Right now, I'm sitting on a tall padded stool at my breakfast/lunch/dinner bar in the kitchen, listening to my daughter's dog bark outdoors.  The washer is spinning, and public radio jazz is playing the Scottish folktune "Auld Lang Syne."  My daughter is pacing around me.  A cup of hot black cherry Emergen-C in a rosebud coffee cup sits beside my old Mac Powerbook.  

I write here.  Yesterday I wrote with my laptop on my lap on the old black leather couch.  Last winter I wrote on the dark tall library table in the front room, looking out onto the snowy yard and pasture, watching the deer dig downed crab apples from under the snow.   This morning I wrote sitting in the pew in Peoples Unitarian Church.  

I take a notebook with me wherever I go.  Unless I forget, or lose my notebook.  Then I just pick up another, along with my favorite Pilot G-2 pen in blue or black.  I hate it when I lose my favorite pen.  My notebooks almost always show up.  I prefer the 5x8 spiral notebooks from Walgreens, although lately I have used a couple of moleskins favored by Hemingway according to their press.  I have a whole collection of note books from the last ten or twenty years.  I haven't counted, but I have a large rubbermaid-type tub of them at my 'new' house, ready to spill their stories each in its own time.    

When I had an office, I wrote on my desk top computer with my dog Chloe curled up in a little dog-bed on top of the file cabinet.  She likes to look out the window, and wants to always be near me.  She doesn't like my writing on this kitchen counter because there's no place for her when I'm spending hours at the computer.  Then she whines, and I can't stand that. Unfortunately I haven't had hours to spend at the computer with my business shut-down, and flood house restoration going on.  I've had to coordinate people and meetings.  And at the same time, attempt to keep my brain from insanity or imploding, using mantras, friends' phone calls, guided imagery CDs, music, and any other tricks I can think of.  It's not easy being me.  

So, for me, the right place to write is right here.  Where ever I am.  As long as my brain goes with me, I'm okay.  But NO TV, or talk radio.  Not while writing.  And no whining.  Okay?  Okay. 

                                           Rosebud coffee cups where I write...