Dear Reader,

WR is ready for lunch. Her options are a salad or chili, and I barely got out the word salad before she snapped at me that it will be chili or nothing. She is a little chilly herself, she said, thinking the pun would work.

It did.

Her little furry face is stained with ink. I’m proud of her. This morning she wrote:

– Inedible Yellow Flowers

– Plastic Spork (tangentially related title, which her brain seems too full of)

– Shutting Its Eyes (half human, half not)

– Automimicry (and is now fascinated by mimicry in general and wants to write a chapbook)

– Tiny Chrome Raven (takes place in Paris; or does it?)

– Willingness to Ricochet (not really about a bullet, unless a poem is a bullet, and maybe it is)

In between she has ordered a gold, heart-shaped pull for her bamboo bill container and is mulling an antique-style mirror for her desk. That can come later. For now I put copies of these poems in both “in progress” and also in The Gospel According to Shrug, because I have a new theory: whatever I’m writing tends to be of a piece, so why not assume it’s in the newest collection until it tells me otherwise?

And I both love the idea of the title Mimicry for a new collection but 1. it has probably already been used. 2. it will need a WR twist for her to be happy with it. Automimicry has a little raccoon rizz, doesn’t it? 

What is wrong with her? (But also, I really don’t want her to change.) 

I told her she is not going to paint that desk tonight, that we have things to do.

She reminded me that it’s lighter out gloriously later now. I guess that means I have an evening ahead of me. Sigh. 

That wee beastie. 

Trivia time: I read yesterday that Grandma Moses went from embroidering to painting because she had arthritis. Hmmm…also, am I the only one who wants to read the autobiography that apparently she wrote? 

WR is tugging on my sweater, saying she wants to go to the thrift shop, because she has a list now, which includes a vintage, freestanding mirror. Of course it does. 

Peace and paintings (not painting),

Drema 

P.S. Yes, we painted the desk, two coats. We lined the drawers with the leftover wallpaper. We encountered issues that worked out in the end. We have more to say, but we are tired. Happily so.

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon has big “do all of the things” energy today. The weather is beautiful. She watched a squirrel climb a tree with a bone and researched only to discover that yes, squirrels do gnaw on bones for calcium.

She now feels that she needs to provide the neighborhood squirrels with calcium, though not bones or milk.

She wrote a poem about it. Of course she did. Have YOU ever watched a squirrel gnaw a bone? I was shocked and a little scandalized.

WR and I have a list of “prettifying” projects to do, all indoors, even though the weather wants us to come out and play. WR asked Stanley to show her a mockup of her ideas, and she stuck her tongue out at me because she was absolutely right: these are the right move.

Stanley scolded us for the Christmas lights that dangle on the porch so we don’t have to put them up again in December, though he does approve of the clear lights. He has shaken his head at the blue rug on the porch.

He signed off on the little pops of wallpaper designs and the places I proposed them. I even suggested adding trim to a bookshelf before painting it, and he said that was a marvelous idea. I wonder if he has spring fever, too.

I also asked him to suggest colors for the hideous green desk I use as a vanity, and he gave me a range from sage green to greige. He was not surprised when WR refused to acknowledge greige as a color and when she, furthermore, chose the dusty rose option. She did not agree to the glass knobs for it, however; she wants cream and will paint them.

Stanley also suggested we get some house plants, for pete’s sake. But we are so not good at keeping them alive, and we might have been known to tear up when we’ve killed them.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility. But would it be cheating terribly if we bought really nice fake ones? (Yes, yes it would be.)

I am refusing to order the paint for the desk just now, because I have a can of yellow from last year that I’m going to use on the bookshelf upstairs. The last thing I need is another can of paint languishing around here. I’m also hoping there is enough paint left to paint the legs on a bench on the porch. Rose, that is.

(WR just ordered the paint anyway. Sigh.)

Some of the smaller wallpaper projects (like lining the back of shelves) shouldn’t take long. But we’re really, really excited to get that bookshelf painted so we can put the bird wallpaper in it.

I guess we have a week of it ahead.

Tonight WR jumped in and before I knew it, she cleared the shelves in the dining room above her desk/vanity, took down the shelves, put on a podcast episode about the Mona Lisa, and went to work.

Here’s the result.

Is the wallpaper perfectly put up?

