Long days and luck by Liz Flaherty #RomanceGems

If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb. 

Yep. But the lamb hasn't been around at all this year, has she? It's all been the lion. Curmudgeonly and quarrelsome and wanting things all his own way. (You notice what I did with gender there. I'm sorry, but only sort of.)

Sometimes, these days, I don't feel so lucky.

I hope you are all doing well through this crisis in our times, this March in history that may go on for a long time yet. I also hope you're finding productive things to do, finding happy in unexpected places, and practicing kindness even if you have to do it through gritted teeth sometimes. 

If you're a writer, I hope your voice is intact and speaking prolifically on your computer screen. Mine--huge sigh that just made the curtains move--is not. Although I'm still blogging and writing my weekly newspaper column, I'm discovering my creativity is only working in fits and starts--and stops. With the latter coming a lot easier than the former. 

What to do?

Well, as most of us have learned over our often long and sometimes illustrious careers, the thing to do is run with it. Although this is a different crisis, it's certainly not our first one. Most of us have known several long Marches in our lives. So, here's my list.  And, while you're at it, stay home (if you can) and stay safe. 

• Write in spurts. My friend Jana Richards wrote about the 100-word challenge on the Word Wranglers blog. Much of the time, you keep on going, but even if you can't, there's that 100 words that weren't there yesterday. 
• Give your best voice to blog posts and other short works. My columns lately have been some of my best. Not only have they felt the best to me, but have been well received by the people who read them--for which I am most intensely grateful.
• Be productive in other ways. Like many other sewists, I'm making surgical masks. It helps to fulfill a need for others and it answers my own wish to do something. I have friends who are baking their own bread, others who are making desserts that make my mouth water just thinking of them, and still others who are reviving an old (and for me, best forgotten) habit of spring cleaning. 
• Read. I know "soul food" is a cultural term, but it can also apply to things beyond actual food. As in anything that lends succor to the soul. I'm reading old stuff, because I don't want surprises or deep thought or worry. I want laughter and relief and familiarity. 
• Speaking of laughter, I'm taking any road to it I can find, including things that are pretty tasteless. 
• I miss the fellowship of church, but I can sing along with anyone I like on YouTube. I can even shut the pastor down if s/he goes on too long!

Please let us all know how you're "running with it," how you're making this long March into spring something that will have as many good memories in it as bad ones. How you're finding your own luck when it seems to be elusive. 

If I sound like I'm preaching, I apologize--I don't mean to. I wish you all happy days ahead. Once again, stay home and stay safe. 

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Come back to check out April's Rafflecopter!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qb35f5aZkdE

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Friendship has been so much a part of my life, one of the many areas I have indeed been very lucky. In the course of that luck, I've read and loved a ton of books with strong friendships as part of their theme, beginning, I think with  Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Emma, Anne of Green Gables and Diana, and Trixie Belden and Honey Wheeler. 

What this means, of course, is that I had to write a girlfriends book. It's been a few years, but The Girls of Tonsil Lake is still one of my favorites. Vin, Andie, Jean, and Suzanne are some of my most beloved heroines. I hope you'll check them out. 

They were four little girls living in ramshackle trailers beside a lake in rural Indiana. They shared everything from dreams to measles to boyfriends to more dreams. As they grew up, everything in their lives changed--except their friendship. Through weddings and divorces, births and deaths, one terrible secret has kept them close despite all the anger, betrayal, and pain.

Now, forty years later, facing illness, divorce, career challenges, and even addiction, the women come together once again for a bittersweet month on an island in Maine. Staring down their fifties, they must consider the choices life is offering them now and face the pain of what happened long ago.

Secrets are revealed and truths uncovered, but will their time together cement their lifelong friendship--or drive them apart forever?