Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon began working on a poem this afternoon. She was interrupted, but the core of it is there to return to. That’s how writing works some days, doesn’t it? This one is about telling the bees…Well, we wouldn’t be the first to write a poem about that, would we?

I think the bees deserve to hear about the good things that happen too, don’t you? So here are some that maybe seem commonplace and nonliterary, but are still pretty cool.

The hot day handed WR, mercifully, a wave of breeze that deeply refreshed her at just the right time.

Also, she had a fascinating conversation that ended with someone asking her, “Are we living the same life?” We just might be, given all the strange similarities we discovered.

AND this person is also reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl series!! What?? WR threatened to dance on the table when she heard that, but I yanked her down just in time. Our delight, though, was surely apparent.

Another topic discussed today: WR is plotting the launch of an online vintage clothing popup shop. Maybe. Possibly. We’ll see. She gets excited about projects and then works tirelessly until she doesn’t.

Ask me how I know.

But this idea might have legs. It involves writing, too, tangentially. Nope, WR, mum’s the word!

Then there’s the ongoing ceiling tile project that is slowly continuing. Our goal was to finish installing the first box of tile (these are the big tiles, the 2X4, btw) today. Up the ladder we went again this afternoon, expecting that now that we know how to do it, it would be faster.

Reader, it became a much bigger deal than expected. But progress is being made.

Turns out, the last row was slightly smaller. And the metal cross pieces of the grid were loose on one side. I found that out when one fell on me. I kept telling myself it was no big deal and that I could figure it out.

I did, but for a while I was convinced we’d simply have to live with a mysterious gap in the ceiling forever.

One of the tiles had to be trimmed, which is good practice since nearly all of the remaining spaces to be filled will have to (sob, sob) be trimmed to fit. We’s skeered. Very. 

We did, eventually, finish installing the first box, though gaps remain that need to be gently closed, but not when WR is in a yeeting mood. She “lowered” (threw) to the floor one of the new tiles that was being stubborn, certain it wouldn’t crack.

It cracked.

Thankfully, it can be used to fill one of the smaller spaces. But I hope she’s learned her lesson.

I’m afraid Word Raccoon is going to try to abandon this project because she adores beginnings and has a complicated relationship with middles. Which, who doesn’t, WR? Stay with it, gorl.

She has four large bruises on her legs from her tiling efforts, but she bruises easily so she is not concerned but it looks bad on her.

Imagine, dear raccoon, looking up at that ceiling with adoring admiration not many days hence. It will all be worth it.

Maybe I should tell her there will be no further popup shop discussion until she finishes that ceiling.

Oh, WR… Word Raccoon? Are you listening?

She has a finger raised while she reads, telling me to hang on. Wait, nope, it’s not that finger…

I much prefer other, softer, hand gestures, WR. Thank you very much.

Drema

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon is throwing a hissy fit this morning. She didn’t sleep well, and she has lab work this morning. Fasting lab work.

First of all, since she didn’t sleep well, she reaches for the snooze button, but I tell her, “Not so fast.” Which pisses her off from the get go.

Then, she stands up and asks if we’re about to get Coke Zero to wake our sorry carcass up.

But we can’t. Lab work means nada, zip, nothing until afterward.

“Not even a whiff of coffee?”

Nope. I’m not going to tell her she can have water, because she’d just spit it back on me if I gave her some.

She flops onto her back and kicks the floor with her little boots. I didn’t even know she had boots.

“Why are you getting dressed in those?” I ask when she finally consents to get dressed and puts on jean shorts and a tee. She knows we’re meeting someone for coffee in a while, and we’re not wearing that.

“That is later and this is now, and it’s this or I don’t go to the stupid vampire appointment.”

Which is very rude, because she knows we really enjoyed talking shopping with the vamp…I mean, phlebotomist last time. I can report back to her about a store that had just opened when I was there last. I found awesome books there!

“And WR, you’re up early enough to water the flowers,” I coax.

I should know better.

“Screw the flowers,” she shrieks, claiming she’s starving. Now I’m afraid to let her near the tomato plant with its smattering of yellow blossoms.

I also stare knowingly at this beast who rarely eats this early, who regularly goes to the gym without eating.

