Days off are a little horrible. Just a little. I’ll often have a plan: go to coffee shop, edit writing, buy face wash from Trader Joe’s. And then I’ll sit down and the only thing I want to do is watch a movie which I don’t really want to do. What I really want to do is nothing and watching a movie is, in my brain, kinda like doing nothing. Another option is thumbing through Pinterest which actually has a tad bit of productivity laced into it, right? I mean, you see all these things you could do. Possibility is productivity.

Lies.

Instead of watching a movie (because I don’t even know what movie to watch and by the time I figure that out, I could have written a great book), and instead of Pinterest-ing, I’m here, writing. It’s good exercise. This habit of connecting words in a row, of trying to be interesting, of linking a bit of humor with a bit of “this is my life”…it’s good. It’s rehearsal. It’s practice. It’s like what my husband and I did yesterday, he on piano and me with my voice. It’s a little painful to watch. We should really tune the piano and keep our kids from banging the life out of it in their renditions of “ABC”…but they’re really cute.

It’s only after practice that you know what you need to work on.

I need to stop belting (is that how you spell it?) out notes, but that’s what happens when I don’t practice–I live in the an all-or-nothing zone, hurt my vocal chords, and bring nothing creative to the moment. I should also read more so that I don’t have Google simple word spellings.

As a kid, I’d sit at the piano and pray, “Dear Jesus, may (coz I have British and KJV roots) today be the day that my fingers just know what to do!” And they wouldn’t. Another miracle denied. If only Jesus realized that this miracle would make me a sunbeam.

It’s minutes to 11am. This means the day is basically over. Either I head to TJ’s now or I get to helping my husband clean the house. Folks are coming over later. To rehearse.

How bizarre.