This and That about Writing - Poem: Lidia's Kitchen

Only 10 more minutes before the Dairy Queen closes. After the movie, I was wondering what to eat. W/o guilt or hesitation, I drove to the DQ and ordered a hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut and a small Peanut Buster Parfait.

Small was huge. No prob, I said to myself, I simply won't eat the whole thing PLUS I'll ride my stationery bike. The reason I did eat the whole thing was bc the hot fudge syrup and the peanuts went all the way down the plastic cup.

Plunk! I finished and threw the cup away. Do you believe that a friggin stink bug was sitting on the top of the trash can?

We discussed the late Kym Cohen at our Writers Group on Saturday at B's house. We almost saw her the previous week but Beatriz had a tiny cold and Kym was afraid of catching it.

Please don't mind if I don't use photos. I've got tons to do, so it's easier not to.

Today's library film was called YOUTH. It starred Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel. I know this guy I said about Keitel. We all stayed to hear Mauriccio's commentary since the movie was very confusing.

I always like to get Mauriccio to myself. Told him I saw a great film 99 Homes about the mortgage crisis.  It took me 10 minutes to think of the name of the film. I remembered the great commentary. Also remembered the director wanted to work with a particular actor.

Got it!  He wanted to work with the great Michael Shannon, who I'd never heard of. 

Also told Mauriccio I watched The Magnificent Seven last nite on Channel 12 and didn't enjoy it as much as before. 

Good turnout at Beatriz's for the Writers Group. In less than two hours that morning I wrote "What's all this Gibberish?" and "The Pen from Paris."

I'd had the gibberish idea - it's about talking ants - for a month and finally wrote it.

The group really liked it!

Am also gonna send in my mental illlness piece to the Intelligencer. In my humble opinion, it is the absolute worst piece I've ever written.

Obama has it right. If you're gonna send in the troops, you've gotta have a plan for what comes after!

I always have a plan. Do you?  

After this blog, gonna go on stationery bike and watch Robert Plant and the Sensational Shape Shifters perform on Austin City Limits.

LIDIA'S KITCHEN

Snuggled in bed
wrapped in Sandy's
knitted blanket
and a maroon
quilt
while temperature
drops to the 50s
I exult in the
feeling of warmth
safety, the feeling
that This is me.

Click! On goes the
television and I
watch for the second
time Frontline's
horror of Isis. Martin
Smith, the craggy-faced
journalist, shows
scenes of destruction,
a pilot thrown into a
cage and burned as he
prays to Allah, a child
who wishes he could
have thrown in the
torches

Watch it if you dare.
I close my eyes and sleep
only to wake up to Lidia's
tenor voice. Her blond hair
is thinner than before, as
she whisks eggs and milk
and makes quite a sensation.

I run downstairs for a box of
Triscuits and slices of
cheddar. Lidia rambles on
as I hang on each word. She
toasts us with a wine I
can smell over the airwaves.

In the morning I open the
door and look. The blooms of the
crepe myrtle have passed, and
will lie speechless until
next spring. The light, so
vaunted in Greece and Italy -
Hello Papa Francis - comes
down smooth as Robin Hood's
arrows. I gaze upward
remembering the pilot.

Read more about Lidia here.