It's the darnedest thing.

It's a little quirk my Muse has -- one I'd totally forgotten about. When people ask me why I don't write much anymore, I tell them it's because I'm too happy and I think that's why the ideas dried up on me. But this past week has shown me that it's something altogether different.

There's been a lot going on in my life the past couple of weeks. Besides trying to finish up my university courses (final assignments, take-home Space Studies exam, tutorials, preparing for the Stats final), and all of the end-of-school-year activities (graduation, retirement dinner, etc.), and now, added to the mix, my 20th high school reunion (where the heck did those 20 years go?!), and I'm running around like a crazy woman.

And, of course, this is when the Muse decides to start talking. Sometimes it's the "what-if?" game, when I'm driving past a former greenhouse that's for sale. "What if the owner of the greenhouse has something significant buried beneath the greenhouse floor, and that's why he's refusing to sell the property, despite his sons' persistence?" Or "what if, during construction on a bridge, during the delay of waiting for the flagman to change the sign from 'STOP' to 'SLOW', someone in a stopped car decides that it's some sort of deep metaphor and he decides to get out of the car and leap off, leaving behind a variety of scarred witnesses who couldn't help but watch the whole thing?" (Guess where I was when the Muse came up with that one?)

Or else it's in dreams. Like last night, when my Muse decided to show me a mini-movie, complete with beginning, middle, and end. I'm actually surprised there weren't credits rolling when I finally woke up. And that was the third one this week. What I hate about those ones is that, too often, the details sneak away from me before I get them written down. I used to keep a notebook on my bedside table to do some mad scribbling upon waking, but it's hard to do that when you have a black and white dog joyfully jumping up and down on your solar plexus, ecstatic that you're awake once again.

So I'm trying to write all of these things down. Murphy's Law pretty much decrees that once this insanity is over, and my life calms down, my Muse will take a long nap, and my story idea well will once again run dry.

At the reunion, the one question I get asked over and over is, "Are you still writing?" Even people I didn't know really well are asking me. Instead of "captain of the football team", or "valedictorian", my unofficial caption was clearly The Writer. I did not realize that until this weekend.

And I miss writing. A lot.

Maybe that's the biggest lesson I need to take away from this reunion. (Well, that, and "everybody gains weight by the time it's twenty years on.")

PS -- My hubby says I look a lot younger than my former classmates. I love Hubby.