Nope. But for a project we weren’t even planning on doing this evening, we’re pretty happy. WR looks for mood, not perfection. Although she’s seen some pretty perfect sights in nature today. (She is not thinking about the squirrel with the bone, though.)

You know, that Austen planter is begging for a plant. I may have to stop by a nursery this week.

Tomorrow evening, maybe WR will paper inside another cabinet’s shelves. That really ought not take long.

She says she will write tomorrow, and even submit, if I ask nicely.

I will.

In Living Color,

Drema

Dear Reader,

Waxing the Parasitical Muse has advanced a round in a chapbook competition. I’m not going to say which one, and there are rounds to go yet, but I believe in celebrating every step. My bold little chapbook has received some attention, and Word Raccoon is clapping and cheering.

(You mean that first poem didn’t make them run? They must be my kind of people!) 

The bonus episode of the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast, “Move Happier: Would You Spend a Week Hiding Out in the Metropolitan Museum?”, delighted WR and me. It takes listeners on a literary wander through the Met, tracing objects and corners connected to E. L. Konigsburg’s children’s novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It’s part museum tour, part bookish scavenger hunt, which feels like the ideal use of a museum, doesn’t it? 

And naturally, it helped Gretchen get in her 26 for 26: 26 minutes of movement each day of 2026. 

“WR, do we know that voice?” I asked when the guest host spoke on the episode. Yes, it was Sophie Gee of The Secret Life of Books podcast! Extra points for this fantastic collab, Gretchen! 

More literary walks, please! 

As to the book they discussed, I didn’t read it until I was an adult, when my child Mia was reading it. I found it adorable, and who wouldn’t want to live in a museum? (WR says she wants to, and she’s scanning a blueprint of museums right now. WR, I don’t think we can do that!)

I ended up writing three poems last night, “Everyone Gets Fries,” which features recipe cards and a band, “Economically Fixed,” about Indiana, and “When ASMR is Your Grandma,” the poem that gives you backrubs and storytime. 

Well, that last one is only a few lines in progress but it knows what it is. (Oops, am I giving away that I’m a fan of ASMR? Oh well…) 

Do these poems belong to The Gospel of Shrug? 

Shrug. 

LOL.

Very tempted to wear my fabulous Dolly Parton tee the son gave me for Mother’s Day tomorrow. But I won’t be cutting the sides open as he did his, though I teased him that I was going to. (And psst…Zack’s girlfriend is a sweetheart. We like her.)

We had a very nice dinner, complete with the traditional making of the lasagna by Barry while I sat reading the newest Martha Stewart book that he bought me. I usually flip through a magazine while he cooks, but I forgot to buy one. MS’s book was a great substitute. (I have not thought of Martha in YEARS!)

And now, thanks to her book, I want to collect sour cream glasses. Which I didn’t even know were a thing.

Also, she has a flippin’ building for her baskets! FOR. HER. BASKETS.

Perhaps you will not be surprise to hear I wrote “A Building for Your Baskets” just now and I’m about to write “Sour Cream Glasses,” I think, though WR is yawning. (Obviously we will not really call it sour cream glasses, but it will be about them. Maybe.)

A cat is walking up and down the street. 

Do cats ever get lonely? 

Over caffeinatedly,

Drema 

Dear Reader,

I don’t remember thinking, “Hey, why not spend an hour on Pinterest this afternoon, something I haven’t done in years?” But here we are.

Word Raccoon is not permitted to start any household projects the day before company, and so must content herself with making a nice long list of ways she wants to get ahold of this place later. Looks like it’s going to require vintage china, plate hanging tabs, and picture frames at the bare minimum. More wallpaper is on its way. 

We took notes for poems earlier today. We feel them ripening. 

We do not want to submit poetry.

We did want to note that it wasn’t Fellini who made the documentary of the 1966 flood of Florence, but actually Franco Zeffirelli. A part of it is available on YouTube, but only in Italian with no subtitles available. Our bad. 

As the title of this post says, I don’t really want to do the work today. The song, the interwebs tells me, comes from the 2016 musical Firebringer, but I’m so lazy I’m not even gonna confirm. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard that song clip many times now. 

It seems apt for my and WR’s state of mind today. We were going to record a poem, but we’re thinking next week is soon enough. 

