Becoming Jessica Fletcher

Becoming Jessica Fletcher

I want to be Jessica Fletcher.
Between 1984 and 1986 Murder, She Wrote was a highly successful TV Series starring Angela Lansbury. But it is not Angela I am interested in, although she had a hugely successful career on the big screen, the big stage as well as television, it is Jessica B. Fletcher.

Angela aka Jessica Fletcher

In those years as I raised a family, worked, studied and dreamed I looked to her character as the person I wanted to become. J. B. Fletcher was a retired school teacher, widowed, living in a small town in Maine called Cabot Cove who turned to writing murder mysteries, and who gained world wide fame as a best selling author.

She apparently got up bright and early every morning, perfectly coiffed, dressed in casual but classy clothing, make up perfect, puttered in her garden, went for healthy walks and kept an immaculate house. In addition she had a delightful circle of friends, including Dr. Seth Hazlitt, and Sheriff Amos Tupper who popped around for dinners and were often the portal to her murder mysteries.

My new BFF Wikipedia tells me ‘Murder rears its ugly head with great regularity in her vicinity (so improbably often that the mystery term “Cabot Cove syndrome” was eventually coined to describe the constant appearance of dead bodies in remote locations).’

All those years of thinking that when my circumstances changed, children grown, time on my hands that I would become Jessica Fletcher (well not become because that would be just too weird, but become like.)

I actually have a blogging buddy who in my mind comes closest to this character.
She is Judithb who writes from growingyoungereachday.wordpress.com.

In my mind she lives this gracious existence. You may want to check her out.

So now I have that circumstance; not widowed but alone, time to do, to be. But for five months now I have tried to figure out what my life is, what my schedule is – unsuccessfully. I am not getting the best bang for my buck. I have tried rising early, rising late, promising myself daily exercise, cooking real meals, oh and writing successfully like there is no tomorrow.

So I think I may try the J. B. Fletcher way. That means getting myself out of bed and putting all the pieces in place. It is 11:15 a.m. and here I sit in bed where I read and write my blogs first thing in the morning. Would Jessica sit in bed – NO!

I look around my apartment or suite as it is apparently called – if you pay enough for it it becomes a suite. Clothing piled in laundry stacks, dust bunnies mating and reproducing everywhere, dishes in the sink even though there is a dishwasher which still has clean dishes in it. Papers and books and notes oh my.

So I think for today I will be J. B. and since I have a late start I may try for tomorrow too. WWJBD?