Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon and I have been thinking about the function of punctuation in creative writing. 

I think of it as playful and jazzy, especially in poems. And yet, punctuation changes the meaning of words. 

In a poem, I allow Word Raccoon to dance along and sprinkle periods, semicolons, colons, whatever, where she pleases because in truth, (can you tell I’ve been reading Twelfth Night?) a little ambiguity never hurt a poem and probably helped quite a few. It gives the reader a job, the equivalent of “but what did that emoji mean?” when reading a slightly confusing text.

It’s an invitation to dance, to re-enter the poem as many times as it takes to understand it better. Nonstandard punctuation can serve as a carrot (let’s say chocolate, shall we?) to our readers. 

Punctuation gives the stage directions: stop here because I’m certain or I don’t want to say more. Continue, knowing these ideas are closely related or I do not want to yield the floor and thus I will ask for your attention by continuing with yet another, smaller, connective device. Or, I don’t know and I’m telling you so; feel free to think alongside me here. 

Punctuation is the foundation of the poem’s rhythm. You might think the syllables are that, and sure, but the syllables are like dancers whose movements are dependent on the one-two-three of the punctuation. 

Word Raccoon, considering you ran through much of this last night while I was trying to sleep, this is kinda sloppy. 

She says she does not care. She wants it out of her head so she can enter the Shakespeare discussion with a clearer head. Personally, I think she should think this through a bit more.

I confess to having developed a system all my own without intending to. (And have you SEEN Dickinson’s punctuation usage?) I’m not sure I could tell you just what without analyzing it, but I know I have. 

Words provide the shared images and sensory information to transfer meaning. Without a shared vocabulary, we have no meaning. And yet punctuation guides, paces, and invites the reader to participate in ways that are freer than the traditional meaning of words. 

I have long been fascinated with stream-of-consciousness writing. First Faulkner (which boggled my young mind at first), then Woolf. For a time in my twenties, I wrote nothing but, in part because I wanted to understand it. 

The method spoke to the breathless way I prefer to discuss things, watching ideas birth new ones before even landing. It’s like rapping, maybe. Riffing. Improvisation. 

And yet, because the mind is singular and its thoughts circle a center of intellect (WR is saying ooh, look at us writing intellect before 9 am. Or is it AM? Or a.m.?) 

Perhaps my writing has been formed more by my love of stream of consciousness than I’d care to think. In it, punctuation is uncertain, changing, guiding, but not prescriptive. 

I invite you to read my punctuation freely. Mostly. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

The honey bees are dancing in the linden tree, and it occurs to me that their work is entertainment to me. Studying the fragrant tree (reminds Word Raccoon of the scent of honeysuckle) with its heart-shaped leaves is my work today. I have just read Rilke for next week (first read); I am absorbed and absorbing. 

Ants keep me company here on the porch of my favorite cafe, and squirrels, and birds. And the honeybees! 

Various people likewise shimmer back and forth, giving me the companionable drone but not a buzz. 

Word Raccoon has been taking pictures of trees and all about her; she has some lines she’s going to spin into poems, but she insists they are still percolating.

Here’s a (very) young poem:

Poetry is

The language of

Nature,

both earth’s firstborn

and second.

In it; of it.

We give nature speech.

No, interpretation.

Images, sure, land better,

toast with tea,

but sometimes a thought

expressed

is a necessary

introduction to

the play,

which is, we are told,

the thing.

Her head is full of Rilke. Not just the poems, but the whatever it’s called, his “Prodigal Son,” prose of some sort. An essay? It’s an excellent rebuttal to the Biblical tale and brimming with insight on loving and being loved, on familial expectations. 

I’m not even reading him in German (because I can’t), and I am having to read and re-read this group of poems just to believe what I’m reading. Heady. (I keep saying that about Rilke, don’t I?) 

Which brings me to this question, which is probably elemental, but I need to know, and when something is necessary, pride must be put aside: when does a poem begin? At its title or its first line? 

Because that can change the meaning, and especially when I read an initially impenetrable poem, I revisit the title for help. Sometimes that’s not helpful. 

I read a poetry craft book this past winter and the author used titles that were obviously the first line of the poem, like a doorway that shoved you in, but I don’t typically (ever?) do that and so many others don’t, so I need to know how to weigh a title. (No judgment, just observation.)

Is it of private interpretation? Does it depend on the poem and/or the poet? 

