Truth to Tell

I am a writer. I work on my novel from noon till midnight every day. My Christmas decorations have yet to be packed away.  I have no idea what is going on in world news. My upstairs office is littered with notes and discarded pages, and my downstairs office is piled with the same. My husband has been doing the grocery shopping for the last month.  I haven't even been outside for three days.

This is not the way Hollywood told me it would be.

Listen Up, Hollywood

Now that Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Patrick Swayze have tapped on heaven's door, Hollywood needs another great hoofer.  How about that confrontational Russian guy on Dancing with the Stars?  The one that sorta looks like Howard Keel in his Taming of the Shrew movie.

Speaking of Howard Keel, we need more musicals too, lightweight ones that have you humming all the way home--"Singin' in the Rain," not "I Dreamed a Dream."

What Fiorella is saying is life is too short to wallow in its shortcomings. Fio may write dark, but she wants her own entertainment to be feather light.

Whew!

Fiorella's happy.  Yesterday she finished typing in the thirteen pages of HONEYSUCKLE DREAMS that her laptop had gobbled up on Sunday, finished her umpteenth edit of the book, ran a copy of it off for Georgetown friend Suzy, and sent an email attachment of it to Bastrop friend Joan. The addition of three new threads--crystal meth, possible pregnancy, and a Hollywood star--have swelled the wordage to almost 95,000 words so Fio hopes Suzy and Joan will still be her friends after they've hefted the manuscript.

So now Fio has to figure out how to use Dropbox or something similar to avoid another near-disaster like the thirteen digested pages, and she has to catch up with everything else she put off while she was devoting all her time to HD.  Little things--like figuring income taxes.

Armstrong, Schmarmstrong

Fio doesn't care if Lance Armstrong doped.  As she's said before, she would guess that most of the other contestants were also upping their chances pharmaceutically--and she would also guess that most of the effect was psychological.  But the basic reason she doesn't care is that, while she liked seeing a US team win, she never regarded Armstrong as a hero.

People make too much of athletes, and then turn on them when they can't live up to the hype.  Lighten up--sports personalities are entertainers more than anything else, and we know all about Hollywood.

Wanted: Sweet Dreams

Fiorella has been having problems with insomnia lately.  Not the good kind, the Hollywood kind which keeps you up all night writing brilliant novels or composing breathtaking music, then lets you sink into slumber as the candle gutters down and dawn leaks through the latticed window.  No, Fio has the kind that sends her from bedroom to den and back again and again, pillow under her arm, with sidestops along the way for a long, hot bath and to pick up some books that might make her drowsy.  In every location and variation, she tries to will herself to sleep, which only seems to keep her more awake.  Pills, stupid TV shows--nothing helps.

It's time to call in the big guns: she'll consult Dr. Google.