There’s this odd sort of bubble that happens when I have relations in town.  Everything gets cut off in favor of the visiting family, almost like we go into some sort of strange social quarantine.  I absolutely cannot produce *anything* either artistically or literarily and spend my entire time playing haus-frau, puttering about, picking up toys and scraps of paper, cooking, entertaining.  Creatively it’s like someone has hollowd out my head, like that little bit of brain that makes me look at everything a little sideways has been temporarily excised and stored in a jar.  It’s like the day after drinking, the habitual noise and picture show that goes on in my head all the time is temporarily shut down and I cannot make *anything*.  I can’t even talk about anything properly.  Ideas, concepts, thought processes are all sidelined, derailed, missing in action.

*shudder*

As much as I love my family, I am ever so happy when they go away.