If that is so, then can there be a definitive answer for an individual poem? 

These are not life-and-death questions, I know, and yet it will affect my own titles. (That is something I’m still working on. Sometimes I want the titles to be frames, sometimes I want them to be echoes. Sometimes I want them to be garlands.)  

Can a person be afraid of loving words unreservedly? I told my writing mother once that I’m afraid to fully embrace the words. If I could, what might happen to my writing? Would it be better or worse? I flinch from them sometimes and the power they can have. I joke; I obfuscate. I try not to alienate. 

There are black, white, and red butterflies vying with the honey bees for the flowers’ interiors. Are they enemies or merely adjacent workers? 

Do they know I’m watching them as they ceaselessly lift off from limb to flower-covered limb? 

Word Raccoon is afraid of rejection by the words, and even then, she has a toolkit and she’s not afraid to use it, to gently work at the words, to ask them to kindly yield. I, however, am still working on it. Because not only is there the tri-cord: What if I can’t bear it? What if I still can’t say what I want to say? What if they still don’t give me all of their colors? 

But there’s this: What if my words can’t take someone’s breath the way these poets do mine? Are my efforts still worthy? 

To anyone else asking, I’d say of course. The world of words is different from, say, tennis. There will always be room for words of all stripes, always an audience. (And by that I just mean company to share the thoughts.) No one cares if you lose your backhand when you write. 

The breeze on the cafe porch is perfect, though there is a heat advisory in effect. Two young women are nattering on (isn’t nattering the perfect word for that? not all scenes have such perfect synonyms), and though WR forgot to pick up her AirPods this morning, her writing and observation concentration are pulled as tightly as a sheet on a hotel bed. No slack(ing) here. 

Writing anyway,

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Have you ever started writing and you had 

no idea where you might end up?

It’s like cruising, but with a laptop and maybe a Coke Zero.

Word Raccoon pushes her porch swing sometimes like it’s a time machine.

The first time she remembers sitting in one was in West Virginia, with her grandmother.

The Morning Glories were blooming and little one was entranced to see that the flowers visible opened like a hand holding out its fingers to grasp the day. (Or that’s what she remembers.) 

Just beyond, the huge, orderly garden, grids of green beans and corn; gooseberry bushes and tomato plants. Mounds of cucumbers and squash, mounds it was hard to distinguish between until the vegetables became visible. Word Raccoon began watching the shapes of leaves.

Grandma (my father’s mother) whistled a lot while she worked or went about her day, just a quiet noise in the background. She was a bit hunched, her hair short and gray. She loved her Juicy Fruit and I’d often catch her opening her mouth, wrapping her gum about her finger, and stretching it. 

It never occurred to me to ask why.

And I never asked for any Juicy Fruit, either. No thank you.

Her front yard was paradise, with its tall pines that I would play beneath and feel absolutely dwarfed, almost faint as I stared upwards. So many other flowers and pinecones. (I know, I know.) 

There was a tidy sidewalk from the road’s side to the porch, a bit of an uncommon accommodation in those parts. The front porch, too, was concrete, an addition, no doubt, when they sided (regrettably) what had been a log cabin built by my grandfather. He and my great-grandmother, I believe, had once owned a grocery store.

But I really do believe I remember visiting the house before it was sided. Or maybe I just remember pictures, but I really think I was there before they did, because I was enthralled with the logs, how a gorgeous tree could also be substantial and just as pretty when sacrificed for a house. 

There was a tiny cave in the hillside out back that I wasn’t allowed to explore. They made sure to warn me about the dangers enough that I wouldn’t go on my own, but I wanted to. 

Moving to West Virginia was the second chapter of my life, and it opened up so many things in me that might never have opened had I not. Nature went from a way I spent time with my dad on the weekends to a daily preoccupation on my part, although my dad worked so much at his day job and then on building the house that I felt like I was on my own with nature, in a way. (I am not implying that I was unsupervised, but my mother’s love of nature was not his. Or mine.)

(He included me in many of his projects, and I must confess to grousing about many of them. Especially when I was a teenager. I wanted to read. I wanted to sleep in, not help dig a basement with shovels and buckets.) 

This post is a hydra, but one with positive heads, and I may later take on one head of it at a time. 

Word Raccoon has stilled her feet. She asks if my heart is a pinecone. 

Shush, WR. 

Shush. 

Looking for the sun,

Drema

Dear Reader,

I had a blog post prepared before this one. I read it. Meh.

