If You Don't Like The Weather . . . (Patricia Potter)

There’s a saying in Memphis: “If you don’t like the weather, just wait until tomorrow.”

That’s also my view of life. There’s always tomorrow.

The above statement about the weather was ever so true this week. Last Friday, snow. This morning, budding trees everywhere and temperatures in the seventies. Daffodils survived the snow and are showing their spring best. Peach trees are in full color. Other trees are budding. My many rose bushes have sprung into life.

I often envy those who live on the coast, but then I experience our glorious southern springs and the equally breathtaking falls, and I know why I stay here. I love the changing of seasons. I like the challenge if never knowing whether I need a coat or shorts.

So now that we have this glorious 70 degree weather (not sure how long it will last; we once had an horrendous ice storm here in April), I’m getting the gardening itch again. I’m on deadline so I can’t indulge it. But I dream of a garden filled with multi-colored blooms, coral azaleas and a swimming pool warm enough to use. Soon. Very soon.

In the meantime I’ll doing the last intensive work of my newest romantic suspense as well as some marketing – not nearly enough – for “Catch A Shadow” which was released this month. It’s about a good deed gone badly awry, plunging a paramedic into a deadly world she doesn’t understand. I really liked this book. It’s one that had been simmering in my mind for years, just waiting for the right time to erupt.

Now I’m finishing another. Probably – hopefully – two chapters away from the finish. I hope to have the first draft finished today, then eight days of frantic rewriting.

The reward: a trip to New York and the annual Novelists, Inc. Conference.
I love New York. It’s such an alien life form. I was totally appalled when I took one visiting New York editor to lunch about twelve years ago and discovered she didn’t know how to drive.

How could anyone not know how to drive?

But many New Yorkers apparently don’t.

As a southerner, I worship my car. It’s freedom. It’s life. A car in the south is nearly as important as a house. To some, every bit as important.

And so when I go to New York, I view the inhabitants as I might view beings from Mars or Venus or some unknown galaxy far, far away. I take the Staten Island Ferry, and the subway to the zoo and worry about getting a cab after a Broadway show. I thorough enjoy it, but only for a week. I want MY car.

But in the menatime, I can look with wonder at the lights and the people walking dogs in Central Park or on the streets. I seek out the pubs and friendly,family Italian restaurants. I burnish my southern accent because everyone seems to think I'm helpless and go out of their way to help.

And so now I’m happy. I see the end of a book. The beginning of a new one. A trip to New York. The onset of spring.

What more can anyone want?