Dear Reader,
The morning is getting away from Word Raccoon. She started out strong, getting the plates out of the garage to wash and pass on to Zack and Erica when they come over to dinner on Friday, made the bacon ahead for the requested BLT’s so my hair won’t smell like bacon on Saturday night (hair appointment on Friday), and WR even prepped what she could for today’s dinner.
Here’s where she slid sideways: she has decided she MUST paint the dining room in November, and she started shade shopping. I reminded her a decision had already been made, but she couldn’t find it at first, and when we did, it was at a shop too far away and we’re not paying $35 to have a can of paint shipped.
So we pivoted and found a color that pleases us, Rose Quartz. To be honest, WR wants something deeper rose, but also, the dining room does not get enough light for that and she knows it. If we painted it that color and she started whining, she knows how very unhappy I would be with her.
This hardware store ships for free, and it’s a good price but decent quality, both important.
WR has said the dreaded, verboten words to me about painting the dining room: “How hard could it be?”
WR, we’ve talked about that!
She’s scheduling a day in her mind. I told her to double it.
She’s saying it won’t take but half an hour to clear the furniture and strip the walls.
“Remember the ceiling tile?” I ask her. “Remember what a pain having the house torn up? Remember moving just the desk, let alone the other furniture, and how the dining room table’s poor leg broke and had to be mended?”
She says she does not care, she wants, nay, needs color on those walls. She says I will not be happy with a lighter color. I counterargue that I will be more unhappy, especially in the winter, to not have light.
I just rehung the dining room curtains (forgot about them after the tile!), just covered the air conditioner with its winter curtain to make it less ugly, WR! Am I supposed to take all of that down?
She shrugs. She says she has waited long enough and she will have painted walls before our next birthday.
Our, WR? Now you’re claiming my birthday, you silly raccoon? Our birthday is so close to Thanksgiving you could just say that.
Ah, she says, but that might make it sound as if we’re preparing to have Thanksgiving dinner here, WR and that we are not.
So, as I said, she’s off track.
Last night she stayed up doing the initial preparations for Saturday’s costume. (Sorry, we don’t tell ahead, do we, WR?) She ripped and cut and hot glued and visualized the pieces of three separate costumes she is integrating into one while listening to Green Day. She couldn’t find the bits initially, but she wasn’t panicked: a costume can be the work of five minutes around here if need be: a hat, a scarf, whatever. But this is what she has decided to wear, and now she’s waiting on a thread delivery to put it all together.
She has to finish that this evening because Friday night is busy but wait, she forgot she has Saturday morning, too. Whew.
Update: she spent the afternoon on the sun porch sewing in the rain and singing along to a musical. The costume is officially assembled, but not tried on yet. Fingers crossed!
With any luck we will have some time to check on last minute poetry markets closing today or tomorrow and get some poetry out there. And we really want to work on the novel today. Rebecca, being an academic, would like fall, wouldn’t she? I think I’d better give her a chance to tell me. And I’m thinking of taking her for another walk later today. I’ve been meaning to try a community trail. I think she’d enjoy that. I’ll ask her.
Another update: I managed to submit a full-length poetry collection this evening. Looking back through the poems felt like traveling back in time. I love those poems. Even as I was doing evening chores, lines of poetry were coming to me. While I was sewing, poetry arrived, too.
It just occurred to me that I don’t think I added the latest versions of a couple of poems in the collection. Dang it! I thought my poetry was better organized than that!
My novel writing went well if we count depth and not length: I spent probably an hour on one scene, going back and adding sensory details, and then going further into those to not only show a carved box, but the scent of the cedar box. I had that bounce between tasks feeling today because the writing was going so well. Strange, I know, but sometimes when I’m delighted with the writing I can’t settle down into it because I’m too excited.
The scene was an important reveal, and to show backstory without telling it, to imagine the group in this actual situation versus the shadow of it that has already been in the story. I’m not sure it’s a great idea to be polishing this section when so many others need so much more work, but I’m someone who can’t resist decorating when I should be doing structure work, so let it be.
That’s writing, too.
Drema