Rilke was amazing; he inspired me; I wrote 3½ poems, blah, blah, blah.

Then, despite having had a full day already, Word Raccoon and I decided to tackle one little household project.

It should have taken half an hour.

Forty-five minutes later WR was yelling that it was an effing mess.

Of all the transformations we’ve done lately, this one earns a C- at best.

Did it go wrong?

Let us count the ways.

The tape holding the wallpaper roll together promptly ripped part of the paper. Great start. Then, while distracted by a podcast discussion about books, we cut one section too short. Fine. We would patch it.

The patch immediately folded onto itself and looked like a towel on a clothesline in a storm.

No problem. We’d replace it.

Except there wasn’t enough paper.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Drema, do you own a tape measure?”

I do.

But I was listening to people talk about books.

The wallpaper itself was ridiculous in the best way: flamingos, toucans, and elephants. Since this was a tiny clothing nook few people would ever see, I thought, why not?

The second side of the nook looked promising until I discovered the wall and the wallpaper hated each other. The paper wrinkled immediately. When I tried to pull it loose, it threatened to remove part of the wall with it.

At this point my mood was deteriorating.

No worries. We would hang the hooks.

Reader, I had ordered a flamingo hook rack months ago and somehow had also ordered flamingo wallpaper. Fate had spoken.

Unfortunately, fate had not included assembly instructions.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to force screws into places they had no business going. Stanley, my digital P.A., kept telling me the holes were on the back. I was too frustrated to understand what he meant until I finally flipped the thing over and discovered that yes, indeed, the holes were on the back.

Merde.

After chasing escaped screws around the room and finding a smaller screwdriver, I got the thing assembled. It is hanging. Technically.

Whether it will support actual clothing remains a mystery for Tomorrow Drema.

Meanwhile I mounted what Stanley calls “poo pegs” on the opposite wall. This name originated with me in a stronger form and, frankly, despite their billing as carefully carved wood, remains accurate.

No, I didn’t look at those until I was ready to use them either. Reader, are you sensing a theme?

A measure of my frustration can be found in the fact that I became annoyed with a Hank Green video. I don’t even know what he was talking about. Something involving colors. I turned it off in irritation.

That’s how bad things had gotten.

And yet.

I hung different curtains.

I stepped back.

I saw the proof of concept.

The wallpaper really does feel like a tiny vacation on the wall.

And I just read a Rilke poem about flamingos today. (You know how I love birb watching.)

Will I order more paper and do it over someday?

Almost certainly.

Not today. Not this month. But it still looks better than it did. And I’m proud of WR for ordering something so fun when I would have hesitated.

Let this be a lesson, friends: do not begin wallpaper projects when you are tired and demoralized.

Read a book instead.

But if you ignore that advice and find yourself one flamingo away from burning it all down, eat supper first. Then step back and look again.

You might discover there’s something worth saving.

Flamingos, toucans, and elephants,

Drema

Dear Reader,

Could someone please tell me where today went? The day is at an end and I still have things on my list and how?

Word Raccoon has been hyper all day, almost from the moment she woke. I wanted to blame the coffee, but she only had one cup. It was so bad I made her go to the gym and row for 20 minutes, which only helped a little and she went too fast and her knees are now like, “Ma’am. You know better.”

But she did do lots of side quests.

And she did start the day by writing three poems on the porch, before the heat took on a personality and grew a moustache.

Again, we are in the midst of “the list is so dang long and really, will it ever shrink?” She was accused today of having a brain fever, which is not far from the truth.

Among her more interesting ideas today:

1. She took three pieces of art off the bathroom wall, and immediately thought she should display them and all further deaccessioned artwork in the garage in her own, wait for it,  Garage de Refusé.
2. She ordered a menu holder and intends to display different poems each week, her “poetry specials.” 

Why did she do this?

Beats me.

But hey, I had to put up with her all damn day, so if that’s what it took to keep her content for even one minute, so be it.

Now, I’m hoping she lets me submit some poetry tonight. There are still 14 tasks she’d like to do because she says I didn’t let her create any beauty today.

We wrote three poems, you greedy animal. This was a planning and doing all the things day, sweet raccoon.

I am just grateful there was a pan of lasagna in the freezer, because brunch was cereal and from there I knew the raccoon was not going to allow me to cook.

