
Dahlias, darling
Author of The Sparrow Sisters
Dahlias, darling
It’s time to put on my reflecto-vision glasses. What? You don’t have a pair? You know, the ones you buy off the back of an Archie comic, right next to the X-ray Specs and the itching powder. Most people go for the X-ray Specs because the picture shows a lady in her undies. But, in case you haven’t wasted that allowance yet, they don’t work. The reflecto-vision glasses, on the other hand, are guaranteed to show you the past with a mixture of insight and nausea. I know, mine are hanging on the chain with my readers. January is as good an excuse as any to take a look through them.
I am an early riser and by early I mean shortly after four am. I try to have a lie in, I really do. Don’t hate me because I am wildly productive. I’m not. Occasionally in those pre- or just post-dawn hours I get some stuff done. This morning for instance I folded laundry, made a list of editors that my ms. might appeal to, drank three cups of coffee (my teeth are now itching), went down to the beach to read awhile and then went to the gym. There, I fiddle-faddled around on one kind of machine or another for about 45 minutes before I lost interest in everything from my maximum heart rate to the New York Times Book Review podcast (who cares that a professor from Yale has written about how our reactions to things change depending on what we are told those things are–science of the obvious to me but then I don’t have a PhD.) At any rate, for every morning I use my time wisely, there are the ones where I paddle the internet (I scroll too slowly to call it surfing) checking on Lindsay Lohan’s SCRAM anklet, wondering what will happen to Larry King now that he isn’t CNN’s resident crypt keeper or saving dozens of recipes for complicated dishes I may or may not attempt.