UPDATE: (WHICH HAPPENED EVEN BEFORE I POSTED THIS, BUT I LIKED THAT PART OF THE POST SO I LEFT IT: WHEN DH HEARD I WANTED RID OF THE BOXES OF MADNESS, HE GOT OUT HIS HANDTRUCK AND PUT IT ALL IN HIS VAN TO DONATE TO THE GOODWILL TOMORROW ON HIS WAY HOME FROM WORK! DONE AND DONE!! I’VE ALREADY BEEN SWINGING WHILE SINGING. YAY!!) 

This is going to be a boring post. It’s probably more for me than anyone else, a little guide to “how to get back to a fully functioning version of yourself.”

Many weeks (though not for a minute) I make lists of what needs to be done, what I want to do, what I would ideally do, what I could do if Word Raccoon would quit howling at lightning bugs.

(Shhh…it’s Sunday morning and I’m eating Greek yogurt with walnuts without her on the porch. I don’t want her to wake up until I’ve had a chance to make plans. Odds are, she will obliterate my plans like the feral animal she is, but I can try, right?)

She’s not fooling me. I know she’s just waiting until the ibuprofen kicks in and my fingers loosen up, then she’s going to take over the keyboard.

So this is the play, lovies: we return to Monday Hour One. Remember that? Make a huge list of what you need/want to do and then fit in the stuff you want to do first.

Word Raccoon always wants to write. (Except when she doesn’t, but lately? Not a problem. Now what she wants to write? Maybe an issue.) So writing goes on the calendar first.

Then comes everything else, in what I call the “Function Like a Human” Shuffle. This week, I’m calling the whole thing:

The Week I Get My Shit Together (Definitely Maybe Edition)

Because we’ve been here before. And we’re doing it again. With flair. We’re following Dana K. White’s wise “Progress Not Perfection” motto. That’s a tough lesson for Word Raccoons who are used to endless revisions. 

Here’s the (semi) plan, friends. I’m hoping it sticks. 

But first, gloriously off topic, which is WR’s way: Platonic is coming back in 4 more days to Apple TV+!! Word Raccoon and I LOVE that show!

Creative Stuff

• Write every day. It can be a blog post, a poem, a one-line manifesto. Doesn’t matter.
  
• Finally write that blog-essay-thing about Richard Hugo that’s been knocking around the inside of my skull like a ghost with a literary agenda.
  
• Write a blog post about seeing Emma Swift perform Friday night.
  She was luminous. Smart. Tender. Her performance of I Contain Multitudes cracked something open in me. It felt like being trusted with the sacred. I want to write about it before the feeling calcifies into “just another Friday.”
  
• Organize my poems so they’re not scattered across fourteen folders. Consider printing them and creating a binder of them, but feel too vulnerable and decide no.

• Decide what my poems want from me and vice versa. See if we can make that happen.

• Collate the Sears poems, write a list of others I’d like to write. They feel “next.” 

Home Stuff

• Unload the dishwasher, load as needed, do laundry including towels, clean the upstairs bathroom, pick up the porch.
  These are the regulars. They mostly get done. But I want to get ahead of them this week, before the vague panic sets in that something somewhere has been neglected and is now growing mold (not really!) and/or resentment.
  
• Also on the docket: deal with the “why is this still sitting here?” items (looking at you, pile by the stairs).
• Order groceries. Know that the more veggies you order, the more likely you are to have something come up preventing you from cooking, prepping, and/or eating them this week. Also: look in the freezer before ordering. You do NOT need more chicken right now, hoss. And are we grilling this week, WR, or ? 
• Tackle the petty tyranny of annoying admin tasks. Loathe them. Do them anyway.

• Reclaim the van from the depths of sweater clutter.

Every woman will understand this: even in the heat of summer, you bring a sweater everywhere, because air conditioning. You have a car-dedicated sweater, and one you bring with you. You end up leaving both in the vehicle. Repeat.

Your husband asks if they’re breeding in the back seat.

You suspect they are.

At this point, it’s less a vehicle and more a mobile knitwear colony. 

Also: dust, vacuum the decluttered vessel.

Porch triage, which includes getting rid of:

• A Pilates machine still in the box that looks like something you’d use to interrogate a Renaissance heretic. It’s currently blocking my swing, which is just criminal.
  
• A giant sun umbrella I originally thought we needed for the back yard; apparently we “don’t”?? In any case, I want it off the porch, pronto. Word Raccoon needs room for ballet practice. 

