June is proving to be as busy as May

                At two-o’clock Friday last, my schedule finally cleared. Now I could leisurely read the daily papers that had piled up. I could check blog stats, Facebook, online news-and-opinion as long as I wanted to.

                Keeping me from that retirement ritual was not anything I couldn’t control, but things happened in an odd confluence of events and time. First, was a week’s writers retreat at Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum in Piggott. Then Florida son flew up for the weekend. The extensive, quarterly Calliope poetry column was due. Finally, I was to host the local writers group on Friday last.

                In this case, the hostess gives the guests gifts; those were bought earlier: a flower-motifed clip, a box of Vanilla Honey tea bags and a gel pen, fine point.

The hostess must clean the areas that writers access: living room, from entry through the room, dining room floor and path to the bathroom, plus said bathroom. The work area—the dining room table—must be redressed. The correct-sized table cloth scrounged for, from either the buffet or the linen closet.

                I don’t think I’d be called a slob, but cleaning for company is about the only time I bother. With only the cat as “family” I DO make sure his area is cleaned enough to keep down the odor.

                Our group schedule is to snack first since it’s a mid-morning meeting. I determined in a Facebook conversation with Linda Ann Yarberry Bragg to use my “good” dishes from now on, so I pulled out snack plates and cups, large and small matching bowls to center the two partitioned platters—all in the Dewdrop pattern. Oh, and we had tea.

                At Harvest Foods on Thursday, I’d filled bag after bag with fruit: 4 plums,4 peaches, 2 grapefruit, 4 nectarines, a container of strawberries and 4 Kiwi. At the cheese display, I selected Cheddar cuts, Colby cuts, Provolone, and Muenster slices. I searched for gluten-free crackers, to no avail, but in passing, I spied a package of Simply White Cheddar Cheetos. It was mine! On the back side of the sack, clear down to the last line was: GLUTEN FREE. Hallelujah!

                We got down to the meat of the day: critiquing previously-submitted pieces. Mine was a new incident for the memoir, which I devised at the H-P retreat earlier in the month. Another was Chapter 7 in a novel. A third was a 10-year look-back on the anniversary of the moon landing, and a fourth was a blog post from an earlier time. It was 12:30 when we finished commenting and praising and asking for more.

                We adjourned to Tacos for Life for our meal. Noisy! Full! A queue! But we all enjoyed our selections. Two of us took boxes of uneaten (too much!) food home for later.

                Serendipitously, we were offered a week’s getaway in July, so our next assignment will be due then.

                One member commented, “Why is it so hard to write when you have so much fun doing it?”