“Don’t tell me we’re not going to the gym again today either,” she yells.

Great. Now she’s eavesdropping on my thoughts.

“Since when do you care about the gym?”

“Sometimes I do!”

Part of her peevishness, I think, is the lack of caffeine. Part is the lack of sleep. But another part may be because she stopped mid-project yesterday. She does not like that.

That being said, she’s not as stiff as I thought she might be from the ceiling tile tango, which is a mercy because she can’t take medicine yet either.

Ideally, she’d water the flowers, take her shower, and put on her clothes for the day.

“Ideally, you would give me a tiara like Princess Donut wears in Dungeon Crawler Carl,” she snaps.

“Let’s make a deal. You water the flowers, and then you can read a few pages before your appointment.”

It’s not the ideal compromise, but I know when I’m licked.

“Let’s make a deal. You put makeup on your stupid face and put on some damn earrings like a civilized person.”

She’s asking for earrings?

We might be in luck.

Don’t tell her, but I’m going to sneak out and water the flowers.

Please send good vibes. And all the Coke Zero you can spare, will you? But for after.

Wish the phlebotomist luck. She’ll be seeing us before the Coke Zero does.

Drema

Dear Reader,

I’d been hearing about the book Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman for a while, and by the title alone WR and I firmly filed it under Nope. Then we heard Kendra Adachi mention it on her podcast.

While we would not say our reading tastes align (at all, which is fine because we like everything else she does) with Kendra’s, we think we know what she wouldn’t like, and our dislikes align, which is just as important to know.

The book is classified as a science fantasy LitRPG, not something we would normally enjoy, except it reminds us strongly of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, which we and much of the world enjoyed.

All to say that WR and I were intrigued by Kendra’s recommendation. (I suspect WR has different reading tastes than I do. Nothing new there.) 

So we bought a copy for Barry, sneaky us, knowing we were going to read it after. But he was finishing up another series, and we said, “Oh, we won’t read your fresh book until you do,” while secretly hoping he would notice that WR and I really, really wanted to read it.

He did not notice.

But he did (eventually) read it.

I asked if I would like it. He gave me a qualified maybe.

Barry ordered the second book in the series for himself, which I took as an endorsement. Then life happened, other books intervened, and somehow the idea of reading it went stale. (Does that ever happen to you?) 

Still, I’d mentioned it to a friend in passing, and she asked me to tell her what I thought, so I decided I would for sure read it. (And dang it, I forgot to text her my opinion.)

I began reading it, and from the first page, it was a carnival ride. A good one. So fast paced I thought I’d fall out of the book. So well imagined. Such a fresh concept (comparison to Ready Player One aside, because that it is not, but it’s in the same ballpark). And while I’m a dog person, there was an imperious cat, Princess Donut, that cracked me up.

Before you know it, you’ve gone from the world as we know it to…something else.

It happens so quickly that the book barely gives you time to catch your breath, which turns out to be exactly the point.

The explosions and monsters may get your attention, but they aren’t really the point. What surprised WR and me was how much of the story is about ethics, loyalty, friendship, and the strange ways people discover who they really are under impossible circumstances. It’s a book that keeps asking what it means to remain human in a world that would very much prefer you become something else.

At the beginning of the book, Carl goes outdoors one frigid night when his girlfriend’s cat sneaks out the window and he can’t lure the cat, Princess Donut, back inside. He tosses on a jacket, his absent girlfriend’s pink Crocs and little else as he goes outdoors to persuade the cat.

He does not, but soon enough he has reason to be (maybe) grateful that he is outdoors. He also quickly wishes he had dressed a little warmer.

(This next bit may be a spoiler, but it happens so early, and it’s in the title, so maybe not?)

Soon after Carl goes outdoors, every building on Earth disappears, along with everyone who happened to be under any kind of shelter. This is because the Borant Corporation has come to harvest the planet of anything valuable, and the survivors are forced into an 18-level televised game to save their lives via dungeon crawling. They must almost instantly choose to enter the dungeon to battle for their lives or remain aboveground and take their chances.

As TV Guide used to say, “Chaos ensues.”

