Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn– is what popped into my head after I finished typing that title up there. Oh, what I’d give to see Scarlett O’Hara’s face when Rhett told her those eight words! They held such promise!

I should be writing the next part of Ushanga, but even getting a word out seems like torture. I won’t push my luck, no, I’ll let the gods of literature and minions of writing do their thing. I’m worn out. I took on so much this past week and today I was caught between finishing Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes and writing a report on the 2016 East African Community Child Rights Policy. I chose the former in between breaks.

Just when I thought that my day would get better, I received a reminder that there’s a strategic plan that I had written and shared with a few colleagues that needed reviewing. I sent out texts to everyone of them calling for a meeting. Three out of the seven responded. I am waiting to hear from the remaining four and it is killing me!

So, I went to the kitchen and made a cup of black tea. I took two mandazis and sat before the computer ready to type at least a sentence into Ushanga, but when I opened the document, nothing…not even the urge to repeatedly type “ushanga” just to get this moving.

I played one round of Solitaire and couldn’t even stack up one pile of cards, so I exited that and reached out for my phone. Before I could even type the pin to unlock the screen, I remembered that I’d just bought 4 black dresses at the market today and went to take them down from the hanging line. As I was making my way back to the house, my younger sister asks, “what are we cooking for supper?”

I want to say “fried chicken and vegetable rice” but do not because as sure as the sun rises, we both know there ain’t no chicken in the fridge. I tell her ugali, sukumawiki and we can fry some eggs. She looks at me the way she always does; half smiling, half frowning and then says “sawa,” and walks to the sitting room to watch Double Kara- some Philippine soap opera that I can’t stand, and now that I’ve rambled my words off here, I’d better go back and try to keep working on Ushanga.