When 24 hours is not enough

I like to be busy.

There is something irritating about sitting on my butt all day long, day in and day out. It is fodder for creative atrophy. My house is up for sale so, with it comes all the cleaning and fixing and realizing that six years of gunk has accumulated in more places that I thought.

When I get busy, I go into hyper drive. Start Trek's warp drive has nothing on me. This month we got the house ready in record timing, I got the dog trained, did Thanksgiving for two extra families, began teaching art classes, and wrote a book.

Yup. I wrote a book. Like I said. Hyper drive.

I didn't intend to finish said book so quickly. It is riddled with errors and I have two characters that are incredibly flat, but the bones of it are good and already I am slavering to do edits. Today, instead of writing out a complete bio for all my characters, revamping their dialogue and filling the plot potholes, I am taking a break. Breaks are good because this morning as I literally bounded out of bed to go running with Britt at a frigid 6:30 am, dropped the boys off at school, and cleaned the house for a showing(all before 9am), I realized that I needed it.

For my break, I went and got my oil changed. Rock on, right? Jiffy lube is awesome. It's the place where life stops and forces you to chill for the time it takes to fill an oil pan. I always take a good book or my iphone to catch up on e-mails because there literally is NOTHING else to do, but sit there and relax. At my Lube station, they have these fantastic leather chairs I could zonk out in and they keep the waiting room nice and cozy warm. Cue snoring.

But I didn't get the chance to catch some z's today. I was under the limelight and it was exponentially uncomfortable. I sat down, answered a few texts and got in on a back log of e-mails from mid October I hadn't replied to. The guy across from me said his hellos then proceeded to stare at me, unblinking for well over ten minutes. It was unnerving. After my fourth e-mail, I looked up and gave him my "do you mind?" smile. He didn't mind at all and kept staring. In fact staring was not enough and he traveled chair by chair (about a minute sitting in each) until he was sitting right next to me.

WEIRD! This is where I lean away like he's putting off offensive body odor because I have issues with strangers getting into my personal bubble. He then scoots as close as he can, wheezing cigarette and beer fumes into my face and says, "you a pretty lady."

Okay. If he were a little kid, I'd laugh. If he were a hot, young college grad, I might even be flattered, but when you have on a sharp business suit and look about forty-ish, you're kind of asking for a slap in the face.

I fan away the cloud of beer and thank him as nicely as I can while pushing him back into his own chair with my finger. My oil change break is over and I escape with beer-boy hollering "call me!" on the way out to the car.

If this is what a break is like, I think I'd rather be insanely busy.