Monday, April 17, 2006
Waning Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Sunny and cool

Spent the first part of yesterday at a friend’s place, doing laundry, sitting on the deck reading, cooking, etc.

Came back and did some rearranging of books, et al. The person working with me dropped a heavy book, spine first, on the good foot. It hit the arch at such an angle that not only is there swelling on the arch, but the footpad/ball of the foot is bruised and swollen on the bottom. Not quite sure how that happened, but, for the rest of the day, I couldn’t put my weight on either foot.

Getting a little tired of this.

Forgot to mention that I read The Jane Austen Book Club the other day. I wanted to love it, but only kind of liked it. I enjoyed the actual discussion of the Austen books. Unfortunately, I did not like the characters who were reading the books. I felt that the incidents in their pasts used to explain why they were flawed were presented as excuses rather than reasons, and I did not feel empathetic or connected to any of them. It was a disappointment. I’d heard such hype about the book and I was really looking forward to it.

Yesterday, when bedridden, I began reading Elizabeth Berg’s A Year of Pleasures and I love it. Her books always touch me, and this is no exception. I just sink in to her world and believe, for a few hours, maybe there’s a bit of hope for humanity after all.

I decided to call the fictional-memoir-of-summer-with-godchildren Celestial Summer for now. I did about a half a page yesterday, or maybe it was the day before, and wrote nearly four pages this morning. I’m telling it through the point of view of one of the kids, who is thirteen at the time of the summer, but remembering it as an adult. It’s an interesting voice to work from. I’m having fun with the memories, and then fictionalizing them to make a good, yet warm story. And I’m making a list of all the details I have to look up, to make sure they’re accurate to 1979 – from which roads were already built then to which songs were out and playing on the radio.

Worked on the proposal. Got a few pages of it roughed out. I think I need to do a chunk of the actual material in order to see if the proposal is viable. I’d like to set a daily word count for it, but with all the chaos of The Situation not going away any time soon, I think I’d only frustrate myself. So I cart it around and work on it a bit here and there. The outline portion of the proposal is halfway done – I need to figure out the other half in order to write it. I wonder if writing the first chunk of it will help me get the rest of it sorted.

I’d like to start typing Shallid, but I’ve put it in a very safe place and can’t quite remember where that is.

Must go to the Post office now to mail my state taxes (federal went out already) and do a few other things. I’d like to get some more writing done today, but wonder if perhaps I’ve already written myself out. I feel as though my writing muscle as atrophied lately, and I’m trying to get it back.

Today’s Circadian poem will go up in a few hours.

If my foot feels up to it, I need to do some more work on the bedroom. If I’m not on set on Wednesday, I’d like to get started on the South Wall.

The North and East walls look wonderful, if I do say so myself. In spite of a few mistakes.

Devon