I should probably make a declaration at this point about how it doesn’t matter how overtired I am, or overpeopled. It doesn’t matter that I feel uninspired, I should just pull out my notes and start crafting. 

Part of me wants to do that. Truly. 

Another part of me acknowledges that this is the first Mother’s Day since my mother’s passing. 

Every draft of a poem I look at seems like drivel, like a box of Band-aids: just cover every strong feeling you have in a poem and you’ll be fine. Grief? Poem. Love? Poem. Pretty tulip? Poem. Feel awkward? Poem. 

I want like anything to believe that poetry is the best cure for a cracked heart, but my nephew will be without his mother for the first Mother’s Day, too. He’s graduating in less than a month now. My mother was his second mother, so he’s lost two mothers, in a sense. My heart hurts for him.

I’d bring him a wheelbarrow full of poetry if I thought it might help.

Life is good, always. But also…oh hell, why don’t I just write a poem? 

No, I just can’t leave this post like this. It will be a good day, if a little sad. There will be the traditional lasagna, the receiving of gifts, a visit from Zack. (Sadly, Mia lives at a distance.) I have fought for almost a year to grieve, and we honor those we love best if we live full, happy, loves. (Call me overly sentimental. I dare you. You would never. Would you?) 

So here’s a poem I wrote that has absolutely nothing to do with the occasion. It’s just a poem I wrote a while back, I don’t remember when, last month I think, and this is a first draft, so you know the drill…be kind, please. It needs work, for sure. (I feel like I just over “comma-ed” everything. Don’t care. Maybe they were on sale.) 

Original

Thrift Shops, Poetry Flophouses

Thrift shops are really just poetry 

prop shops.

But the stories everything carries,

from tchotchkes (kissing Hummels, Marilyn plates from Franklin Mint),

to crocheted appliances;

from a set struck 

from your grandparents’ kitchen,

to that Caboodle you could never afford,

to a bridal veil with a ghost of tobacco

that you will resurrect in a bathroom baptism

All you have to do is roam a store

to leave with

a free pocketful of poems,

and you haven’t even 

shoplifted. 

First Revision 

Thrift Shops = Poetry Prophouses 

Hummel figurines, childish mouths open for a kiss,

Marilyn simpers from a plate by Franklin Mint,

a set of crocheted magnets (stove, fridge, sink)

that you’re pretty sure your grandma had.

A Caboodle from your 1988 Christmas list 

that you didn’t get mocks you with makeup stains.

A bridal veil possessed by tobacco 

you will free by baptism 

in the bathtub. 

It’s the only store where

you don’t have to buy anything

to walk out with a pocketful

without even 

shoplifting. 

I don’t love the revision. Revision is strange because sometimes you strengthen a poem and simultaneously lose something you loved about it. I thought I was sharpening this one, making it more image-based, more emotionally grounded in the objects themselves instead of my commentary about them. 

And I think I did. The Caboodle line in particular feels sadder to me now, more specific. But somewhere along the way, I may also have revised out a little of the raccoon energy, the fun of “poetry prop shops” and walking out with a “free pocketful of poems.”

Maybe that’s the real work of revision, though, deciding which ghosts get to stay in the house. One version wanders the aisles talking too much, delighted by everything. The other picks up each object and holds onto it a little too long. I genuinely don’t know yet which one I prefer, which probably means both versions are telling me something.

I’ll stew on it, but another day, because remember: I don’t really want to do the work today. 

At least I revised one poem, even if I am going to likely revert mostly to the original. So maybe I do want to do the work. I confuse me some days.

Not so silently after all,

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Some mornings Word Raccoon will not settle down to write. She wants to write, but then she finds a hundred things to notice and tries to follow them all at once, which results in her not writing. 

Actually, that worked for me today. We had things to do!

I bribed her to clean the downstairs bathroom. She negotiated for two cookies instead of one with her tea, and I agreed if she’d get to work.

When she did finally clean, she was fearful that things in the curtained cabinet were going to fall out and conk her on the head. Especially the vintage jar filled with laundry pods. 

She loves it, but also, it’s heavy. Which got her to thinking. We have been looking for just the right storage cabinet for the small space beside the washer, and WR and I decided that today was the day to shop for one online, and we did, successfully.

WR’s only complaint is that it’s white. I reminded WR that she has a whole arsenal of paint and wallpaper at her disposal. She said she’s not afraid to use it, either.

