Religion notes:

Via Philocrites' Guide to Unitarian Universalist blogs: the Guuild - UU Religious Professionals Knitting.

On the op-ed page of today's New York Times, a quarter-page ad commemorating the 400th anniversary of the Episcopal church in North America.

My current church-related docket includes two more services for Cookeville, a sermon for Nashville, a set of child dedication certificates to letter, and a band gig for a birthday celebration. After July, though, I'll be taking an extended break and participating only in lay leading (once a quarter), hymn leading (pinch-hitting as needed), the fundraising table (once a month), and chamber choir (one rehearsal and performance a month). It means formally dropping out of the main choir and band (not that I've been able to participate in either this year with any semblance of regularity or reliability) and ending the monthly eastward shlep.

( passion for the unattainable )
The bottom line is that life is good. Messy and not wholly manageable, but definitely good.

---

I left for this morning's walk to the library with two books to return. On the way, I paused at a yard sale (to benefiting a youth services group) and saw several police officers getting ready to direct traffic around a 5K race through the 'hood. On the way back, I passed by two more yard sales, stopped at the bakery, and watched the runners/shufflers/stragglers streaming past a water station near the B&B. I arrived home with two pints of soup (honeydew melon and Caribbean mango), a chocolate-chip scone, a beat-up cutting board, and a copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder Book.

Last night there was quite a bit of rain, and the living room reeked of wet dog as I worked. Today the sun is shining, and the songbirds are out in force. The rest of the day will be devoted to laundry, errands, and writing. The joke is on me: If you'd asked me twenty years ago what I wanted, it wouldn't have been this. When I was seventeen, I was terrified of dogs, I was thirty pounds lighter, I regularly wore makeup (a habit I'm thinking of resuming -- but probably not this year *g*), I had yet to nosh on my first avocado or sip my first Scotch, and I doubted I would ever own a house or return to the South to live. Ten years ago, I would have told you that I liked steady paychecks too much to consider freelancing, although I was working sixty-hour weeks as a retail buyer (plus commuting daily between Ann Arbor and Detroit) and not getting much of anything else done outside of it. I had yet to visit San Francisco or Edinburgh or Tokyo, I wore oversize men's clothing more often than not, and I probably downed more wine and whisky each week than I have the whole of this year. (Ah, how I miss my old metabolism.)

I'd be lying if I claimed I'm not apprehensive about aging, but I shouldn't be: if the pattern holds, and I do my part, life will keep getting better. So: laundry, errands, and writing. (And the mango soup, and maybe a haiku, and definitely scritches for the leek-chomping dog.) And love to you all, and praise for such joys.

Have cut 100 words and written 1300 for Project A, and proofread three pages of a Handel book. Sadly, neither of these were for work, which means my day hasn't really started yet. *sigh*

That said, I'm remembering what's so compelling about writing fiction and poetry: it's such wicked fun when the narrators/characters veer into directions I didn't expect, writing my way through that, and then looking back and going, "Hey! That was [clever] [funny] [unexpected]!"

Makes up for all the times I squint at the screen and mutter, "Good grief, a magot with bandaged paws could do better than this."

(I ended up looking up magot yesterday after a conversation about this place, which was in a photograph on a nearby wall. "Magot" means "Chinese grotesque porcelain figure," but it also means "pile of money" and "Barbary ape," at least according to my Harrap's.)

Things I need to do within the next 36 hours:

* revise Project B and forward it to programmer
* wrap up current phase of notes on Project B
* finish Project C and turn it in to editor
* pay bills
* sing in two church services

Things I need to focus on this next week:
* continue work on Project B and Project D
* research and write next sermon
* continue work on lesson plans for the Sayers-Rowling course
* finish the kidlit essay
* deal with heap of accounting chores at the office
* reduce the chaos in personal "For the Accountant" pile

Good things:
* There is a Tylenol sample in the house (from last year's volunteer stint at the Country Music Marathon). This means I don't need to put on shoes and run to the store.
* Perfect weather today. I love it when it's warm enough that moisturizing isn't an ordeal but cool enough that the mosquitoes aren't yet in force.
* The BYM brought home apricot hamentashen.
* This thread at kassrachel's journal. *gigglefit*
* And this one, where she wrote a Snape/Lupin and The Time Traveler's Wife crossover drabble for me. Have I mentioned lately my friends are brilliant? :-)
* I'm doing laundry and roasting chicken (with paprika and chickpeas), so the demands of art and commerce have not totally vanquished my "domestic engineering" skills.