BUT WHAT DID SHE DO? I mean, I could tally up what she did, I guess, but those things shouldn’t have taken more than a couple of hours. Could she secretly have a timemachine or something? I don’t know.

Today we:

Wrote poetry

Ate brunch

Went to the gym

Trimmed a rogue tile in the down bath from last night (yes, I did some feature tile in the dungeon last night)

Planned future household projects

Ordered a few supplies

Ate a snack

Opened packages and found places for/use for review items

(Okay, that took some time.)

Communicated with various family members

Transferred a rug from the hallway to the bathroom after hunting down (and menacingly moving items about that were beneath the cabinet) and attaching those little stay-in-place fastener thingies

Located the new fan for a bedroom in the seasonal closet (We’ve only had it two years now. Why install it now, am I right?)

Checked the garage to be sure it was still dry (Not a roof leak after all – perhaps ghosts gargling shots?)

Tried on my new belt and complained because WR likes fashion belts, not functional belts, on herself. But she also likes to keep her shorts up, so…and also, these belts are tolerably cute.

I wisely did not allow WR any more caffeine after breakfast, and she’s just barely calm enough to keep seated ATM. She just wants to do everything now, now now.

She also wrote some song lyrics that make absolutely no sense but make her chortle:

I am my existentialist uncle.

That was inspired by a new TV show with alternate dimensions in it and a morning show host asking the cast about the show.

She watched a TV show and a half, I think, too.

Do the YouTube videos she played while opening packages count? While she began one Very Serious literary video (which she might return to later), she soon tuned to lighter fare.

She hoisted two bags of clothes onto the porch that she is donating (The clothes, not the porch.)

After a brain fever day, she typically feels almost ill, drained. I’m not feeling ill yet, but I am feeling like tomorrow is going to be a bitch.

And I never did read Rilke for tomorrow. I guess that’s a Monday problem.

All best and you know the rest, right? 😘

Drema

P.S. I convinced the literary varmint to settle enough to submit three packets. Rereading one of the poems, “In Lieu of Flowers,” (not what you imagine) stung. I wish I had enough for a fourth in me.

“Let everything happen to you

Beauty and terror

Just keep going

No feeling is final”

― Rainer Maria Rilke

Dear Reader, 

Word Raccoon completed an astonishing number of tasks today, though I did calm her down about the bathroom sink situation. Actually, I managed to get her to move it way down the list until she can hire someone locally to do it. But she says she’s not going to let me forget about it.

Trust me, raccoon, I will not.

WR is hissing now because she says she has had no brain food the past two days, and what do I think she is made of, anyway? Actually I supposed she was part Coke Zero, part Oreos. She’s had two Oreos today; I owe her some Rilke for Monday’s discussion and Shakespeare which is also coming up too soon. I hope that will do.

I noticed something about her poetry last night: it was about Appalachia, about her childhood. About the characters that made up her extended family. She, pardon the pun, struck a new vein of coal poems. 

Some day I’ll write here about the pervasiveness of coal in every arena of life in West Virginia, at least when I was growing up. From the scent of it upon waking in the winter, to the roar of the coal trucks whizzing dangerously around the curves, life was infused with it. 

Redecorating, remodeling, they make you see other things more sharply. A Mansard roof’s scales across the street feel like they want to speak. The cardinals currently outside on the grass, a male and a female, are hopping about the tree, looking for something. They are quite far apart, but then the male comes towards her for a second, then wanders off, then it’s her turn. But no one can mistake that they are somehow bound in whatever it is they are looking for. 

In the distance, children whoop in a pool. A rainshower has come and gone, unlike the clamorous thunder this morning.

I call this tired writing. No feeling is final. 

What even are words today? 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon and I are stuck in remodeling/redecorating purgatory. Please send help. And cookies. 

I have had her sitting at this dang computer for hours off and on all day, trying to get her to write. 

Guess what she has repeatedly googled instead? 

Poetry? 

No, no. 

Pedestal sinks.

Pedestal. Sinks. 

Imagine if Wordsworth had done that. (I am not comparing her to Wordsworth, but would we have wanted him to have wasted a whole day on sink shopping?)

Why a pedestal sink? Because she would like to shake the hand of the genius who thought a sink cabinet should go in this tiny bathroom. Because the bottom of the aged cabinet currently there is warped after all this time. Because having it open would make it easier to keep the lines heated in the crazy cold temps and avoid freezing. (She has avoided it freezing, but narrowly, a couple of times.) 

