1 December 2003

Mrissa's Rule of Hospitality: you always need more toilet paper, more Kleenex, and more chocolate than you thought you did. I won't make the same mistake at Christmas. Although the presence of truffles and Fazers should make the chocolate question a bit more manageable. We also made pretzel rings Saturday morning, me and Grandma and Onie while Mother got out her crochet hook and mended some of my sweaters. All my best sweaters are getting old. Sigh.

Did you know I am Bookish? Apparently I had to take an internet personality quiz (Which Regency Romance Heroine Are You?) to find this out. I know you're shocked. I should have warned you to sit down first. I'm sorry. (Does anybody regularly read this journal lying down or standing up? Let me know if you do. I'm curious now.) Anyway, I'm feeling more Bookish than usual lately. I want to just spend all week reading. I don't get to, of course, but I want to. I think I'm going to try to convince myself that editing is really a lot like reading. That's what I'm going to do.

There are so many fun things masquerading as work around here. I have a metric ton of cooking magazines from my aunt Ellen; I am to go through them and copy out what I want and return them when I can. No rush. But there they are, enticing me. I have boxes of my children's books in the basement; I need to go through them and pull out the ones I can't live without for another day. I have cookie tins to wash out and cookies to bake. I have to clear out this space -- this one right here, where I and the computer are sitting -- to put my new-old desk in, and then the office might get organized, and then, as we always say in my family, then we'll be dangerous.

My current desk is not so much a desk as a monitor-holder. It's got the little keyboard tray, too, but there's room for the mouse pad, the speakers, and a glass of water on the top with the monitor, and that's it. I could not write longhand on my desk if I tried. For four years, I've been writing on the kitchen table or a lap-desk (on which point Timprov and Mark correct me: it is now polite, they say, to call it a Saami-desk). I will have an actual desk soon. It's in the garage waiting for me. It will be good.

First, though, I have to get to the point, with edits and stories and so on, where I feel that I can take my computer down for awhile and take the time to set up the desk. That may or may not be today. We'll see. We need food here, oddly enough. You'd think that after Thanksgiving we'd be in food up to our ears, but we're only in soup up to our ears, and one can only have leftover soup in its permutations so many times before one is ready for something a bit different, maybe a bit more solid. I've tried to get Mark to say what he's missed having, but he's unfortunately amiable. So, as usual, I will have to make stuff up myself and go to Cub and punt.

I forgot to say much about Saturday. I got to spend time with Andrew and his girlfriend Heather and show them the new house. I approve of the Heather. I also approved of the ravioli I had out for lunch with them. Mmmm, garlic cloves....

The folks and Mark and I went up to Aunt Ellen and Uncle Phil's and hung out with them and Cathy on Saturday afternoon and evening. And we were quite privileged: Aunt Ellen and Cathy made rice pudding. The kind that takes forever and tastes wonderful wonderful. Even Mark had some, and Mark is anti-pudding in most cases. And Aunt Ellen put the nutmeg on the table so I could nutmeg to my heart's content.

Aaaaand...WIHA! Finally. Kristofer, the publisher, was going to make a few small edits to this edition, so if you're going to buy it (and you know you want to...everyone else is doing it...you would if you loved me...), I'd wait another day or two to be sure they went through. Still, yay! Finally! It's got all kinds of good people in it, people like Evan and Karina and Columbine and Philip and Trey and Mike and lots of other talented, lovely people who don't have journals or have journals I'm not aware of. Don't those sound like good people to read? Go, enjoy.

But now it's time for me to do something productive. Which does not, I must remind myself, include reading The Porcelain Dove. Other productive things abound. I'll make do.