From wise mentors to backstabbing other crawlers, from learning that his intelligence is lower than the cat’s, as well as his charisma, Carl goes through it. And you find yourself rooting for him because of his loyalty, because of the bits of humanity he can’t hide.

And come on, I have to spoil this part: the cat gains the ability to talk. And she has opinions! In fact, she seems to think she’s Carl’s boss. Watching their friendship develop is sweet. 

But beware: the cat is ambitious! She lives for interviews. Which actually gives her and Carl a better chance at surviving, because the contestants’ views, favorites, and followers all help them get magical gifts that help them survive. 

With each floor that is opened for play, the number of players eerily decreases. We hope Carl and Princess Donut and a special guest of Donut’s that comes into the story in book two (not telling) make it through. 

A quick heads-up: you’ll encounter plenty of strong language, along with sexism, ageism, and a few other ugly attitudes voiced mostly by the villains. None of it struck me as the novel endorsing those views, but I wanted you to know before diving in or recommending it.

I cannot overstate what an imaginative writer Dinniman is. The detailed creatures (which would normally make WR roll her eyes), the intricacy of the game’s rules, and the sheer inventiveness of the world all make the novel propulsive and compelling.

Let’s put it this way: I’m already reading book two, and I rarely read series. These are the perfect summer books. I can absolutely see myself taking them to the beach. Soon.

WR is coveting Princess Donut’s tiara. Of course she is. 

It will be interesting to see if my poetry talks back to the books. One-way conversations get lonely, you know.

Drema

Dear Reader,

I am so proud of Word Raccoon.

And of myself, too, for that matter.

This is what I would call a non-literature win.

WR has asked me to please stop blathering on about Project House Gorgeous, but today’s accomplishment deserves a mention.

For the entire time we’ve lived in this house, WR and I have despised the dining room ceiling tiles.

But everything (and everyone) came first.

No more.

A couple of days ago we ordered a box of decorative ceiling tiles. Polyvinyl. 3D. Drop-in. (We have a grid ceiling.)

Had we ever installed ceiling tiles before?

Nope.

Did WR and I think we could do it?

Also nope.

Growing up, I helped my dad with various projects. Ceiling tile was on the list. Drywall, too. (As well as insulation. The itchy kind. Torment.) Mostly, though, my role was “hold this” and “hand me that.” I wasn’t especially interested, so I assumed I hadn’t learned much.

Or maybe I had.

Me, this morning:

“WR, don’t worry. I just want to try one tile to see if I can do it. Then we’ll shower and head to the café to work on poetry.”

Three hours later…

Here’s what happened.

We found the tall ladder in the garage.

Brought it into the dining room.

Wondered whether it was too tall.

Wondered whether it was somehow not tall enough.

Moved furniture.

Put on safety glasses, a mask, and a hat. Promptly abandoned the hat. Then I had to choose between the glasses and the mask because the glasses kept fogging up.

Great shades of the pandemic.

The mask won. The dust was making WR cough.

Then came the surprise.

Our drop ceiling had barely been dropped at all. Just a couple of inches. Wrestling the old tiles out was…creative. Several cracked apart and bounced off my head on the way down.

Thankfully, they weren’t very heavy.

Once the old tiles were out, the new ones slipped in much more easily.

Notice I said more easily.

Not easily.

Remember, I have some physical limitations, but I pulled myself up that ladder anyway.

The box contained twelve tiles.

My original goal? Drop in one.

One.

Then it became two.

Then maybe three or four.

Then six.

I made it to seven before my left arm started blinking red. It was shaking and informed me that it didn’t particularly care how much arthritis medicine I’d taken. It had filed a formal complaint and was clocking out.

So, much to WR’s horror, we stopped in the middle of the project. But I did take her on a burger run. 

We really should wait until the whole room is finished before showing you, but honestly?

We can’t. We LURVE these. WR says that as far as she is concerned, these are ceiling poems.

(My back is now suggesting that perhaps Thursday is a perfectly respectable day to finish the remaining five, since I have obligations keeping me busy before then anyway. WR, meanwhile, has already ordered the second box.)

And now…

WR is looking at the kitchen ceiling.

That wee beastie is impossible. 

