Lock up your chocolate, I’ve been left unsupervised (Weekend Coffee Share #12)
My long-suffering husband is camping in the desert this week, and I’m taking a few days off to enjoy having the house to myself. In other words–I’m entirely unsupervised. Unmonitored. Responsible to no one. Free as a bird, baby. Let the debauchery begin!
But before we get to the debauchery, good afternoon, and happy Friday! Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share, graciously hosted by Natalie the Explorer. Come on in, grab a treat, have a seat, and let’s party!
Now, where were we? Oh, yeah–debauchery. Those of you who read my last attempt to portray myself as cool already know the sad truth: I’m boring as hell. I’ve been on my own since Tuesday, and the most exciting thing I’ve done is order pizza. I haven’t even cranked the music to eleven yet. Fifty-something me would be such a disappointment to 16-year-old me.
So what have I done instead of party like it’s 1999? I’m ashamed to type this, but here goes:
Homework.
Yeah, you read that right.
I have the house to myself for a week, and I’m doing… homework.
I’m also writing, reading, and cleaning.
The naughtiest thing I’ve done is binge on the fun size M&Ms and Heath bars I’m supposed to be saving for Halloween.
Ain’t middle age exciting, kids?
So why am I doing homework? I’m taking a class offered by the Guppy Chapter (GUP = great unpublished) of Sisters in Crime called Guppy Bootcamp. It’s focused on building skills toward getting published and covers topics like creating log lines, creating your online space, finding agents, and pitching. So far, it’s been great, as has the Guppy Chapter in general. If you’re a writer hoping to be published–especially if you write crime fiction–I highly recommend joining Sisters in Crime and the Guppy Chapter.
Other than my online class, I’m not doing anything unusual, and, all kidding aside, I’m totally fine with that. The older I get, the more I prefer my excitement on the page rather than in my life. It’s actually been lovely to putter around the house and garden, take walks, enjoy the quiet, and be, well, boring as hell. I miss my husband, but these kinds of short breaks with lots of downtime are therapeutic.
With that, I’ll wrap up this post with a few laughs. First, someone even nerdier than I am decided to chalk the base of a streetlight in the Albertson’s parking lot with… the Pythagorean Theorem.
Imagine being unsupervised with a stick of chalk and deciding to decorate the world with geometry. Thanks, nerdy Tucsonian. I feel downright cool by comparison.
Next, a profound analysis of country music lyrics:
This seems like a good place for a gratuitous link to my analysis of a Carrie Underwood song.
And finally, let’s end this week’s post with some general silliness:
How about y’all? How was your week? What kind of debauchery are you up to this weekend?
10 Comments
Jennifer Jones
I do love having a rare couple of days home along. At these times reading, walking, and cycling are usually my priority. All fun stuff! I love the title of you post. It really had me interested.
Janet Alcorn
It’s lovely to be free to just do whatever, isn’t it? Kind of like a retreat right at home. Thanks for stopping by!
Gary A Wilson
Wow –
I was ready to prowl through my old comments looking for one of yours because your post was not coming up looking healthy, like I was seeing almost raw data without formatting or even complete data. Then I realized it had been maybe a week without rebooting the laptop and gave that a try. And it worked – sorta.
I had everything except a Reply box with a post button. . .
Hmm, maybe Janet is up to some form of debauchery, it would be in character I think.
but no, as I sat quietly contemplating how to track you down to let you know that something was wrong – the screen finally fully populated. WP is just running slow – very slow.
It was fun joining you on this post. I too would be a disappointment to my, umm, I’m going to go with my 21 year old self who dated a few gals I had no business being with other than some short term fun and steam creation, got drunk a few too many times, said and did audacious things and lived long enough to realize that, while fun, this type of living likely had a rather short fuse and did not really suit me the morning after – so I made some changes and became respectable. In my case, I got lucky as other girls were still interested, they were just not as likely to kill their husbands. . .
Man! I loved that ending to your post. I’ll be laughing about it the rest of the day.
If you read my coffee share, you’ll note some of my past may have bubbled up last week as I tried to create a new short story without filtering what I wrote until later. The result was something I can’t use because it does not suit the audience I’m trying to build. Inappropriate sex with minors as a character building image is powerful and would work – but that kind of imagery is not going to make it to my own blog site, so I have to find another way to twist this character into someone who could do awful things.
It’s a good thing that we can’t ask our younger selves for their opinion. I’m not sure I’d really want his.
But jesting about debauchery – what a treat that was.
You can unlock your chocolate. It’s safe with me, but don’t get between me and even mediocre vanilla ice cream. It would only result in regrets for us both.
Janet Alcorn
Gary, thanks for stopping by! Your visits and comments are the highlight of the Weekend Coffee Share. And yeah, WordPress (at least my instance of it) has been really slow for the last day or so.
It sounds like you packed some living into your youth, and that’s as it should be. It’s how we learn and how we figure out who we are (and who we don’t want to spend our lives being).
I dropped a comment on your post with some thoughts about handling the character-building without being too graphic or offensive. It may not work for you, because you write cleaner than I do, but I’m a firm believer in including uncomfortable truths in my fiction. Calling out the ugliness and awfulness helps make it real, and if people don’t understand it’s real (and, in the example you use, incredibly common), they won’t take it seriously and try to make it stop.
As for vanilla ice cream, it’s one of my favorite vehicles for chocolate–specifically, Hershey’s syrup.
Have a wonderful week!
Natalie
Janet, Those jumbo bags of 100 assorted mini chocolate bars are the best 🙂 Your Formula 1 subtitle image is hilarious. Thank you for your #weekendcoffeeshare.
Janet Alcorn
Thanks! I can’t take credit for the Formula 1 subtitle thing–I found it on the site formerly known as Facebook–but it made me laugh, so I thought I’d share.
Angela
The Guppy Bootcamp sounds really interesting, I always tell myself I’ll take a writing class online but I have yet to do so. And that observation about country music is too accurate! ? I hope you have a great week!
Janet Alcorn
Thanks for stopping by! Hope you have a great week too!
Kirstin
Oh to have a few days of no one else in the house to catch up on blog posts, not cook if I don’t want to, and watch all the cooking shows I always miss. Haha. Your class sounds interesting.
Janet Alcorn
Yup, it was a lovely break, though I didn’t accomplish many of the tasks I set for myself. I did get lots of rest though!