Call it spring fever

 I don't know what's up the last few weeks, except very little writing and reading, thus no blogging.

Yeah, we had a somewhat stress-filled earlier-than-planned trip to Champaign for the birth of my first grandchild. All's good there, momma and baby doing fine, but that might have thrown me out of whack. 

I did visit the awesome used bookstore there and dropped some cash on nine books, to which I laughed when the lady checked me out and asked: "Would you like a bag for those?"

No, I want to walk around downtown with nine books in my arms, one of which is a twenty-pound autobiography by Mark Twin (Vol. 2 of  3). Seriously. Do paper bags cost that much? How many books do you need to buy to get a bag?

Also, my mind's been preoccupied with my best buddy Stanley, who is nearing the end of his tremendous life as a dog. He's slowed down a lot and it seemed like the end was imminent. I called my son a week ago and said I'd probably be putting him down last weekend. I think Stanley overheard the call because he's been reinvigorated and bounced back good as new. For now. 

Otherwise, I've just been out of sorts, unmotivated, lazy and generally a dull boy.

I did get through two novels in the last month: Robert B. Parker's "High Profile," a Jess Stone novel; and Richard Stark's (aka Donald Westlake's) "The Mourner." I even screwed that up. I read it out of order. It's the third book and I have the first two but didn't check to see which was first in the series. Very unlike me and messed with my OCD.

On the writing front, I've had the fourth Bags Morton book done for some time but my editor has been dinkin' around doing her real job and raising her family and forgetting that I should come first in her life. Maybe I should pay her more. Or, for that matter, pay her period.

Meanwhile I have another half dozen books in some phase of unfinishedness and keep jumping around from one to another hoping something will click but nothing is clicking. That aggravates me more and just exacerbates the cycle.

So I need to quit whining, get my head screwed on straight and start punching the keys. That's kind of why I wrote this. Just to prime the pump. Get the fingers working again.

We'll see if it works.