It doesn’t take long for some authors, when their books are accepted for publication, to develop artistic temperaments. For me, it only took five days.
It started an hour ago. I was settling in to work on my magnum opus, or at least to reply to some weekend emails, when an incessant beeping began outside. You know the sound. The heavy equipment warning beep, which was a little odd since our gravel road isn’t a hotbed of heavy equipment traffic.
At first I kept writing, but after fifteen minutes I could no longer ignore the noise shattering the quiet so necessary for us artist types. I looked outside. All I saw was the dripping rain which has turned our gravel road into a treacherous slippery mess. The beeping continued, so I got up and looked out our big corner window. A full gravel truck was backing along the road in front of our house, followed by a white city pick up truck. Just east of the gravel truck, past our neighbor’s driveway was a semi stuck in the mud, blocking the road.
I grabbed my camera and documented the high-tech maneuvers used to get traffic moving again. First, the gravel truck dumped a bit of its load in front of the semi. Then two city workers hopped out of the pick up and rustled around in the truck bed. Eventually they hauled out two shovels. Now this was the tricky, high-tech part. The city workers handed the shovels to the men who had been in the semi. Those men shoveled dirt under the semi’s tires and in two minutes, they were able to get the thing moving again.
The entire incident ended with a little parade as the gravel truck drove past our house, followed by the semi, followed by the white pick up. Very festive, though a marching band would have added a nice touch. But by then, the rain had turned to snow, and we all know that below freezing temperatures are hard on musical instruments.
Not that I’m complaining about the cold or the six to eight inches of snow predicted for tonight. I don’t complain about the weather, even though it did cause the road conditions which caused the ruckus which disturbed the quiet I need to write my book.
But since I can’t control the weather and refuse to complain about it, I’ll do the next best thing. I’ll get rid of all distractions – shut the curtains, put in my ear plugs – you name it, I’ll do it.
After all, people are waiting for my magnum opus. I refuse to disappoint them.
