Saturday, April 15, 2006
Waning Moon
Jupiter Retrograde
Rainy and humid

Ink in My Paint Can

That East Wall was a pain yesterday. I managed to get the trim done on the North Wall (also a pain, because of the different molding on each side of each window), spackled, primed, and got one coat of color on the East Wall.

I got the second coat of color on the East Wall this morning, and hope to get the trim done this afternoon.

It will take the rest of the week to move everything back on the East Wall and take everything off the South Wall. The South Wall has its own door molding complications, but I don’t think I need to spackle too much.

The West Wall is going to be a major pain.

But, after that room is done, there’s only the tiny bathroom – which will be a pain, but hey, it’s still SMALL.

And then the apartment is done.

Back to writing;

Unfortunately, my arm hurts like crazy.

Yesterday, I made some notes on a summer I spent with all ten godchildren a few years back. Their parents deposited them with me for the summer. It was quite, um, interesting. They thought I was going to be a pushover; in reality, I’m much stricter than the parents. I have no problem saying no to a kid. I’m the adult, I make the rules. Whining simply means you lose all privileges. Yes, you get to do a ton of stuff you don’t get to do at home – but there’s a huge price of responsibility involved.

I don’t want to write a memoir about it, but I would like to write, someday, a novel based on the experience. I want to set it early – I was thinking 1979 would be a good year. I’d have to re-research the Cape – I don’t think my diaries from 1979 have enough about the Events of The Day – only the events of my days.

I made some character notes. The characters, as they do when a writer does the work properly, are taking on lives of their own separate from the actual people on which they were based. But conflicts like that between the god-daughter who was a suburban brat with pretensions of political vegetarianism versus the actual hippie god-daughter with parents who self-sustained on land in Vermont, and the conflicts between them and the two kids raised by Evangelical Southern Baptists (I don’t know if there is such a sect, but that’s how I remember it – and isn’t is amazing that their parents would actually send them to someone like ME?) and how we all found a way to semi-peacefully co-exist and have a hell of a good time – might make interesting reading.

Or it might not.

It’s one of those ideas which will need possibly years to marinate. I’ll just make notes whenever the mood strikes me, go back over the old diaries, and see what happens.

I have to run some errands today, including getting some more Clear Moon mixed up to finish the room, and another can of primer, and then add the Snowy Egret trim to the East Wall.

But I want a fairly leisurely pace today, with plenty of reading and writing interspersed among the painting.

Unlike oh, so many of my fellow citizens, my taxes are DONE, and I don’t have to spend the weekend screaming and swearing. I already did my screaming and swearing. And, now that the IRS taught me how to prepare my own taxes instead of me paying someone to do them and do them incorrectly and then it takes years to untangle, it’s much less painful. Plus, my refunds are better.

Oh, to have a six month or year long sabbatical!

Oh, to find a way to fund it!

Devon