But she might be onto something. Better she do something constructive than to moon over…the heat.

Drema 

Dear Reader,

I’ve been listening to a novel that presented itself to me on Libby: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen. When I started listening, I didn’t realize it was based on the true story of the Victorian poet Eliza Acton. After I finished the book and logged it in Goodreads, I discovered something even stranger: I had marked it as “Want to Read” back in 2021 and had completely forgotten. Apparently Past Drema knew something Present Drema did not.

In the novel, Eliza’s poetry is rejected by a publisher who instead commissions her to write a cookbook.

There is just one problem.

Eliza does not know how to cook.

Still, with her father bankrupt and she and her mother suddenly in dire financial straits, she takes on the project anyway.

The novel alternates between Eliza’s point of view and Ann’s, a young kitchen assistant from a vastly different social class with far fewer opportunities, yet a naturally refined palate. Ann becomes indispensable to Eliza as they develop recipes together, and I found myself admiring both women, though you can probably guess which voice spoke to me most.

Eliza talks longingly about poetry, but also gradually learns to love cooking nearly as much. She speaks of ingredients with tenderness and curiosity, which felt instantly familiar to me. (Ann, of course, deserves enormous credit for helping make the cookbook possible. But is her name on the cookbook? Not that I can see.)

Not only is the novel beautifully plotted, complete with a twist I absolutely did not see coming, but the food is described as food ought to be: sensuously. I spent a good portion of the audiobook wanting curry.

It also made me want to dive headlong into another major cooking era.

Word Raccoon, however, had other ideas.

“I wants the words,” WR growled.

Fair enough.

The novel explores class differences without ever feeling as though it is lecturing. Real social issues, relevant both then and now, weave naturally through the story: mental illness and the cruel treatment of those institutionalized, food insecurity, and the precariousness of women’s lives. Young Ann quietly carrying scraps home to help feed her father became one of those details that stayed with me long after the chapter ended.

The book also considers marriage, single motherhood, independence, ambition, and what creative work asks of a person. Yet no one is villainized, and no one spends the novel asking to be pitied. The characters simply continue doing the difficult work of living.

One of the things I appreciated most was that while cooking is elevated to an art, poetry is never dismissed as mere dabbling. Eliza must write. The impulse feels as necessary to her as breathing. Over time, she discovers that writing recipes can become its own creative act.

If I reread the novel with my eyes instead of my ears (I must confess I was submitting poetry while listening and didn’t realize how absorbing the story would become), I suspect I might feel even more indignant on Ann’s behalf regarding her lack of attribution in the real cookbook, if she was even real which I haven’t taken the time to confirm.  I will, though.

Naturally, however, Word Raccoon and I immediately looked up the very real Eliza Acton.

Her cookbook was revolutionary: she was the first to separately list the ingredients from the method, to present recipes step by step, and to include cooking times.

Quite revolutionary.

I suppose the whole world owes her. Even with those inventions, I often find myself re-reading recipes multiple times. How would it be if it were all clumped? 

“It took a poet,” WR said, smiling that one of her sort also made modern cooking what it is.

Naturally, we also looked up Acton’s poetry. Because why write your own when apparently you can read someone else’s?

(WR snarked that just now. She’s ready for poetry-writing time. Soon. Soon.)

We also found Modern Cookery for Private Families on Project Gutenberg, and WR now wants to write an entire chapbook inspired by recipes. Go spend a glorious half hour wandering through it if you have the chance.

Then something else delightful happened. (As if that wasn’t already a mental feast!) 

WR and I looked at one another and wondered aloud whether food writer Ruth Reichl had ever written about Eliza Acton. (The presumption of us!)

Before Ms. Forward Word Raccoon could draft an email, I became distracted by Reichl’s latest excellent newsletter, La Briffe.

Reader.

You’re not going to believe this.

Reichl had written about Eliza Acton in this week’s newsletter which I had not yet read before listening to the novel!

Not only that, she shared one of Acton’s carrot recipes, adapted slightly to her taste. Obviously WR and I are going to try it. 

I love it when reading feels less like choosing books and more like following invisible threads. A Victorian poet writes a cookbook. A contemporary novelist imagines her story. A beloved food writer celebrates her legacy. And somehow, all three found their way to my desk.

