By Reaona Hemmingway
June 25, 2010
Welcome to the first post on my new blog. The business of this past week has brought to Emporia, Kansas for the 25th Annual Tallgrass Writing Workshop craving relaxation. My original purpose for coming to Emporia happens in the morning, Saturday, June 26, 2010. The Towne Crier bookstore here is holding their 3rd Annual Kansas Authors Extravaganza and I will be there to sign copies of my book along with forty some odd other authors who live in or originate from Kansas. As luck would have it, the Tallgrass Workshop is also this weekend, so I get to do both with one trip.
The great part about coming to workshops or conferences is the opportunity to meet with and swap stories with fellow authors. The horror comes in trying to leave home with everything you need: Clothes, laptop, toiletries, directions to the hotel and conference, and so on. To give myself plenty of time I took half a day off from work to give myself time to get packed, deliver books to the Hastings store in Topeka, drop poetry contest entries into the mail for this year’s judges of the 2010 Kansas Authors Club Literary Contest, get cash from the bank, and leave town in time to arrive in Emporia before supper. That was the plan, not the reality.
The first time I left home around 3:15 I made it six blocks when an AT&T cellular phone commercial came on the radio. The horror of listening to this ad was remembering that I had plugged my cell phone in after I came home so that it would be charged up by the time I left. It was still on the kitchen counter sucking up juice from the wall socket. A few right turns and loops around circulars brought me back to the house where my new tenant was just settling down to work on the computer and my yellow Lab was just settling down to an afternoon nap. I retrieved the phone, went back out the door, and headed to Hastings.
Things were going good again as I dropped off my new published book off at Hasting, drove to the Post Office and mailed the poem to my judges—I’m the poetry contest manager this year, and then headed to the bank. Four blocks from a bank branch on the south end of town near the freeway, I realized I left my checkbook and credit card case at home. Bummers.
I looped around on the freeway heading north instead of south to Emporia and drove back to my section of town, waded through the circulars again, and disturbed the sleepy dog, again, in order to get what I needed to pay for my hotel and meals for the weekend. Such are the hazards of not carrying your checkbook and credit cards with you. The bonus of leaving such things at home is that you can’t so easily impulsively buy things at the store. Purchases take thought, a trip home, and a return to the store. Usually, by the time I get home, I decide I don’t need the item bad enough to make another trip to Wanamaker Road where all the malls and stores congregate in Topeka.
As I finally headed south again, I stopped for the gas and, because it was dinner time by then, I swung through Wendy’s for chicken wraps, ice tea, and a coffee shake. Now if I wasn’t so full from eating all that and an hour behind schedule arriving at the first workshop event, I could have enjoyed a Mexican buffet with my fellow writers.
Now don’t think I’m one of those people who would misplace their head if it wasn’t attached. If you ask anyone who knows me, I’m generally well organized. The trouble comes in adding the poetry contest management with settling in a new roommate and getting on the road with everything you need into a week of working full time, sprinkle on a few physical challenges and bake long enough to in high temperatures and even higher humidity and you have a recipe for taking wrong turns on your way to a writing workshop.
By the way, the program tonight was great. We were entertained by the Tallgrass Express String Band. If you like folk music about Kansas, I highly recommend you check out their website at www.tallgrassexpress.com. Truly a Kansas born and Kansas bred sound for celebrating the beauty of our Flint Hills.
(c) 2010 Reaona Hemmingway