Onwards!

"To have stopped by the fig and eaten was not an error, then, but the reason for going."

- Jane Hirshfield, "Flowering Vetch

* Six poems rejected; two sold. Woot!
* Brunch at Marche with friends Saturday afternoon (croque-monsieur, celery root slaw, and cafe au lait served in a bowl)
* The roads were icy enough Saturday night that the BYM picked me up from the office. Today, it's sixty degrees.
* I have work that needs doing. I also currently have the mental constitution of a whelk. So, I'm going to take a nap, walk the dog, and then start the day over.

Just now, I finally sliced up a sheet paper I marbled over twelve or thirteen years ago.

Things to do when insomnia won't be denied:
1. Write thank-you notes and holiday cards.
2. Make tea.
3. Renew library books.
4. Moisturize.
5. Archive e-mails.

Things I didn't do in 2006:
1. Keep my resolution to be on time more often.
2. Keep my resolution to write 365 poems.
3. Get/stay in shape.
4. Cease whining.
5. Keep ahead of my filing.

Things I started doing in 2006:
1. Volunteering for Room in the Inn.
2. Regarding sleep as a necessity rather than an inconvenience.
3. Using a Franklin Planner again.
4. Saying "no" to any optional committee/activity involving repeat meetings or a pre-9 a.m. start.
5. Drafting a heap of poems and stories. Now to finish them...

Resolutions for 2007:
1. Stop being late.
2. More writing, less whining.
3. Get/stay in shape.

From the in-box:

According to Rabbi Levi, Abraham said to God, 'If You seek to have a world, strict justice cannot be exercised; and if You seek strict justice, there will be no world. Do You expect to take hold of the well’s rope at both ends? You desire a world and You also desire justice? You can have only one of the two. If You do not relent a little, the world will not endure' (Genesis Rabbah 39:6)

- from a Jewish Theological Seminary e-newsletter

I remember very early having the sense that there is one poet in the world, and sometimes if you're very lucky and you work very hard, you get to be the poet for a while. The rest of the time, you're trying to earn your way back to being the poet for a moment. Meanwhile, you love poetry itself.

- Franz Wright, from an essay to appear tomorrow on Poetry Daily

I don't know that I agree with either of these, but they were interesting enough that I wanted to remember them.


Yesterday ended up being more social and more domestic than I expected -- a friend suggested brunch, and I was feeling okay enough for that, so the BYM schlepped us all to Goldie's for blintzes (me), challah French toast (her), and other breakfast-y things, accompanied by a fairly intense discussion about research, citations, etc. (which is the sort of thing that's bound to happen when you plunk a quixotic sociologist and an opinionated copyeditor at the same table. Fun stuff, honest!).

It wasn't until we got home that the BYM informed me that a neighborhood committee was going to congregate in our living room in an hour; this would be the living room I'd been treating as my writing/editing hut for the past week, with books and papers and napkins and socks everywhere. (Yes, socks. I have this tendency to get home and think I'm going to sit down for just a minute for a quick check, but then I get engrossed in writing and/or work, and then I want to get comfortable, so I end up kicking off my footwear so I can put my legs up on the sofa...) Cue Tasmanian-devil-style cleaning frenzy. (It's probably good he didn't tell me earlier, though, since I would have ended up fretting.)