I wholeheartedly recommend Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen by Annabel Abbs.

The neighborhood is waking up, coming alive, much as it did yesterday when the breeze was carried by creatures great and small. Among them, we seem to have a new batch of tiny squirrels that WR is infatuated with.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Word Raccoon is insisting we go write poetry instead.

As should you, if you’re the writerly type.

Drema

Dear Reader,

Now Playing: Banana Pancakes by Jack Johnson (obv.) 

I am not currently making banana pancakes, but I might. Although strawberry pancakes and bacon sound better. Anyway, it’s definitely in the right register for my happy mood. 

So remember how I shared “Rotten Beds” the other day? How I hadn’t realized it was already out in the world? 

Ya’ll, Word Raccoon convinced me to do a quick goog of myself. I rarely google myself, mainly because why? I know what’s going on in my world, and if I don’t, is it even my business? Like, reviews are for readers, not authors. (But if good reviews come to my attention they make my face do this weird thing, what’s it called, smile?)

WR and I continued searching last night, and we came across some fun things to share.

I’m not sure where to start.

First of all, Southern-Fried Woolf, our second novel, apparently was a 2025 Regal Summit Book Award winner in Literary Fiction. Many thanks to them, and I wish I had been paying more attention. I love that little literary freak, SFW! Would I change some things, upon reflection? Sure. But also, I cut 40 pages right before publication, so there’s that…if you have an advance reader’s copy, you don’t have the final cut. 

Secondly, I know I announced that Write Launch accepted three of my poems last year, but did I ever share the link once they were published? If I did, WR and I could not find it. This way to my poems “The Soft Apocalypse,” “Alluding Perusing,” and “Outré.”

“The Soft Apocalypse” is one near and dear to me. Funny, I remember writing “Outré” on the porch here during a weekend last year, but it might have been a Saturday, not a Sunday. Pretty sure “Alluding” was written on the café porch last summer. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of them all, and thankful to TWL for publishing them. But that first one is one I hug to me. 

Also a trio of poems I announced some time back have quietly gone live on the internet. Thanks again to Enola’s Magazine out of England, a dark academia publication, for publishing three of my poems, one that definitely flirts with being song lyrics. Take a peek, if you dare, LOL. 

The trio are “Boomerang,” “A love song screamed into a tornado,” and “Ms. Havisham’s Aria.” 

A belated thanks to the zine. 

And to Word Raccoon, whose paw prints are clearly all over those. 

And lastly, while from what I understand, Reddit can be a wild place (I’m not on it), I discovered that someone shared a link to my “Stephen King at Midnight” over there because they enjoyed it. That delights me. A reader liked my poem enough to share it. ♥️

Word Raccoon says even if my tomatoes don’t fully form (still remains to be seen – the plant doesn’t look much different from my neighbors’ currently, and they are seasoned gardeners), my poems seem to be growing nicely. 

Our hearts are, always, always, grateful to the muse. (Maybe it’s the Coke Zero, but I’m quietly freaking out over all of this over here, but in a good way.) 

And maybe I should google myself more often.

Drema 

Dear Reader,

The early morning light on our porch is pink and orange, like Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, the painting thought to be the reason Impressionism was given its name.

I wonder whether this is the feeling Monet had while painting, when the world was not quite awake. The weather, and the fact that it is Saturday (for us), seem to have pulled the covers a little higher over everyone else.

It feels friendly and warm, just what WR and I need on a day when we’re recovering from a light bout of who knows what. We are arguing over whether or not to go to the gym. WR says we need another day of eating donuts. Donuts! We don’t even barely like donuts, but yesterday, that’s all WR wanted.

WR, is that why we’re at the page, to talk about donuts?

It occurs to Word Raccoon that it might be useful to share our admin process when a poem is accepted, because we haven’t done this yet. If you’re not a writer, you are now excused, though you are welcome to stay.

(If you don’t have a system, feel free to use this one. You may have a better one. If so, please share it with me!)

