Song of the day: “Hit the road Jack” by Buster Pointdexter. Finally I found out the name, because when I looked the one from Ray Charles up, it really wasn’t the one I had in my head.
But there you go…it sure explains the “buster” remark in the song, eh. Hah.
I know, I know. I’m running way behind, and I really should have posted a blog this afternoon, but since we were working on an in-between story, I was kinda distracted and then just forgot all about it while we dove into the story. So I wrote this one (the story that is) in 1999/2000 I think, and though we worked on it a couple of years ago, I had almost forgotten that I wrote it. I know, weird, but there you have it. You can’t remember a hundred stories (even if you wrote them yourself) word for word, so it has been a wonderful discovery.
It’s a bit of a mixed up love story. A bit of Cinderella, a bit of Les Miserables, set in Chicago’s turbulent ‘20s with bootleggers and gangsters and jazz. *sigh* It’s been so long ago that I wrote it, every page is a friggin’ surprise…which worries me a little since it means that my brain is leaking again. Darn it!
But anyway. It is fun to do, and though we’re cutting a lot from the story the characters are still fun, and the writing not half as bad as I’d feared when I first opened the file. In a way the story is a lot like the W.I.s, designed for the specific purpose of distracting me during the post-writing blues. You see, after a big project I tend to throw myself head-over-heels into a new project, only discover that the inspiration dwindles after just a few weeks, leaving me with just another half-finished book in my files. And thus the “short love stories” (and W.I.s) came into existence.
They’re cute, they pack an emotional punch and are SHORT with capital letters. Translated: fun to do in a I-have-got-to-stop-mooning-over-the-friggin-long-manuscript-I-just-finished. Hah.
In case it wasn’t obvious, we finished the paper edit of A.T.O.L., which is like, wow! But still, there is this threatening sense of depression in the back of my mind, even though I am of course psyched to have it done at last. Seriously, it is not every day that you finish the edit of as 110.000 word count manuscript. YAY!
Okay, enough about that. Let’s get to the daily drag, shall we.
What with the atrocious weather (it didn’t clear up until later today) there was a lot of nasty cleaning chores to see to. There was the 26 year-old kitchen lamp (yes I am that old that I remember mom first bringing it home way back when) which’s shells (it is made of small shell disks dangling from fishing lines) were no longer white but a grimy yellow from dirt. It took a couple of hours but now it looks wonderful again.
Another thing that had be cleaned was the kitchen fan, which hasn’t been taken down in three years and really needed to be scrubbed clean by yours truly…whenever I could squeeze in an extra ten minutes. Grandpa needed help sawing long beams for what will soon be the supporting fence of the raspberries in the lower yard.
Since I was in a cleaning frenzy anyway, I also cleaned my office. It was starting to get ridiculous, really. There was such a thick layer of dust on everything that the flies were leaving tracks (so yeah, that’s a slight exaggeration, but that’s what it felt like anyway. Hah). It was a mess but now it is starting to look decidedly better. At least I recognize the yellow paint we slapped on everything during construction. Hah.
What else? Well, like taxes there was laundry of course. Lots of it my own, even though I haven’t gotten around to changing the sheets on my bed yet. I really should do that tomorrow, darn it. What with the weather cheering up that should lessen a little in the near future, I’m thinking.
The majority of this morning was spent unloading the sand from the car, and though we’re going to have to do the same thing tomorrow too, I’m not going to bother to explain much more than the fact that I had shoveling out duty, and taking care of tenant (her caregiver was out to her second job again). It takes time, but we do chat, and that’s fun enough. It was good that mom and middle sister took her out to town this afternoon, because she has been spending way too much time inside these weeks past.
We checked out the engine of the Land Rover. Oil, cooling fluid, etc. Went over the tire pressure, the paperwork and then messed around with the engine some more. Hah. The dogs made moving around “interesting” as usual, of course, preferring to stay in front of our feet at any time, and almost causing near disaster while I was trying to turn around a full wheelbarrow.
Rocks got hauled down the mountain again…not me, though, seeing as I have only lifting duty these days, what with my bum knee and all. It’s a total pain in the behind, but rather than risk permanent damage, I am not allowed to wheelbarrow heavy stuff down anymore (for a while at least). Instead I shovel sand into the wheelbarrows, or unload rocks, which is what I spent yesterday’s afternoon doing, FYI.
This afternoon was spent doing masonry on the wall, of course. We brought it up another foot, meaning that we’re well past half of the wall. Only lifting and masonry for me, no hauling, darn it. It is beautiful, in case you’re wondering, and I am taking daily pictures to show off once it’s all done. Not yet, though. I want the end-result too.
Which reminds me, it is almost midnight and the end result of this blog is me saying: “Seeya later alligator.”
I know, tacky, but what the heck. Hah.
No comments:
Post a Comment