5/26/2017

Soap with a Role

My love affair with bath soaps persisted as son #2, his dad, and I resumed our road trip. From Hilton Hotel in San Diego, we hopped to Bakersfield, a city nestled in the southern Central Valley of California. It was our halfway stop toward home in Stockton.

This time, our overnight resting place was Marriott Hotel. Here, as I researched on odd bar soaps, I stumbled upon (perhaps because of guilt) a soap with a role:

Me: Are you taunting me?

Soap: Writer’s Block!

Me: I refuse to have writer’s block. It’s just that I haven’t had time to write because my husband  and I are having too much fun bonding with son #2 and on a long road trip, there are just so many distractions and so little time.

Soap: Writer’s Block!

Truth to tell, I came to the US with the printed manuscript of my latest book. While packing all 12 chapters (so far tweaked and almost as good as finished) with my laptop, I told myself that it would be a cinch to write in California where the climate is cooler. 
 
But I still had a 13th and last chapter to polish before finally sending it to my editor. Every time I attempted to work, however, something came up—like an invitation to try out a new restaurant, visit a museum or a historical site, go to the library, etc. etc. And now, because of all the scheduled hotel hopping, I was preoccupied with bath soaps?!

And a special one to taunt me?!

The deadline given by my publisher was the month of May, and the month was about to end. Yet I refused to listen to the voice breathing inside my mind, Beg for a deadline extension. 

So I shrugged off my bar-soap-with-a-role-to-taunt-me fixation and trashed my trivial thoughts. Odd or ordinary in shape, structure, or name, a bar soap is a bar soap is a bar soap.

Next stop (two hours from Bakersfield) would be San Miguel de Tolosa mission.

Meanwhile, I curled up under the all-white comforter for a restful sleep and I woke up refreshed, grateful for the grace the new day would bring.

“I lay down and slept, yet I woke up in safety, for the LORD was watching over me." Psalm 3:5 (NLT)

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