• A cart and machine that go together, both new in box that are difficult to explain but currently impossible to ignore. 

I’m this close to posting a giant “FREE PLEASE GOD JUST TAKE IT” sign and hauling EVERYTHING out to the road.  

(This is what happens when you’re a reviewer and offered things you might or might not agree to review. The thrift shops love you. But this stuff’s too heavy to cart there and also, I’ve been on the fence about the pilates machine until now. I want to be able to read on my porch swing again, so bye bye!!)

Book Stack Reality Check

• Skim the library books I checked out with wild optimism a couple of weeks ago, now stale.
  
• Return the ones that do not spark joy or at least mild curiosity.

• Read something for pleasure this week, even if I have to bribe myself with tea to sit still. Psst…I downloaded the newest Taylor Jenkins Reid, love, and I can’t even bring myself to read it though if there’s any book I’d want to read, it’s that. IDK why not…my brain is set to “burning to write” right now, I guess. 

• WR says that now that we’ve removed so much porch clutter, she spies a bookshelf that would LOVE to house a collection of poetry books. I have already told her NO, she may not move her bed outdoors. 

I’m onto her sun-loving self. 

She just wants to read Neruda to a passing birb.

Planning + Plotting (These should actually come first. Why are they this far down in the post? No one knows. WR refuses to let me move them. Yes, she’s awake and questioning my life choices. She says cleaning is BOOORRRIIINNNGGG!)

• Look at my calendar. Pretend to be a grown-up.
  
• Actually slot in the fun first, then fit in everything else around it.
  
• Dream about a (maybe) Labor Day escape, maybe someplace with quiet, caffeine, and plenty of sun. Maybe sand for bonus points. Maybe bring home something new for my sun porch collection. Which, btw, now holds an empty 7.5 ounce Coke Zero can, because at the car dealership last week, I was indeed offered a tiny can, which now apparently has .5 ounces less than before?? Word Raccoon was not amused but liked the tiny can, so she hopes DH doesn’t mistake it for trash when he sees it on display. Then again, he knows me and Word Raccoon. 

Extras for Gold Stars

• The three non-regular home care items will earn extra credit points : the maybe porch overhaul, the not-just-desweatering van cleaning, and a modest shoe purge/org because those things are everywhere right now and TBH, Word Raccoon has a hard time deciding which to wear when there are so many in sight. She’s been leaning towards the glittery rhinestone clogs the past few days, which are cute but so heavy!
  
• If I do all three, I will spend time swinging on the porch and reading. IF I get that terrible contraption out of here. (Any of you want to basically form a gym in your house? Because hey, I’ve got you. Let me just go inside…I have more.) 

Outdoor Redemption Projects (Now that the heat is not trying to kill us all)

• Clean that one wall’s siding at the back of the house that always looks like it’s auditioning for a mold documentary. I’ve never waited this late in the season to clean it.
  
• Paint the trim and garage door. Maybe.  
• The Squirrel Feeder Ultimatum.
  I tried to put it up myself. I failed. Even with a stepladder, I’m too short. And I wasn’t gonna haul the big ladder out myself. (I’m right that a squirrel feeder shouldn’t be a mere three feet off the ground?)
  It’s either going up this week, or it’s going out to the street for anyone else to take FAR AWAY. NOW.

The squirrels are watching. I can feel their judgmental little eyes on me. I know which way they want this to break. Me too, squirrel babies. 

But here’s the thing…with those things gone, I will suddenly notice that the porch windows need cleaning, and the porch needs dusting, and all of the china and glassware on it. 

Then I will notice my frog prince sitting on the shelf and he will want me to write: poems, on my novel (oh wait, I still have a WIP??), whatever, and all bets are off. Domestic productivity? Gone.

Will it all happen? Honestly? Probably not exactly like this. But something will. And the something is enough.

Because the point isn’t perfection. It’s motion.

And because the longer I sit here this morning, the more I can feel Word Raccoon stirring. She’s eyeing the keyboard like it owes her money. 

And frankly? I need her. Even if she chews the list and howls at cloud formations.

Maybe I should be ashamed that I prefer her antics to a highly organized shoe shelf. But nope. 

Actually, I just need to invite someone over and I will go into hyper cleaning/decluttering mode. 

Anyone fancy a cookout? I’ll make the elote. You can grill the burgers. Or maybe I will. 

Maybe we can do it together. 

That’d be fun.