Gambling on Writing-Marcia

When we first started many years back, we had a high time of it, meeting at places like Bangkok 3, The Black Sheep, and The Wild Goose. I remember laughing so hard one night at the Wild Goose that the famous chocolate cake threatened to squidge out my nostrils. If any one of us says the magic words, "Cracky McCrackin" we can still get a giggle on. It's the opening for an inside joke that never fails.

At the places where liquor was served, we enjoyed a drink. Plates of food were involved, so was tipping. It cost a lot to be a writer back then, somewhere between twelve and twenty bucks a week. And that didn’t include any of the babysitting fees, summer camp dollars, or daycare ducats. After several years of enjoying our Round Table ‘Round Ashland lifestyle, I think we all realized we were spending way more than we were earning—which was absolutely nothing.

We tailored back to Starbucks. You can go fancy for the 16oz. Choke-a-latte and spend close to $4, or scale back to a buck-something for black coffee. I'm the strictly black girl, it's lighter on the wallet and the waistline.

As our writing got more risqué, our voices louder, and our Starbucks audience more interested in our story lines and sidebars, we realized we better head out to more secluded digs.

We retrenched at the SOU student union. It’s an abandoned shell in summer. Well, once we were interrupted by a Tourette’s-stricken women who’d lost her keys and a starving college kid who’d lost his cell phone (He took one of Jennie’s day old bagels, used her cell to call his, and voila! Problem solved.), but other than that the only person we can scandalize is the janitor--and sometimes he does mop a little close.

So we are now incurring significant savings. No bangers and beer, no Reuben and bread pudding, no pumpkin lattes and gingerbread scones—it’s whatever's in the thermos or water bottle, plus any wee treat we’ve squirreled away in our summer totes.

This is how I figure it, (depending on how the individual previously ordered) one can save between $20 and $80 a month (our first years’ expenses) down to somewhere between $8 and $16 a month for our Starbucks excursions. I propose that the Lithia Women start gambling.

I say we pool our coffee monies and buy Powerball tickets. The ability to make art is about the ability to buy time. Art takes time. Time is money. Most of us have no money and no time. If we win $44 million I’d like to think, once that’s split five ways and we’ve paid our taxes, none of us would have to work at Harbor Freight Tools or Jasper’s. We could write while our children are in school and shop at the farmer’s market for our organic vegetables and have beautiful meals al fresco every night. We would write for writing’s sake. What a tremendous luxury.

Come on ladies, pony up.