We all know that, Word Raccoon!

She started tossing all of the car care stuff out of the bathroom in preparation for the cabinet’s arrival. I mean, I’m with her on that, but she could wait until we’re done rearranging.

Now she’s talking about – gasp – decorating the bathroom beyond just the walls! Before now, there were no available surfaces, but when this cabinet gets here…

She’s shopping the house for items that would work before going elsewhere. Part of me wants to give her some of my beach finds, but imagining the porch without them causes my heart to contract. Mine! Mine, mine, mine! 

During lunch, we listened to a lecture on Rilke. WR could barely chew her lettuce, she was in such awe. I told her more Rilke later. First, we chase the words for ourselves. 

Or that’s the idea. This is supposed to be writing time before going-out time. There is entirely too much “going out” and socializing planned for this weekend for WR. She’s an introvert trending towards an ambivert, usually, though she’s not quite back to ambivert. 

She’s grateful to have people in her life, and yet she’s also tired ahead of events.

Last night, when having dinner with friends, she found a couple of sparks of her old energy. It’s there, somewhere, it’s just in the regrowth stage. 

Our friends asked about our poetry, and WR found the courage to talk about it as if it’s a normal assed activity. “It’s like wearing different dresses, or singing different genres of music,” she said when she tried to explain her probably alarming range of poems.

One friend said he had just one question: “Whatcha been smoking?” WR chortled and was not at all offended. 

He also told her there are no waffle houses nearby. She is aware.

And for the record, WR does not smoke. Anything. 

Speaking of wanting quiet, I’m reminded of a hectic morning in Paris a few years ago. I was overwhelmed and exhausted from the travel and schoolwork. Jetlag is no joke!

While Barry went to an atm, I slipped downstairs to grab us a table for breakfast.

The dining room was small. I scanned the options: the loud bunch? Absolutely not this morning. Then I spotted a playwright we knew sitting quietly by himself. I asked if Barry and I could join him, and he smiled and waved me over.

For a few minutes, we simply sat there together, sipping coffee in companionable silence. It was relaxing not to have to perform conversation for once, you know?

Then he told me he’d been hoping to talk to me anyway. He was staging a graduation reading of his play and wanted Barry and me to participate. I said yes. And honestly? It was SO MUCH FUN that I’m very glad I did.

Side note: during practice, I asked him for notes, and he said he preferred to see what I discovered in his writing. That was generous, although I was willing to adjust. (I admit to playing the comedic character broadly, though.) 

Anyway, those few minutes of sitting with someone with quiet energy on a frantic morning were restorative. I’m still grateful. 

WR misses other quiet moments from her past amid loud radiators and sun prying its way in through ancient blinds. She misses a squeaky chair and sagging stairs. They say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone.

But I did know. 

WR, I think it’s time you go take a nap, will you? You’re getting ridiculously sentimental. And is that a weather-induced headache? 

Still here.

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Word Raccoon was slightly mollified for the indignity of cleaning yesterday by being permitted to listen to North Woods while doing so. I told her we could read it with our eyes if she would just wait, but she said she would absolutely go on strike if I didn’t let her hear it while cleaning.

(It’s a haunting, layered novel. While I often get frustrated with short stories because I get invested in one and then boom, it’s over, this novel felt like short stories but provided the structure of a house through the decades, and I loved the reimagining of its life throughout time. The “fortune teller,” the historian – his sass about academia made WR giggle, the twin sisters. Nicely done.) 

BTW, WR informed me the only reason I am suddenly cleaning with such determination is because Zack is bringing his girlfriend over Sunday, and we haven’t met her yet. (Our family rule is that the children must date someone at least three months before introductions commence. I’m assuming that criteria has been met since he asked for a “plus one” for Mother’s Day.)

Fair enough. But the work needed to be done anyway, WR! 

Here’s the newly hung chicken-wire frame currently displaying a deeply concerning number of finger puppets. WR and I are jumping up and down with delight. We will not be taking questions about our taste at this time, but we will accept gushing compliments, even if we’re not finished with it just yet. (When your raccoon is awake at 4:30 am and refuses to go back to sleep, you put her to work.) 