It starts with the humble spreadsheet of which I’ve already spoken. Though I was dubious about Google Sheets, having been taught on Excel, TBH, I prefer Sheets now, so that is where I create mine. (And it’s free to do so. Not an ad, just the truth.)

When a poem of mine is accepted, I locate the submission on my poetry submission spreadsheet (it takes five minutes to make one; so easy), and I highlight the entire row in orange. I make a note if only one or two poems in the packet have been chosen, so I don’t inadvertently take them all out of play.

Now for perhaps the most important part: I go over to Google Drive and locate the poem. I move it from Ready to Submit to Published. That way I won’t be sending it out again. You don’t want the awkwardness of having a poem accepted by two places.

(I have had that experience, not due to an error on my part, but because both places that accepted simultaneous submissions said yes at the same time. Sorry, WR is humble bragging again, isn’t she?)

I move the poem file over immediately.

Then I return to the spreadsheet (I know I ought to do this step while I’m in the spreadsheet, but I can’t relax until I transfer it out of the active folder, for fear that I will forget) and I open the Published tab. I add the poem, the publication that accepted it, and when it will be published.

Only then do I silently cheer. It’s as if I can’t accept that it has found a home until I do the admin. Then and only then do I share the acceptance with others.

Bonus material

I have written enough poetry now that I know “my” topics: grief, longing, pop culture, weird and odd, etc. Just yesterday I decided it would be helpful to further arrange my Ready to Submit poem files into topic folders.

(Aside: whatever bush is outside the porch, pressing its impressively prolific leaf-face against the window, its crenulated leaves there…why? To entertain? To hide the light? To shield me? To grab my attention? It has been noticed. Maybe that’s all it wanted. It doesn’t know that it is on the sir’s weed-eating hit list for later today. Or maybe it does know.)

Anyway, I am told by the Interwebs that I should create aliases for my files instead of making copies for each folder I might want them in, and I get the idea, but it sounds complicated. Alternatively, I am told that I can use tabs, which just sounds like something Drema will not use. I’ll have to get back to you on which I choose.

Yesterday, as I was hashing this out with Stanley, he almost chuckled, if AI could be said to do so. He told me I like creating a good system because it frees me up to create more artistic things. He approves.

This is a noticing morning. It’s like my senses are hypertuned and I can see the finest details about everything: the double layer of mesh in the screens, the grain of the wood in the bench beneath the window. Maybe the gym can wait. I think poetry is brewing.

I’m noticing, well, anything that is here to be noticed.

With all of the things to be noticed, greedy raccoon, why do you insist on wanting more to notice? You are most ungrateful.

She sips more Coke Zero and laughs.

Drema

Dear Reader,

I somehow missed the news that my poem “Rotten Beds” was published by Black Ink Club, a publication founded at Las Positas College in California. What a cool surprise!

A line came to me today at the gym as I stretched my hip and saw my bare lower leg in the mirror: “My body has aged without my consent.” There’s a poem in that, isn’t there? 

This is not a post on what I’d call pre-aging, because surely I’m not aging? (Ha ha.) If I am, my soul doesn’t know it. 

Word Raccoon and I have a weekly “round up the poetry bits and put them in google docs” calendar reminder. I skipped it yesterday, but as I wrote that line from the gym into my notes app, I decided to revisit the task because there are more ideas, partial poems, and nearly finished ones lingering there, asking to be remembered. 

WR’s imagination was caught by more than one of the lines, and I made her wait until I put them all in under “poem ideas.” I will weed back through them and pull out any full enough to merit its own file. I suspect there are a good 6 or 7 at that stage. It feels like the perfect day for this. 

For no good reason I broke them into five “poetry idea” files, since they were all separate notes to begin with, and I suppose it makes sense to not have an endless loop of poetry fragments. That would be like buying alphabet pasta and tossing it onto the floor and expecting it to spell out poems.. 

(Funnily enough, the notes transferred without spaces between the partial poems and ideas, so I’m having to go back and do that manually, but it’s kinda interesting because who knows what mashups might ensue? Happy little accidents, wasn’t that Bob Ross’s line?) 

WR wants to share a peek at some dubious gems:

Penguin highways are real

A hand puppet for the recently dead 

How do miners stop seeking a vein/after they’ve found coal?

