Sunday, Sunday. Can’t trust that day

Sunday, November 20, 5:20 p.m. Sunday is the day I get serious about putting a column together for the Wednesday paper. Really serious. Nothing gets in the way of writing a column I’ve been mulling over for a week, sometimes longer. However, if you were to watch me on Sunday, you’d wonder when the H E double-spaced submissions I actually figured on “putting pen to paper.” Believe it or not, I do most of the writing with a pen on paper. So, back to watching me write a column.

This morning I started the day in a bit of a panic, as I do every Sunday when the deadline is looming. I check my email, take my vitamins, drink a glass of grapefruit juice, check Facebook to see if anyone had a more exciting Saturday than I did. I drink a few coffees and read the newspapers while listening to the radio. I check the Weather Network and eat breakfast. I growl at the stupid crossword clues and grumble to LOML about how I’m going to devote the day to the column and nothing else (just in case someone thinks I’ll do something else, like bake cookies or help with the laundry). LOML has heard this before, in fact, he has been part of this every Sunday morning for years. I don’t expect him to comment; he understands how the process works, for me. But, it must be amusing to watch me as I do everything I said I wasn’t going to do and avoid the very thing I should be doing and I call it my “creative process.”

As with every Sunday, I find oodles of interesting fodder in the newspaper. Sunday isn’t usually a big news day in print, but newspapers offer a great perspective of the previous week. By the time I’ve had a second cup of coffee I’ve decided to write about elementary schools banning balls in the school yard because kids have been hurt playing. Indeed. I say, bring the balls to school and leave the bullies at home.

Bullying is a hot topic but I don’t want to mess around with two unrelated issues—balls, and bullies without them. Before I finish the North of 49, I’ve changed my mind several times and decide I’ll address the issue of peanut allergies and the how-theheck did millions of folks, over hundreds of years, manage to eat peanut butter, in all its permutations, without risking their lives? What’s that all about? North of 49 gives me some thinking space and by the time I’ve decided to peek at LOML’s answer to 62 down, I’ve also decided to pass on idiots-running-schools and related issues. I’m afraid I have a hard-wired-opinion of how the world became so delicate. I don’t remember peanut allergies when I was a kid. We did have lots of bullies and injuries on the playground, though.

I move from the breakfast table to the online news and sadly note the troubles in the Middle East don’t ever seem to go away even when the so-called instigator/dictator has taken a powder. I wonder, aloud, if I should write a column about how a war could be fought without civilian casualties. In a nutshell (not a peanut shell) I figure the folks who want to fight could be given a place to fight, say an international battlefield in a remote area. The rules would be simple. Each side would take what they need for the duration. There’d be no going home to re-stock. No sending out for reinforcements. Everyone who shows up to fight has to stay until it’s finished. No leaving the “zone.” Set a time limit, say three months. The side with the most fighters standing at the end of the limit wins. Nah. No one would take that seriously. Someone would send out for pizza or sushi.

So, now it’s just about 9 p.m. on November 20. I’ve painted a shelf in the kitchen. I’ve defrosted the “frost-free” freezer. I’ve made two trips (yup, two) to the hardware store. I’ve cleaned LOML’s desk—he not as grateful as he should be and the look suggests I might have started with my own mess. I’ve put my laundry away, mostly, and because I took fresh towels to the upstairs bathroom, I fannied around in my office looking through yearbooks from my high school days and found a melted candy cane in my desk drawer. The front hall closet is tidier, the winter gloves and scarves have been sorted and I’ve oohed and aahed over the Christmas lights now hanging in the side yard. The creative process is physically exhausting. I don’t know how I keep up the pace.

theresa@wellingtontimes.ca