The to-do list remains fearsome, but most of it isn't due this week, so I have some hope of getting back into the swing of things (catching up on correspondence, seeing the floor of my study again, etc.). Seasonal scheming continues apace (with much glee), and I have (finally!) only two scenes left to write for my holiday exchange fic, so I'm hopeful I can send that puppy to the mod by the end of the week (provided my beta(s) are still speaking to me by the time they get through draft the nth) and then put in some serious time on (1) my upcoming Advent sermon, (2) assorted encyclopedia essays that need to be drafted sooner rather than later, and (3) the suite of poems I started while in Florida.

First, though, the bank, and then the library, and then a couple more hours of billable work. Onward...

It is not an optimal day when there is Liquid Plumber involved, but we shall persevere.

There are tasks, inevitably, and here on this farm, at least, too many to be filled in one day. Some tasks are seemingly straightforward. Wash the kitchen floor. Shovel the barn floor. Others are less so. While washing the kitchen floor remind yourself to be more consistent in keeping shoes off in that room and better at mopping spills when they happen. When shoveling the barn concentrate on what being a shepherd really means. To find some joy in the appointed tasks is another requirement. For without joy, what is the point? That is a more difficult thing to do. And that is one of the things that define us to ourselves.

- Sylvia Jorrin, "This is a Day"

Right, then. Lists...
( To do... )

Slightly vexing things:
* Gouged my heel on a nail
* Car sounds worse than before its stint at the shop

Splendid things:
* Says You now airing Saturday afternoons.
* Pomegranates on sale (*nods to qrssama)
* Sting's new album of John Dowland songs and letter excerpts. I've been playing "Have You Seen the Bright Lily Grow" (by Robert Johnson -- the one non-Dowland piece on the CD) over and over - so, so pretty! Also, I normally loathe "Can She Excuse My Wrongs," but Sting's arrangement is interesting enough (and he has that lovely decadent tinge to his voice) that I won't automatically hit "skip" next time I run the whole playlist. And the liner notes/design is also well-done.
* Earrings from orbitalmechanic. They're perfect. Thank you, my dear.
* The painting almost_clara surprised me with yesterday. It's inspired by a series of drabbles I wrote related to "Dover Beach," and it's stunning.
* Random notes and cards from friends.
* Sun's out. It's going to be a brilliant day.

Mike Carson's "No Surer Heaven" at poems.com -- man, that's a good poem:

...It's fifty years since he and I eased down
In Geren's Woods, his own heart years now gone—
So quiet and quick-eyed, kind to love a kid
Not his, by instinct never saying I love.
He put instead the rifle in my hands,
Gave me the name and use of all its parts.

---

Every now and then I wonder how my husband puts up with my level of mayhem. For instance, last night I managed to knock my glasses behind the bookshelf that serves as my nightstand. While fumbling around to extricate them, I managed to knock over even more books, notebooks, post-it pads, etc. (I probably should have waited until morning, but it was all too probable I'd forget my glasses were still behind the shelf and end up hunting for them through the entire house instead. Therefore, it was imperative that I retrieve them then and there. Erk. It's past time to vacuum up there again...)

That said, as we were about to go to sleep, he "played" an extended tune on the half-dozen water glasses on his dresser, using his chapstick as the mallet.

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Woke up feeling somewhat cranky and bleak, in spite of nothing being terribly wrong -- lots of little impasses, detours, and out-of-my-depth flailings-about, but nothing unmanageable (at least, in the realm of what can actually be managed). Some of it is simply needing more sleep if I'm to avoid catching other people's colds, and some of it is simply needing a true day off...

...which is not an option today, but I did stay home from church in favor of writing and reading. The plan for the afternoon is to finish the morning's drafts, indulge in some cooking (pesto and shortbread, probably), take a walk, and then put in eight billable hours on assorted assignments. Onwards.

[More goodness: Last week's submission = two rejections + one acceptance, and last week's arugula-bacon quiche still tastes superb.]

By the by -- much as I like my life now -- I miss some of you more than I know how to say.