Here’s a story about something that happened to me in Charleston and it happened just tonight: I tried to write and I couldn’t.

Of course, trying to write wasn’t what I did first.  I took the kids to see the Princess Bride, stopped at the store on the way home, fixed dinner (bagged Caesar salad, a smorgasbord of frozen pizza, and pie for dessert- it’s Merry Monday, after all), did laundry, washed dishes, put the kids to bed and then sat down with my laptop.

I opened a blank Word document and set about writing what I had intended as a piece about the impermanent nature of things. (Look for it on Thursday.) But, just in case there was any last minute inspiration to be found, I headed on over to the Facebook.  I thought I’d just check in and out every few minutes- you know- how I do.  But, when I checked it there were a bunch of people talking about the Princess Bride which featured prominently into the piece I was getting ready to write.  And, everyone was so witty. 

Oh, no! What if, by the time I posted my piece to the blog, people were totally over reading about how everyone LOVES the Princess Bride?  What if my post were already irrelevant before it had even been written?  And, why take paragraphs to write stuff that could probably be summed up in a Twitter-length?

(An aside: did I just coin a new term there?  A Twitter-length?  A unit of measure… like a league or something? Should I submit that to Urban Dictionary?)

Anyway, I became distracted. Fearful.  STUCK.

“I need something,” I said to my boyfriend Chet.  “Like, make something up that we can do that’s fun when I’m done writing in about 45 minutes.”

“A reward, you mean?”

“Yeah, but what’s that thing you always say?  Like, when we have to do chores around the house?  What do you call it?”

He paused.  “A carrot, you mean?  Like, you need me to dangle a carrot?”

“YES- that’s it!  I like when you say that.  It always reminds me of this fabric poster-y thing I used to have in my room when I was little.”  And then… “I wonder if I could find a picture of that on the Internet.”

Which is how I spent the next twenty minutes:  conducting Google image searches for “seventies fabric wall hanging rabbit carrot” and “fabric poster bunny carrot string”.  Mostly, I got a lot of ideas for Easter crafts, plus some adorable photographs of actual rabbits, and several images of half-naked or scantily clad women.  (I would’ve guessed that I might come across a Playboy Bunny or two, but- no- these were just random topless women, which I guess is a staple of any web search, anywhere, ever.)

“Maybe I need to write my story out by hand,” I said.

“Yeah, I think you’re getting distracted by the Internet.  You write on paper and I’ll see if I can find the rabbit thing.” 

Chet took the laptop from me and I grabbed a legal pad and pen, stacked them on top of my clean, but unfolded laundry and started up the stairs.

But before I could get very far: “Found it!” my hero exclaimed from the other room. 

How is that even possible?  I’m usually the only one that finds anything around this house! Well, it turns out that it sort of really was me who found it, if you count the fact that I suggested changing “seventies” to “vintage” wall hanging.

Sure enough, there it was listed on eBay for $18 and with free shipping, at that- a piece of my childhood for under twenty bucks!  I reminisced over his shoulder for a minute, silently debating whether to buy the thing using PayPal (which I guess I’ve decided is a form of play money based on the way I throw it around), but ultimately I resumed my long, lonely march upstairs to my doom. 

I mean “writing”- “to my writing.”

Seriously.  How can something I say I want to do- something that (when it works) is so fulfilling- be so goddamned hard?

Settled into my bed, I began crafting my story again, coming at it from one angle and then another, occasionally pausing to remind myself that my very favorite President (after FDR), one Mr. William Jefferson Clinton, wrote his entire book My Life longhand.  Certainly, I could churn out one lousy blog post this way.  (Save for some sporadic journaling and my even more sporadic Morning Pages, I usually write on a computer.)  I just hoped my hand wouldn’t cramp up.

About five minutes and two complete sentences in, I heard a muffled sob from across the hall.  I threw down my paper and  went to check on my little girl, who was sitting up in her bed.

“I can’t sleep,” she cried.  “Didn’t you get my text?”

(Oh, what, Internet?  So, we text in the house sometimes, so what? My grandparents’ house on Virginia Street used to have an intercom system.  There’ s no difference.)

Anyway, my daughter has been texting me from her dad’s when she can’t doze off.  And, even here, I’ve noticed it takes her longer to get to sleep lately.  I’m worried about her.  But, tonight, I smoothed her hair back off her forehead, opened my Kindle, and played her the theme song from the Princess Bride. She had loved the movie earlier in the evening and this seemed to settle her in for a good night’s sleep.

Child soothed, and hopeful to finally get this thing written, I climbed back in bed with my trusty medium-point Bic and my legal pad.

“Is that the original version of that song?” Chet, who had since come to bed, asked looking up from his game of Angry Birds.

“It’s a live version, but it’s the same guy.  Willie Deville,” I reply.

“But, did Mark Knopfler write it?  Because he did the music for the movie.”

Now, I’m confused.  I look up from my writing.  Two more words down on paper.  I’m really flying through this thing. 

“Well, right, but doesn’t that just mean that he picked the music out and stuff?  Like, you know, how Danny Elfman or T. Bone Burnett does all the time?” 

I mean… I think I’m right on this.  But, just in case he doubts me and also because I’m not totally sure about it, I decide to Google.  Thanks be to God for the Google.  I know I have something to do- some writing to get done or something, but I just really need to know if Mark Knopfler wrote the music in the Princess Bride, or just coordinated it, or whatever.  But, this particular Google search (“Mark Knopfler Princess Bride”) was cut short at “Mark Knopfler Pr” because before I could finish, Google suggested this: Mark Knopfler Prank Calls. 

Why on earth would Mark Knopfler be making prank calls and to whom?!

I could go on for a while about the rabbit hole that Mark Knopfler’s prank calls became for me, but suffice it to say that I didn’t get back to writing until I had listened to several very angry people trying to figure out why (a totally American-sounding) Mark Knopfler would be screwing with them over the phone.

Which brings us up to speed.  Or, would have just about brought us up to speed, had I not had to type all of this after writing it out on paper.  So, I guess, we’re not so much “up to speed” as “twenty minutes behind”.  But, you get the idea: we’re almost here.

Yes, here I lie (but, only not really, since I am typing the words- sitting up- that I wrote out in cursive about, oh, twenty minutes ago)… here I lie, struggling to write about something that’s happened to me here in the big city, only to find that I can’t even make it out of my own head.

“Does this ever happen to you?” I ask Chet.  (Or, asked him, when he was awake and not snoring, which is not now, but was then.) 

Chet is an artist.  He paints, he sculpts, he draws. (Sometimes nude women, which I don’t care for, but I digress.)

“Do you ever start to paint, but instead of it being fun, it feels like someone’s shoving bamboo shoots under your fingernails?”

He looks at me again and says, “Well, sure I do, you know that. Sometimes it’s really hard to even get started.”

“What do you do about it?” I beg, demand, beseech, ask.

And, though I know that he’s already focused again on his Stupid Zombies game, he throws out the one thing I need to hear more than anything: “Sometimes you just do something shitty.”

So, that’s my (shitty) story and I’m sticking to it.  I’d better be working hard tomorrow while you’re all over at Esse Diem so you’ll have something better from me on Thursday.  In the meantime, laissez bon temps roulez!