Lisa Reardon's Blog

Yesterday I bought a new computer.

Today I’ve been busy rethinking the need for the many support and protection programs I bought along with it.  Being an intelligent adult, I decided I could handle this transition on my own without clinging to the starched shirt-tails of GeekSquad.  It’s been less than thirty-six hours and I’ve already made three phone calls and one trip back to the store. I erased all my 2017-2018 financial/tax records and spent two and a half hours retrieving them. I’ve cried three times gently and once violently

This was just the prep work. I haven’t even unpackaged the new computer yet.

Yes, it really did take me nineteen months to figure out how I screwed up the username and password to my own blog. Much weeping and gnashing of teeth, along with endless tread marks inside my skull from Freak Out Kitty doing her laps. What’s new since February 2018? Geez, what isn’t? Focus on the good…

I wrote a play. It’s called RADDICHIO! and it is a farce based on Shakespeare’s TWELFTH NIGHT. I haven’t had that much fun writing in a long time. I’ll post the first scene on the website as soon as I figure out how to do that. Of course it was my intention to include the first scenes of all the plays (as well as the first chapters of the novels) on the website, but that didn’t get done in the last nineteen months either, did it?

It’s good to have goals.

This blog is my nemesis.
This is a test.
This is a nemesis test.

…Freak Out Kitty.

When F.O.K. is on the loose anything can happen. F.O.K. knows the new (relatively new…okay, old but new to me) car I sank all my savings into two weeks ago is developing transmission trouble. F.O.K. knows I’m never again going to write anything good. F.O.K. knows I’m developing a drinking problem because I recently bought a bottle of port and drank a glass, at home, alone. He also says I’ll never get my apartment (all forty square feet of it) clean in time for a visit from my family in ten days. He tells me I’ll die alone in a snowdrift someday. He’s convinced Martha My Dear–also known as Laid Back Kitty—will:

a) drown in the toilet.
b) never eat again due to excessive pickiness.
c) develop an exotic feline disease that will make all her fur and
teeth fall out.
d) somehow escape the apartment and
d-1) die of a massive tick infestation, or
d-2) come home covered in poison ivy which will make my entire
body bubble until I look like a leper.

While Martha My Dear lounges on her pink, fleece-lined bed, F.O.K. races in gyroscopic circles around the inside of my skull leaving layers of claw marks in his wake.

I remember the magic words: Nothing bad is happening now.

Something terrible may have happened yesterday, or ten minutes ago. And something terrible will probably happen tomorrow or five minutes from now. But right now, at this moment, nothing bad is happening. Martha My Dear snores beside me. I’m wearing warm socks. The car runs fine. It doesn’t matter if the writing is good as long as I’m writing. The walls aren’t caving in. Lightning isn’t striking. The upstairs neighbor walks flat-footed across a wood floor, but that is the worst thing happening right now.

Freak Out Kitty, go to sleep.