Dear Reader,
Across the street the neighbor’s college-aged daughter is sprawling on a plaid blanket with her boyfriend, carving pumpkins which are sitting on tree stumps.
I’m actually on the porch swing so I can only see them if I turn, because I don’t want them to feel like I’m staring at them. Which I’m not, but they are just the perfect fall painting.
Word Raccoon’s eyes are hearts right now. She wants to paint them.
(The young woman was the same one who came over and claimed the garment rack I put out at the road with the other furniture, what was it, a couple of weeks ago? She suggested we get together for coffee sometime – I gave her a Bradbury comic book I found once because we had talked about him at her workplace.)
Indoors, the kitchen smells of chili, another fall dish it seemed time to make, regardless of the temperature out. The chili spice was on “use it or lose it” island, so I thought it was time to turn it into something before I had to lose it. Bonus: chili is better the second day, so tomorrow’s dinner now exists.
WR was not happy that I made her organize the utility closet today, but it was bothering me. I took out every last thing that didn’t belong and put back only the few things that did, thereby assuring the safety of my beloved steam mop, the upstairs vacuum, the upstairs step ladder, and cleaning wands and such, all hanging now. WR thought it was going to be so much more difficult! And she did not trust me that everything I wanted to fit in there would. Done and done, my raccoon.
Before all that, WR woke up and began reading The Historian. She pinkie swore that she wasn’t going to go down any rabbit holes this morning, but before I knew it she was looking up organdy and its history and the traditional headdress of what is now Croatia called a počulica, made of organdy. Kostova described it as being butterfly shaped and WR wanted to know more, naturally. Then WR wanted to know the difference and history between organza and organdy.
That being said, WR is only on (sigh) page 85! And it’s over 900 pages long!
But she’s enjoying it.
There’s no rush, except that other novel came in the mail I’ve been excitedly waiting for, and then the Libby app said “Surprise, here are two novels” and then WR was told she had to verify her card but whatever she did, she could not get it verified.
At first she thought it was because she tried to verify it with her CVS card, and she laughed but then when she tried to fix it, the real library card didn’t work either.
So now she has to go to the library tomorrow and ask them to please, please fix this before the new Russo she has been waiting for goes away (Under the Falls.)
The second novel Libby offered us we nobly said to send on to the next reader in line and we will jump back in line when we’re ready. (We’re not totally selfless; they let you cut the line when you do that.)
We feel poetry at the back of our head, coming this way. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming. It’s dessert, writing poetry is. But let’s not call it pumpkin spice anything. That’s too banal for my writing partner. Are fizzy desserts a thing? If so, it’s that.
What a beautiful fall day!
Drema