Spring Break!

Spring Break! Magical words for school children, for teachers and even for parents — anyone and all who have a chance to get away from the normal school day routine. At the Education Cooperative where I work, Spring Break is a blessing and a perk. The schools are closed, so are we. (This is not so during the summer months.)

Last week, conversations at work were about SB plans — Disney World, Crystal Bridges, trips “home” to family, work in the garden, paint the house.

The first days of my break have been filled with rest and reading. I have slept late and napped in the afternoons. During my waking hours, I finished reading Pride and Prejudice. Yesterday, when I had a dream about being at work in my pajamas and falling asleep at my desk, I decided maybe I had stretched this rest thing a little too far.

Tomorrow, I will leave for a Writer’s Retreat in Piggott, Arkansas. The home where Ernest Hemingway and his wife Pauline lived with her parents while he wrote A Farewell to Arms, and the barn converted into his writing space, sits at the edge of this small town. The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center hosts writers’ retreats and several other special events throughout the year.

BFF Pat will pick me up and we will spend the three-hour trip talking. We may get it all said by Saturday afternoon when we trek home, but then again, maybe not.

My goal for this retreat is to learn from mentor Rob Lamm and other writers present and to work on the edits of my almost-finished-novel-in-progress, An Ordinary Day. And maybe some of the Hemingway genius will rub off on me and I will write that ‘one true sentence.’ Rest, read, write — my choices for this week.

To all my readers blessed with a Spring Break — enjoy!

For more information on H-P Museum and Educational Center visit hemingway.astate.edu