My daughter, Jaime is an actress and a writer, and I am a writer who wishes she could act.  Feeling we both needed to work on our books, I flew to Nashville for a few days of plotting (books) and writing.  Jaime’s husband Ed hovered in the background – pushing food our way as needed to revitalize creative juices – that is until the laptops died.  At which point, we plotted while he soldered.

We both have great husbands.  Jaime’s Dad shuttled me to and from the airport and fended for himself while I was away.  Ed as noted above helped keep us focused on our goals by removing irritants such as the aforementioned uncooperative computers that wanted to take a vacation.

There was one minor problem and that was Jaime’s cats, Kramer and Kozmo.  They simply could not understand why we did not devote ourselves to lovingly petting and talking to them.  One time, the smaller of the two huge furry yellow tabbies, Kozmo jumped up next to me on the sofa chair.  I petted and scratched his head briefly before returning to my book on the laptop.  He sat down next to me but made a point of laying his long bushy tail across the keyboard obliterating the keys.  After some initial attempts to coax him to remove his tail, I gently pushed him off the chair.  He gave me that disgusted cat look and left me to my work.

The four days flew by and it was soon time to leave.  We stopped at Provence, a favorite bistro for lunch with their friends before heading to the airport.  Once at the airport, I soon found my flight was delayed so I had plenty of time to work on my craft.  I didn’t get as much done as I wanted as I am easily distracted by the airport environment.  People interacting, planes, food court smells, and personal electronic devices putting off low level hums and music if the user is right next to me.  However I would say the two biggest distractions was realizing too late I forgot my phone charger, and listening to the 15 and 20 minute announcements of further delays to my flight.  Ultimately it was two and a half hours late.

The way I look at it – just more time to gather ‘color’ for future stories.