In Which Our Heroine Is Neck Deep and Gasping

23 April 2004

(Whenever I type or write the word April, I hear my friend Marylyn's voice in my head reciting from the Canterbury Tales the way she did for us when I was in seventh grade and she was still my teacher and not yet my friend. Every single time. There are worse things.)

I underestimated the phone component of yesterday afternoon. On the phone to the source of the other half of Michelle's birthday present, the plumber, the inspector who makes sure our water softener was installed correctly, etc. etc. It took four attempts for me to talk to my aunt. I'm still not done with the phone, as I have to call the nursery to get an appointment for someone to look at our front tree and tell us what to do to it. And so on.

I finished neither the typing nor the reading of Sethra Lavode yesterday because of all of this. Ah well. It's still here to do today. I also saw maybe 15 minutes of the Leafs game, nonconsecutively, and 5 of the Flames game. Had a good lunch with Stella and Lydy and even managed to find the restaurant without any trouble despite not knowing its name or address. Cooked. Ate. Typed more. Dealt with the cable modem guy.

I need to get to the grocery store this morning: before the plumber and inspector come in the afternoon, and before the people who work outside the home do their grocery shopping in the evenings and on weekends. I also have to pick up replacement birthday cards for Mom and Michelle, since I spilled water on the ones I had, cementing the envelopes to the cards. I already warned you not to think of me as graceful. This is why.

So the shower and the errands first, and then the laundry and the typing and the strawberry hulling and all that. And I have to get going on a freelancing assignment now and finish off a story soon, if it's going to get in before the theme issue deadline. That one may go by the wayside, even though the story is half-written and really could just get finished and sent out by the end of next week, all things being equal. All things are not equal. Some things are less equal than others.

It's that kind of day. There are a few things that absolutely have to be done at a certain time -- if I don't show up at the airport to get Mark on time, that's not good -- but mostly it's just that there's a lot of stuff that has to be done sort of soon. It's like that a lot around here. It's the work-from-home condition, I think. One has to be disciplined about it, and today is one of those days when I have to be more disciplined about it than others.

The other part of the work-from-home condition is having a bowl of stawberries and a box of Hoedowns* downstairs for when the discipline needs some fortification. And I need to remember that part as the rest of it crashes around my ears today (like head-high waves rather than like something falling). And maybe tomorrow I'll have taken a few steps back into the shallows or be enjoying bodysurfing on said waves. Today is not that day. Today the strawberries and the Hoedowns are quite necessary.

*The Hoedowns are calling themselves Tagalongs and were a much-appreciated gift from the Stella, who apparently has access to some of the ever-elusive Twin Cities Girl Scout peoples. They can't fool me, though; I know they're Hoedowns. They're the kind with chocolate coating and peanut butter in the middle, where you bite in and get chocolate and peanut butter on your front teeth and it's almost as good as the chocolate-dipped peanut-butter Ritz that Amy Claycamp's mom used to make for Girl Scout treats sometimes and man I miss those. Huh. Better go before I get on the free-association train.

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