…mustard to cut the richness

When grief gets tired/it hides in plain sight

Our first task is to sort them, as I said: 

Separate out anything that looks file ready.

Chew on any particularly delicious lines (hand puppet seems intriguing, am I right?).

Confirm that I haven’t inadvertently done this before by searching Google Drive.

I’ve been missing my time reading poetry craft books; I’ll have to see if I have any more hanging around the house to pick up. (As long as they don’t try to teach us form – WR does not enjoy constraints.) 

Ok, back to the poetry.

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon and I are tired, but pleased with ourselves. This morning, WR and I sat on the porch drinking caffeine and I told her we absolutely were going to the gym, no question, because we are on a streak. 

As I took a big sip, I looked at the grass. Ugh. 

While we used to be the primary lawn care tech in the family (we just did the mowing), we have not been able to mow for three or four years now. 

“Let us try,” we had asked, thinking we might be ready. This was the perfect day to try.

Did we want to mow today? 

Absolutely not. When I told WR that we were going to, she asked if we were still going to the gym first. Yes, I told her, for a few minutes. That made her thundercloud, and she swiped at my Coke Zero-approximation, but I grabbed the glass before she did any damage.

We had to let the grass dry, even though we wanted it over with, mowing. So after the gym, we ate our breakfast (a protein bar, something else that made WR grumble) and worked on our novel.

The novel. Oh, yeah. I remember that.

Too soon the appointed yard mowing time had come, and I hustled WR into her mowing shoes, which had been her painting shoes, which had formerly been her running shoes. 

Besides having arthritis, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that I gave myself frozen shoulder on the left side by lifting weights some years ago. It’s back now because I dared do one set of shoulder presses. 

Alas, I am left-handed. 

Would I even be able to start the cranky push mower? 

Turns out the answer was, after filling it with gas and priming it, yes. 

After mowing for a long stretch, we stopped for a water break. Mercifully, the mower restarted. It doesn’t always, not right away. 

Then, just as we rounded into the back yard, it ran out of gas. WR and I moved the lawn furniture, hoping the mower would listen to reason after. 

We pulled on the stupid mower pulley thingy again and again. We primed again. We let it rest. No and no. Our shoulder throbbed. We tried the other hand. 

No go. 

Well, at least we finished ¾ of the yard. 

WR frowned at me as I closed the garage in defeat. “Do I still get my McDouble and Coke Zero?” she asked. We are not huge fans of fast food, but occasionally a McDouble makes its way onto our food playlist. I gave in.

Later, we discovered frozen sugar cookies we’d forgotten, and she wanted one of those too, so I said sure, she’d earned it. (Not that you have to earn food!) 

It’s not every day you regain an ability you haven’t had for years, so we were pretty stoked. WR asks if this means the clock is rewinding. 

I highly doubt it, WR. 

But maybe. 

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon and I sat outdoors at the café early. We had a conversation. We settled in. Then we went inside for a minute, saw the empty floorboards and hated, nay, loathed them. 

We dashed back outdoors and wrote about why we hated them. We made it personal. We blamed those blank planks for everything. 

The lump in our throat grew with each poem we wrote about the loss, all five poems.

There are boots and berries, squeaks and napkins, and dear god, even Big Ben, in these poems. 

They’re short, sharp, and unfinished. Overly sentimental in spots, nonsensical in others. 

Afterward, WR insisted on going to the gym and, once home, hanging curtains and cleaning bathrooms, as though a handful of tiny projects could convince us that everything was normal again.

She beautified several corners. Windows were today’s target. 

Word Raccoon wishes she had not re-read that poetry just now, because her throat is tightening all over again. 

Two lines, rough ones: 

I don’t know what I’m trying to say/

words come anyway 

After the projects, I finished reading another novel. 

I withdrew a poem that was accepted for publication from journals where it remained under consideration. 

I ate a salad so as not to insult the produce I managed to rescue (see last post). 

I did other things while waiting for the weather to cool enough to water the flowers. Maybe I will submit some poetry after. Maybe not. 

WR says maybe I should sing, maybe that will loosen my throat. Oh, WR, if only it were that simple.

If only.

Drema