I wrote one tiny poem yesterday, and then another, just to keep my promise to Word Raccoon that we would write something during this full weekend. I’m pretty sure they belong in my newest collection, but we’ll see. One is called “Do Not Disappear People.” Lack of comma intentional. The other is hokey, but I had to get it out first. I’m not telling you its title – too cringe.

I’m not sure just how much writing I’ll be able to do today, but I will try to find some time. I’m assuming renting a carpet cleaner is probably overkill for meeting the son’s newest girlfriend? 

Maybe I won’t. 

Random PSA/pet peeve shoutout to the younger generation: Tupperware is not a generic term for food storage containers. Stop it! Women of my mother’s generation would be scandalized by this linguistic drift. I have heard it way too often lately. Where’s the line between natural progression and tradition? 

After dinner with friends last night, whom we had not seen in far too long, I asked to pick up wallpaper for a project Word Raccoon has become unreasonably invested in.

There’s a bookshelf in my writing room that I have been meaning to paint for years. This peel and stick wallpaper is for behind the shelves. I’ve been watching too many videos that feature color in small spaces and now my projects have projects. This one woman molds her own decorative plaster tiles and paints them…I’d LOVE to do that. 

Imagine how the eyes will rest after these projects are finished. Art demands to be fed color. 

“Where is that going?” Barry asked suspiciously when he saw the wallpaper, which he called Victorian. I’d say it’s Victorian adjacent. I mean, it does have birds on it, but the colors are trying to behave.

WR wanted to reply none of his business, but I told him because I suspected he was imagining me wallpapering the bathroom ceiling or something equally tragic. I don’t get indignant when I know I’m being falsely accused, I get sweet and pretend I do not understand that my intentions are being questioned. It tastes better for me and goes down worse for the other person. 

Is that wrong? 

(WR thinks someone has too many opinions over what is clearly her decorating domain. I pointed out to her that to be fair, she was scheming to put up a brightly colored chicken wire frame full of FINGER PUPPETS on the living room wall without notice.) 

After all, this is the same beastie that just ordered red, white, and blue popsicle earrings. She insists she’s only ordered them to review them. But if she wears them more than once over the 4th of July weekend, I’m gonna know she’s fibbing. 

(I’ve seen them. She is.)

Friday Forward,

Drema 

Dear Reader,

Today’s writing session felt like rummaging through a junk drawer with a flashlight and accidentally discovering a Midwestern theology. The title of this latest, growing collection, The Gospel According to Shrug, still delights me. 

The sun came out, only for a moment, but I was grateful for a glimpse. I find it inspiring, always. (Am I too weather focused? Too bad, WR says.)

Some days you write from inspiration; some days you write because your brain is pacing around muttering at fluorescent lighting and existential dread while clutching a gas station coffee. (Okay, I wasn’t, but a preacher in a poem was. Poor guy.) 

That was me and Word Raccoon writing today. We apparently spent the morning building out what may or may not become an entire poetic universe. Current titles include: 

• T-Shirt Cannonized
• Rotten Bottom Poetry
• Midwestern Existentialism Meets the Holy Ghost
• Crown the Cracker Barrel
• Death in a Small Town Without Enough Wastebaskets
• The Southern/Midwestern Writing and Cooking Incident

So, you know. Totally normal literary behavior. (More poems seem to be brewing.) 

These poem towns were peopled by gas station prophets, thrift shops, funeral dinners, roller dogs, squash, and at least one deeply suspicious dressing room. 

I found a groove today. One that feels funny and more like corduroy than record grooves. One of the poems says 

I chop yellow squash in rhythm and remember/

poems I haven’t written.

So, you know, a typical Wednesday around these parts.

The best writing days, for me, are often less “I wrote a polished poem” and more “I discovered a hallway I didn’t know was in the house.”

Today felt like that. 

No, that sounds too House of Leaves, a book that I’ve technically read but only because I was “supposed to.” I refused to retain anything of it. 

Oh, calm down. It’s had plenty of success. My little murmur of disapproval will do nothing to harm it. It’s just not to my taste. 

(Sorry, maybe it’s the three Skittles I just had, maybe I’m just feeling restless, but WR is hyper right now; she’s spinning and talking at full volume. She’s too playful.) 

Now if you’ll excuse me, my brain appears to have tilted somewhere near the dishwasher, and Word Raccoon has entered a state best described as emotionally overcooked. 

