Listeme

I planned to write about the tournament as soon as I got home, but the kids stayed over Monday night, then I worked and had mediation meetings and more kid time and then worked some more… very good and busy week, really. So here I am, finally. The tournament was great. My record (8-7) doesn’t sound great. I did make some boneheaded errors. In fact, it looks like -- as much as I can’t believe it and hate to confess it publicly -- I probably missed the word BASENJIS. For a kajillion points. I have gone back over my score sheet with disbelief and creative rack leave analysis, and I am pretty sure that’s the rack I had. So that was indeed a terrible miss. But in that same game, I also made one of the better strategic plays I’ve made in my scrabble “career” and was rewarded by being able to play out with ESTUARIaL from the ES and win the game. From low to high in one short game. I’ll resist making comments about metaphors for life. I had a lot of good luck and a lot of bad luck. ...

The Boston Area Tournament is coming up this weekend. I feel very unprepared. I guess that’s understandable. The other things going on in my life are pretty overwhelming. I’m trying to decide what to do when I grow up. I’m trying to find work to do while pursuing those life goals. I’m in the middle of divorce mediation. These things are pretty big. If I could look at my life from outside it, like a best friend or a sister, I would tell myself that I’m doing okay, that I should take more baths, that I should enjoy spring walks, that I should have a glass of wine or an ice cream cone. If I’m to be responsible for all the grownup things, I should also take care of myself. Right? So I’m armed with flashcards and optimism. It is a tough division. The games will be hard and require concentration and intelligence.

From the warnings in the back of the Life textbook: If one sleeps over at one’s old house to take care of one’s own kids while their dad is on a business trip, and if one is pleased with how calmly and smoothly everything is going and has gone and seems to be likely to go in the future, one should not be surprised when one’s silly dog decides to have -- oh, what should we call it? diarrhea? -- in the master bedroom on the white carpet. One should be careful not to say anything too terribly vile to the dog while scrubbing away at germy spattery spots with old white gym towels. Note: one should be especially alert to the smirking meanness of the universe. The universe has been known to send along vicious wasps to sting one on the ring finger of the left hand, causing one to nearly faint from anxiety.

Do people really mean it when they say they just want what's best for everyone?

I feel a little disloyal to my genre roots, but I’m increasingly drawn to so-called literary fiction. Some of my stories for Odyssey barely qualified as science fiction and probably could pass for mainstream or literary. Whether or not they are GOOD is another matter. I guess I will keep doing what I have been doing: writing the stories that I must write. I can figure out how to categorize the stories later. Pretty rocks for my Scrabble slingshot: Umbellet, brunizem, whimbrel, bigeminy.