The title is just a word that popped into my head, which is, I suppose, the way of “whimsy.”

I am rereading my friend’s novel, remembering that I edited the book, line edit more than content edit. She’s a good writer, and her characters are so real I’m sure I’ve had conversations with kids like them at my daughter’s school in the library where I volunteer and during poetry workshops I’ve given. They’re far more real than the kids from The Secret Life of the American Teenager.

My friend has the time and freedom to think today since the school where she works was closed for bad weather. This isn’t necessarily good or not good for me (I’m laughing at myself). She asks me to consider playing a bigger role in the students’ film of her book, the foster mother, Janet.

I don’t know. The camera doesn’t love me. My wacky left eye that doesn’t move left makes me look cross-eyed on camera, still or moving. My ass grows into something that resembles one of those exercise balls, round and large and squishy. Also, I just don’t know if I want to put that much emotional energy into someone else’s creative project.

Although…

Making a play or a film come to life becomes everyone’s project, not just author’s or director’s or the actor playing the main character. There’s a kind of magic that happens even during the most difficult productions.

I have to think on this.

I still have a towel wrapped around my head from my quick shower.

The mail carrier delivered my daughter’s college fund statement, and I risked opening it. Bad idea. I feel a bit sick to my stomach over the losses (a quarter of the fund), though it could have been far, far worse, I know. She could have been left with nothing.

It’s time to write the “poetry reading in the basement bar of the cool Cajun restaurant” scene. Could be fun if I let go and trust my fingers to type the right words.