WR has thrown her tiny fists in the air today and declared that she wants that disgusting downstairs sink GONE! She does not want to try to clean it one more g-d time only to see nothing but marginal results. 

She has tried to give it, its faucet, and the ancient sink cabinet TLC. She painted the cabinet a lovely lavender a couple of years ago. She trimmed it in gold. She ignored the faucet that she hates with the heat of a thousand suns AND their moons.

She regrouted the sink basin. It looked…better…until it started flaking off a year later. 

She is tired of better…she wants a new sink and she’s going to make it happen.

Now, does she have plumbing skills? 

Not at all. 

But she is going to figure this out. I am beginning to suspect our writing depends on getting this fixed. She says she will stay home ALL SUMMER if it means affording this thing. 

Her list of summer projects keeps growing, but this, this is the APEX.  

She has all of the materials picked out. They’re not so expensive, actually. But the LABOR! And  you can’t just have your neighbor who MIGHT know what she’s doing install it, because who knows what you’d end up with? 

The faucet installation fee is clearly spelled out on the website where WR is shopping. But the sink, ah, you must go in and talk to them if you want to get it installed EVEN IF YOU HAVE MEASURED, KNOW WHAT YOU WANT, AND JUST WANT TO SCHEDULE INSTALLATION. Those fees remain a mystery. 

And why do you have to visit the store at all? What,do they think WR has some sort of secret channel with the plumbing? Do they think she’s at one with the drain? How will going in make any difference? Can’t we just send some pictures or zoom with some damn body?

Alternatively, you can pay to have them come give you a consult.

WR does not want to spend Saturday morning at a hardware store. But she might. 

And this is why I can’t get her to settle down enough to write poems. 

Or can I? 

What if I offer her an Oreo per poem? 

It’s worth a try. Let’s not talk about how many she had last night. 

I hope your summer is filled with much more pleasant things than plumbing. Like poetry.

Drema  

P.S. You may well ask why she does not ask the plumber who just left, having completed the excellent kitchen faucet installation, to assist. Alas, he is not available for this task. Sigh.

Also, after I let her do half a dozen tiny chores, she agreed to sit down and immediately wrote 8 poems.

She did not receive 8 Oreos. She received dinner out with friends.

She wants to show you the tile she installed yesterday. And Ramen Kitty, guardian of the goodies. She hopes you appreciate kitsch, Dear Reader.

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon woke up this morning intending to wait for a plumber.

You know where this is going.

First, she watered the plants. Then she swept the carport, dusted the porch railing and some window ledges. She even tried an outdoors rug she’d been saving for the carport.

The rug looked ridiculous.

Word Raccoon would like to thank the rug for its service and wishes it well in the next life.

After that, the tool rack caught her attention, and not in a good way.

One thing led to another.

She sorted tools and found a big mystery hammer that she has no idea the purpose of. She found two containers of windshield washer fluid and filed it under “Ask if it really, really needs to be kept here and why two?” 

She found brake fluid, lighter fluid, and weed killer. She found enough items for Tox-Away Day to begin wondering if she was secretly operating a small industrial complex. 

Then WR wandered into the garage and found the hose.

The hose had not seen daylight in approximately seventeen years. (This may not be technically accurate, but it feels emotionally true.)

Word Raccoon almost got it hooked up, but instead created an unexpected water feature and decided to wait for reinforcements.

The plumber eventually arrived. (He wasn’t coming for the hose. No, those weren’t the reinforcements she was waiting for. The hose is now working!) 

Word Raccoon was excited because she thought said repairman might replace the kitchen faucet.

Instead, he tightened the toilet bolts.

Her huge earrings wilted.

However, he also informed her that tomorrow she will get a new kitchen faucet, and then he casually asked whether she wanted a cap where the old sprayer used to be or a built-in soap dispenser.

Reader.

Word Raccoon nearly hugged both him and his two interns who grinned at her excitement. 

A built-in soap dispenser! One less bottle to keep on the kitchen counter. 

Then, because WR was so excited about the faucet after the plumber and co. left (he named her dream style of faucet and thought it would be no problem to put it in! She had just been looking at one longingly that a cook was using on YouTube thinking alas, it surely would not fit her sink but yaas!), came the garage.