After writing WR and I:

Rowed at the gym. 

Washed the car.

Unloaded and loaded the dishwasher.

Made supper. 

Decluttered two cords and an old set of earbuds. Yeah, I’m awesome like that. 

Misc. other things. Probably. 

Reading next. 

WR says: Protect the eyes from overreading, won’t you?

Thrift shops and prosy poems to you,

Drema

Dear Reader,

I am listening to Collective Soul’s Collective Soul this morning, from 1995.

Wait, does that sound like I’m time traveling? Didn’t mean that, LOL.

It was my favorite album for a season. I’m listening to it today for multiple reasons, one that the café is playing…not my favorite genre of music. Seems to be their thing. Sigh. 

And also, I’m in a funk; let’s see if “Gel” can chase it away. It’s just a residual cluster of things nagging at me. If I don’t want to see the list, I’m sure you don’t want to, either. 

No big whoop. 

Last comments on National Poetry Month, I promise: I know I’ve seemed all over the map with it, but in hindsight, here’s the thing: I already have a daily practice, so it was like signing up to wake up every day, and who wouldn’t be pissy over that? That’s on me. I should’ve just taken advantage of the community aspect and left it at that. And the poems to study that were sent along every day were really cool, and I also appreciated the effort, for sure. 

I don’t mean to seem ungrateful to those who put the cohort together.

One nice thing that came out of the month is reconnecting with someone from the program I met in Paris. He’s a poet, and now we’ve been encouraging one another’s process, which has been genuinely helpful. (As much as those in the program try not to break into groups by genre during classes, it happens.) 

Yesterday evening I submitted four packets of poetry and put my newest poems into Google docs. Along the way I found nuggets, lines that made me happy. I found tidbits in my “ready to submit” folder, poems I’d kinda forgotten about, some with real voltage, if I may say so. 

It promises to be an unusually active weekend. Breathing deeply. Word Raccoon is growling, asking if she’s going to be allowed any pockets of writing time? She just knows I’m going to make her clean house. Of course I am! But I will do my best to sneak her a bag of time, too, and her laptop. 

Maybe if I toss some lines on the page here from one of my recent poems very much still in progress, we can move the pieces together. 

WR is now snapping her teeth at me. She says if I touch any of these right now, I will be doing them a disservice. New work only today; I am not of a revision mind. 

She’s not wrong. 

We do remember a handful of intriguing lines in our fragments folder. Let’s look there instead. Here, this is a line that would not only make a good poem IMO, but maybe even a great collection title: 

The Gospel According to Shrug

There, raccoon, chew on that. 

Meditatively,

Drema

P.S. Half of One is publishing my poem “Squirreling” and they have an artist illustrating it…I can’t wait to see what they come up with! WR is wounded; she wants to know why she’s only made it into one published poem.

ALSO, thanks be, the manager at the café asked if I was warm enough and flipped on the fireplace for me. Yay!! I didn’t want to ask in case they couldn’t afford to turn the heat up. It was 64.5 in here the other morning! And WR noticed!

Dear Reader,

Last night, I did something I’ve been meaning to do for years.

Truly years.

I destroyed our old hard drives, because those wiser than I have said it’s reckless to dispose of them without protecting your financial information. I was convinced, but not immediately motivated. 

Word Raccoon was tired of seeing the task on our calendar, asking what was that thing that kept popping up that I kept rescheduling? At her urging, I said I would try getting rid of them. 

It was messier and more difficult than I expected. Which is why I kept putting it off in the first place.

In trying to pry them open, I ruined a screwdriver and a set of wire cutters, both casualties of my determination. I gouged myself twice, and my hands are not happy with me. 

And afterward, I had to pick up what I can only describe as a scatter of glass across the porch. Not ideal.

Which is why, this morning, I relocated operations outside.

There were more hard drives, of course. I dug them out this morning, determined to start on them immediately and get them finished, out, out, OUT of the house. 

And because I am nothing if not a woman of layered experience, I paired this destruction with an audiobook: North Woods by Daniel Mason. It’s excellent so far, but not something I would’ve sought out. 

I have the physical book from the library sitting here, but Libby offered me the audio version today, and something in me said: yes, this is the correct soundtrack for controlled demolition.

(That something was probably Word Raccoon.) 

