Dear Reader,
Today has trotted away with itself, and I’m not entirely sure how. I woke before six, so it’s not as though I slept in.
I have been catching up on writing product reviews, something that’s easy to fall behind on if you so much as blink. I received the best pair of running shoes and, while I’d never worn the brand before, I’m excited to recommend them. (I did not, admittedly, wear them for running, but they’re excellent walking shoes.)
I finished reading the second in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I enjoyed it, but I was also glad to reach the end, not quite feeling the same literary evangelism that had me recommending the first book to four different people. I did have to fight my way through parts of it, though that may have had more to do with all the caffeine I had this morning than the novel itself.
Part of the day was definitely consumed by accidental online paint browsing. Because of course replacing the dining room ceiling tiles means the walls need painting now, too. Alas, the lack of enough light to please (damned carport, WR says. She hates it.) means going a shade or two lighter than I’d prefer.
And while I was at it, I also chose a potential living room color. Which will mean taking down those stupid glass shelves that are too high to be of any use and were there when we moved in. The walls will also have to be partially stripped and painted. Some thick wallpaper has been gradually cracking.
Then there’s the decade-plus stain on the ceiling that landed there thanks to a child of ours who shall remain nameless. I once tried to get rid of it, but it didn’t work, and I’ve simply averted my eyes for years. My eyes refuse to be averted anymore.
I’m putting the painting on the fall sprucing list, but we’ll see if Word Raccoon can wait that long. She’s longing to be finished with the projects, already. She has poems to write!
Last night she dreamed about her novel, and pieces she’d been puzzling over arrived wanting to be written. Not yet, apparently, but it feels complete in her head, though it’s miles away from that on the page. She’s unsure if she can bear to finish it. Like any novel, she doesn’t like to give them up. Well, she doesn’t have to, does she? She just needs to transform it into something shareable.
A chapbook contest wrote to say that while we didn’t win, they found our poetry compelling. You don’t always receive a personalized rejection, so I was grateful.
Yesterday I also hustled out two poetry submissions, sending Look, I Built a Cathedral out, and submitting to a new journal looking for poems related to classical literature. I seem to have quite a backlog of those.
I’ve confined today’s House Gorgeous items to small actions, mostly opening packages and putting things away, breaking down boxes, and putting up new brackets for the upstairs bathroom curtains. (Update: I just heard it them fall. Okay, take two tomorrow. Why do I ever trust adhesive fasteners?)
I also sorted our upstairs toolkit into a wooden box because the plastic kit required so much shoving and shuffling just to put things away, and WR kept nipping at the handle out of frustration. We chucked that plastic nightmare into the trash.
I’m also slowly putting together a birthday box for our eldest. Now if everything gets here on time…
The vacuum stand is assembled, though I discovered I’d need to order a charging plate before I can actually hang the vacuum from it. Since I was already ordering attachments, that worked out fine.
I also changed the plain ivory outlet cover in the upstairs bathroom for a version covered in wildflowers. One minute’s work created a moment of lasting beauty.Â
Like writing a poem.
I think this is what you call project creep, and I’m feeling it on every front. What happened to Sunday being a day of rest? Writers don’t have those, do we?
WR points me back to a notebook poem we wrote yesterday.
Administrivia
I deal my day out on slips of paper:
Water the flowers
crumple, toss
Go to the farmers market
rip, dispose
Write a poem
see above
Visit the gym
check and trash
The things only you can do,
I’ve left
undone.
And now my darling little fuzz moppet is writing a sappy poem that has Mark Twain — Mark. Twain. in it. I can’t think of a less romantic character, but here our gorl is, writing love American style. Hee hee hee.
Drema