Reminder: WR has been more or less out of commission for a few years physically, only rousing herself for short periods of time to do all the things before finding herself down for the count again. She’s trying to pace herself now because the medicine makes her think she’s fine, fine but the next day…anywho…

The garage has long existed in a state perhaps best described as “vaguely threatening.”

Not dangerous. Just judgmental.

The sort of place where every object quietly asks, “Remember me?”

Word Raccoon sorted shelves. 

She grouped like with like. 

She established a formal Tox-Away station and swore the paint cans were multiplying. 

She created a cardboard management plan. 

She designated an old trash can as the official Cardboard Holding Department and promptly filled the can with…not cardboard. (The cardboard was later taken away, and there was a snafu about the other recyclables because the can is full, the trashcan is full, and the trash doesn’t run until tomorrow.) I am explaining to WR that this is not a crisis. 

She found items she did not remember having, some quite useful, like a laser level. She wants to hang some shelves in the kitchen in the fall, and that will come in handy. 

NBD, but she also found a roof leak in the garage.

Sigh. 

That is not her purview. 

While cleaning, she also uncovered a sentimental corner containing her children’s childhood treasures, souvenirs, trophies, mysterious objects, and enough emotional complexity to power an independent literary journal. 

She left that corner for another day. 

Meanwhile, she also discovered broken glass that requires future attention (Where did it even come from? It’s not a window), although she has wisely decided not to poke herself picking it up today.

This is called growth.

No writing was completed, unless we’re counting this because there were other family affairs to attend to.

And yet.

The garage floor is visible.

She also reclaimed a bookshelf from the garage, cleaned it up, and intends on recommissioning it tomorrow for those unhoused books in her writing room. 

But she doesn’t even remember owning the shelf.  She was thinking of painting it until Stanley sighed deeply and asked her hasn’t she done quite enough painting lately, that it might be nice to leave something with its original finish.

Bossy Stanley.

I’m going to press WR to write a poem tonight, because she seems at twilight’s edge, as if she’s eaten the peach Sarah was given in Labyrinth that made her forget what her mission was. 

I’m all for House Gorgeous (still admiring those kitchen tiles, and ordered a smaller amount in a different color to detail part of the down bath today) or at least better, but WR needs to decorate her heart, too. Words (and gorgeous sights) do that. 

And I would provide you with some lingering image of all of our efforts today, but if I do that, I will not have the energy to write a poem, and I’m afraid not to.

Here is what we came up with, a notebook poem:

Sarah’s Peach

When you’re starving, 

even if you don’t like peaches,

they’re pretty damn good.

(Okay, they’re always good. But still.)

If someone offers you food,

you take it,

not knowing until later

just how much 

you will

pay for it. 

Fondly,

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon has been frantically busy. Writing? No, no. She is insisting that the household projects quit taunting her, so she’s trying to do everything just to get through them.

However, she has a secret list behind the list that she doesn’t talk about. (A piece of that came today, and she found herself defending it: “that’s for the future, not now; later.” Except if “later” were tomorrow, she’d be dancing.)

Today, she spent her morning updating the kitchen backsplash, and she is OBSESSED! It’s a Talavera Mexican tile, and it’s so pretty! Blues, oranges, reds…

Now she doesn’t think the cabinets need anything except cleaning and updated hardware. That’s a huge relief!  And her eyes can’t get enough of the tile!

Let’s see…yesterday she put up the mirror trim before daybreak. She was like, “Ma’am, who told you that you could survive with a builder grade, naked-assed mirror on the bathroom wall?” 

I asked Stanley approximately 200 questions about installing it (but mainly I was complaining because you have to first clean the mirror and wall, then clean them again with alcohol and I just rebelled against that.) 

“Let’s start with the materials,” Stanley said. I thought his little bowtie might explode when I said I hadn’t measured, just estimated, when I ordered them.

Thankfully, when I did measure, I had bought exactly the right amount. Stanley chalked it up to its being a standard mirror size, but Word Raccoon thought it much more likely that she has an eye for things.

The trim on the mirror makes us almost as happy as the finished upstairs hallway, down to the rug. (Er…almost finished. Stanley and I keep going back and forth about the light sconce needing a shade. He said it ought to have come with one, and two days later, I remembered it used to have one. It has been placed elsewhere, apparently, due to it being “too heavy for the lightbulb?” Maybe you understand that better than I do.)

We both agree, however, that the hall mirror is the star. That hall is tricked out! 