The audiobook is intriguing, so much so that I will go back to the written page to finish reading it. I need to know what happens to those twin sisters. Lil’ Miss Mary needs a talking to!

Somewhere in the middle of all that hammer swinging, I found myself thinking about my dad.

He taught me how to drive nails when he was building our family’s house in West Virginia. I remember putting nails into the floor, carefully, imperfectly, him patiently showing me how to draw the shiny nails out of the soft plywood and drive them in again straighter. I couldn’t have been older than nine.

(He tried, lord love him, but I’m not truly handy.) 

Much later, in that same house, he decided to move the bathroom.

This time, he handed me a different kind of hammer: a sledgehammer, and told me to go at the wall.

To the moody teenager I was by then, it was awesome: the weight of it, the permission to swing it and demolish the walls and even loosen the studs. 

By the time I finished this morning, I had gone through the rest of the drives. Some surrendered easily. Some not so much.

But they are done. Taking this off my calendar finally, hallelujah! 

From there, I did what any reasonable person does after dismantling pieces of their technological past:

I went to the gym.

(I did not lift weights. My wrists had already staged a quiet protest. They are gonna complain so much tomorrow!) 

Here I am now, writing. Finally.

I’m still feeling the after National Poetry Month aftertaste of “enforced” poetry. Ironically, I’ve still found myself writing a poem every day (today, one about my father building our house), but I haven’t felt that overwhelming urge to write that I value so much. A writing life can survive that, but oh, I miss feeling like I’m spilling over with words, dreaming of them, unable to live a normal life almost because I want to write.

Ebb and flow. It’s all a part of the writer’s life, I suppose. I prefer the flow. I don’t ever feel really like myself when I’m in the in-between. But maybe I can write my way through it? 

WR says of course we can. She says if I give her a Coke Zero she will drop and give me a poem right now. 

Deal! 

Yours in demolition and words,

Drema

Dear Reader,

I spent more time than I ought to have on an online return yesterday. A package arrived a few days ago, but only one item was in it, when there should have been two.

The company (which shall remain nameless) doesn’t allow you to count something as missing for the first 48 hours. Kinda like a missing person, I guess. 

Not that my $3.45 item was a missing person.

I almost let it go. A couple of weeks before a pair of reading glasses did not arrive, and I did report that and received a refund. The difference was, the reading glasses were in a package by themselves, so the reporting was pretty straightforward.

For my hair elastics (oh so important, I know), if you look at the photo of the delivery,  you can see that the package had been ripped. I assume the elastics are languishing at the bottom of some delivery truck.

Ironically, even as I was ordering them, I remembered having a bag of them that didn’t work out for me, and I assumed I’d gotten rid of them. The day after I ordered a new bag, I found the old. Naturally. (Word Raccoon never knows what she owns.) 

This time around, the older bands I found in a drawer worked fine. But there was still the question of the lost ones. 

I asked online, I asked AI, I asked the vendor’s website how to report that one of two items was missing. I tried all of the tips and tricks. Nothing worked.

It took about half an hour, but I finally found the right magical portal to Customer Service. A few minutes later, the service rep issued me a refund, I thanked him, and was on my way. 

Was it worth the effort? 

Financially, probably not. There were better, more profitable, activities I could have put my efforts towards. But the survey they asked me to fill out afterwards might have been. I praised the rep but also explained exactly the difficulty I’d had in finding a place to report the missing item. 

Will they listen to me and change? 

Doubtful. But at least I spoke up. 

In today’s world, that is probably the least important place to speak up, but I’m not sorry I did. What if the item had been more expensive or necessary? What if it had been a gift? 

I wish I didn’t have the sneaking suspicion that this is set up this way on purpose. I could be wrong. Word Raccoon says she’s suspicious, too. 

In the meantime, the sun is shining, I knocked out half of my life “to-do’s” for the week over the weekend, and now it’s time to plan my writing week. The rest will take care of itself. 

(A customer at the cafe is mopping up a coffee spill he made. WR, did you knock his cup off the table because he wouldn’t let go of your hand fast enough when he introduced himself? You naughty raccoon. He meant no harm.)

Then someone came in and she and I discussed Victor Hugo: that we have not read him, LOL. But I hear there’s an abridged version of Les Mes, and that might be worth a look. I don’t like long books in the warmer months.

Sunnily,

Drema