things in your house and git 'r done!

I also got an email from another reader and it reminded me why I am so afraid of snakes. Read on.

Garden Grass Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis)can be dangerous. Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Sweetwater, Texas, had a lot of potted plants. During a recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze. It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one of the plants and when it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud scream.

The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa. He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him on the behind. He thought the snake had bitten him, so he screamed and fell over on the floor. His wife thought he had a heart attack, so she covered him up, told him to lie still and called an ambulance. The attendants rushed in, wouldn't listen to his protests and loaded him on the stretcher and started carrying him out.

About that time the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of thestretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital. The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor man. He volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief. But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa.

The neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to revive her. The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocery store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches. The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed that he had been bitten by the snake.

She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat. By now the police had arrived. They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened over a little green snake. The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife. The little snake again crawled out from under the sofa.

One of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table. The table fell over and the lamp on it shattered and as the bulb broke it started a fire in the drapes. The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog who, startled, jumped out and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car.

Meanwhile, the burning drapes were seen by the neighbors who calledthe fire department. The firemen had started raising the fire truck ladder when they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires and put out the electricity and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area (but they did get the house fire out).

Time passed! Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car, and all was right with their world. A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The wife asked her husband if he thought they should bring in their plants for the night.

That's when he shot her.

What's unfinished in your house? (And I don't mean bottles of wine and boxes of chocolate.) And are you afraid of snakes?

P.S. Many thanks to Carol for the "advice" and to Lis for the snake story. As soon as I read them I knew I'd found my blog topic for today. A nifty Writing Playground pen is headed to each of them way.

P.P.S. Late-breaking news! I went back to a store I visited Monday and I found a dress! Whaddya think? The color doesn't show up well in the photo but it's deep, dark purple and is tea length rather than full length. I have black dressy sandals that I can wear and I think it just screams for diamond jewelry, don't you think?





P.P.P.S. I don't like the title of my story. If you remember, it's about a woman who has a double mastectomy and worries that her husband will leave like her father did when her own mother battled breast cancer many years before. I was calling it "More Than Enough Woman" but that just isn't right.

HELP PM COME UP WITH A TITLE!

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