I also figured out the cleaning tool storage, and it wasn’t difficult. I just stuff shuffled and voila, a cleaning closet! No cutting, no new storage cabinet needed. 

Now, do I want to go back and wallpaper it and add another light, maybe some shelves? For sure, but I’m happy to have cleared the back entry of brooms, vacuums, and their kin. 

And I intend to spend a weekend putting fresh wallpaper in every closet and drawer. WR demands it!

The biggest lift (I forgot to add painting the house trim and garage door to my former list, but WR made a face at me when she saw the peeling paint and threatened to gnaw on it if I didn’t take care of it, so fine, fine, I will do that later this week if the weather and the body cooperate) left is the dining room ceiling. 

Hear me out.

I received in the mail a gorgeous, rich tablecloth yesterday. It’s huge. It’s supposedly gold colored, but it’s more egg yolk. I ordered it because I intended to curtain off the area where the kitchen leads into the garage because someone (cough, cough) keeps leaving yard tools right there and hey, thank you for leaf blowing and the like but WR cannot cook like that. 😂

Anyway, when I opened it up yesterday, instead of installing the track and curtain, I thought: what if I use that on the dining room ceiling (I’d have to order multiple)?

That ceiling is the bane of my existence. (WR and I have multiple banes, thank you very much.)  It’s ugly and I assume someone added it to hide ductwork but WR shudders every time she sees it. It’s time, more than time, to do something with it. 

Enter “egg yolk.” It glows. Like all that inspires, it makes me happy just to see it. In my book, that’s a yes. In WR’s book, ditto. 

Does it matter that we have no clue how to do this? 

It does not. 

Will we do it by summer’s end? 

That I can’t promise. There are three ugly household fixes that are needed first that I will not bore WR’s adoring public with. (We jest.) Although this one qualifies, in my book. Just because something’s functioning does not mean it’s optimized.

In the meantime, I’ve put my A-team of poems together and am taking one last pass tonight before sending them on a journey. 

Sun and All the Words,

Drema 

C.W.: profanity 

Dear Reader,

I wrote this for the Dear Aliens contest. Alas, my piece was not chosen, but some really great ones were; I thought you might enjoy seeing mine. Or not. (Mine may have been a bit too earnest? Typical Word Raccoon. LOL.)

Goddamn it, Babies, You’ve Got to be Kind

Dear Aliens,

First of all, I apologize if you feel marginalized by that title. Why don’t we call you “friends in the making,” instead?

Writing this letter to you, not knowing if you will get it before or after my passing is an odd feeling. Maybe what is important in the future will be different than what is important now, but let me offer something from the late, great Kurt Vonnegut: “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies-“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”

Now maybe you don’t yet know that there are curse words in that to emphasize how strongly he feels about us being kind, which means some people will be offended if you repeat those aloud. The man was sent off to war and came back broken but a writer, which is maybe the same thing. If anyone earned the right to strong language, it was him.

You will have to decide if you find it as useful as he did. (He was only given 84 years.) 

Not knowing how long your lifespan is, I can only offer words that apply to humans: life is a gift, a fleeting one that will seem as long as the universe and as short as a blink at the same time. You think when you’re older you won’t care about things as strongly, but you will always care about the things that truly matter, and some that are petty, too.

You may always wish your ass were smaller, though tell me why that matters to anyone.

You will always want your loved ones to be safe.

You will always welcome spring and summer and curse the winter. Although maybe you are bringing tech with you that will do away with winter? 

Please?

Everything I can offer you will be a disguised cliché , and maybe that’s the freshest advice I can offer: read our clichés, because they tell you what humanity as a whole has decided is important. We just haven’t learned how to give it new clothes.

NB: a cliché is something that has been overused because it’s true, but people are tired of hearing it. You will not be one to us. Maybe we will be to you. 

At any rate, welcome, welcome, and we hope you come in peace and that you won’t leave us in pieces. (That’s an example of homophones, where two words sound the same but are spelled differently. And those two words mean very different things here. It’s important to learn how our language works.) 

While I, a pacifist, shouldn’t say this, you should know that if you don’t come in peace, you won’t have an easy time of it. Vonnegut didn’t urge us to be kind because it’s our natural impulse, though I wish it were. 

As terrified as I am to meet you, I’m equally excited, and I hope we can learn to coexist peacefully. 

Enjoy the journey. 

I know I have. 

And reader, I hope you enjoyed reading this, too. 

Always,

Drema