Fart in a Skillet

 Fart in a Skillet

By Shannon Baker

This is the phrase my LG (Lucky Guy) uses to describe someone who has so many things going at once he/she can’t concentrate on anything for long. He might or might not ever use it to describe me.

I wouldn’t admit it to him, of course, but recently, I’ve felt a little like this. After five years living in Flagstaff, AZ and working for The Grand Canyon Trust, a non-profit environmental trust, I got a terrific opportunity to head back up to Colorado’s Front Range and get in on the ground floor of an exciting medical device start-up.

 I love the great outdoors and being part of an organization whose goal it is to protect and restore landscapes, but I’m a capitalist at heart. I also love Colorado and have been jonesing to get back up there.

You’d think doing the real estate dance of buying, selling and moving would be plenty for one couple. The excitement of starting a new business and launching a new mystery series might be enough thrill for one year, right?

Life being what life is and crazy being what we are, we accidently fell in love with Tucson. As a retirement place. Really. In a few years. But why not look at houses now, we asked ourselves. The housing market is as nuts as us and one inexpensive foreclosure on the edge of the desert later, here I am, sitting by my very own pool.

It’s true, there’s no kitchen (I mean none; no appliances, no counters, no cupboards, no sink) and no A/C (while I write this it’s 102 degrees) and the only furniture is a blow-up mattress and some patio chairs.  

Which brings me to the fart in a skillet issue. For the last month I’ve been a whirling dervish of real estate and logistical activity. I’ve been trying to wrap up my day job and tie all those lose ends. So much so, that the draft I need to write for my next book has been neglected.

But no more. I have one month from the end of my job at the Trust to the beginning of my new one. Between packing and moving and life, that affords me two weeks plus of nothing but writing. The only distractions here are the pool every so often, necessary to balance out the no A/C issue, and food scavenged from the cooler. Every two days I need to run into town for more ice.

Welcome to my personal ShaNoWriMo. (Shannon Novel Writing Month) I am cranking, piling up the word count and reveling in near total isolation. LG blows in every few days to make sure I haven’t lost my slippery grasp on sanity.

And I had this pesky blog to write to keep me sort of grounded in the calendar and connected to something real.

Signing off again. See you in a week. Until then, happy writing, dunking, sunning.