lull before the storm

I'm supposed to be doing a half-dozen different things: getting up to speed with my coding. learning how to interface with potentional cover designers. prospecting the web for images pertinent to the same.

Instead, I'm trying to keep a mild cold from becoming a spring behemoth. Thinking about looking at the ProChem site for new dye colors. Stitching alien instructions. Listening in on conversations between my characters. Shaping the plot of the next book with each stitch (telling my phone the details so they won't spin off into the ether). Worrying about distant family. Thinking about distant lives.

Low tide stuff, but action is required. Library. Orange juice.

ps : and this

Charlie Monday

Six am alarm. I drove through the dark to get there like when he was a baby. It was very foggy and I zoned out and almost missed a turn.

It's been a while since we've had a whole Monday. Screw all the presidents, we had a great time. Charlie informed me that Herbert Hoover kept pet alligators. Who knew?

What a relief for me. No news or politics. No reading, no writing, no research. No stitching or cloth. As little phone as possible. Just focus on him and the doings.

Late in the day, we watched a movie together that had us both laughing. Of all things, Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon, probably the funniest thing on Netflix right now.

Then his Dad picked him up and I signed on to my shift, humanity restored.
.

Saturday

My sleep/wake cycles have been sacrificed to family duties for a few days. I keep asking myself if this is Sunday.

Charlie stayed overnight Thursday. All the cats see these sleepovers as an invitation to Circus. With all four of them, kid and cats, in my bed I got about two hours of sleep. I dropped him off at a friend's house for the day on Friday and was home by mid-morning. A twenty-minute nap turned into two hours and that awful "what day is it?" lost weekend feeling that persisted through my shift at work.








Saturday dawned sharp and cold. The sunlight by itself almost too harsh to work by so I balanced it with the task lamp, but I was restless. Couldn't settle into a stitch or sequence. There was editing to do and reading for a friend.

I'm resigned to let this take it's sweet time to manifest. Let it rest and not get obsessive with progress.

Gifts came. The best kind. On the bottom, a long-coveted treasure from afar. Thank you!

Colin is busy reclaiming the living room from a cluttered hoard. "Cutting for Stone", I thought I'd lost. Yet to read and want to.

The two books on the top of this pile were from deep in our disordered stacks. I'd say they've come from beyond, including a note, a slightly delayed valentine. One of my first Tarot books and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, provenance unknown. The note was between them.

love, always

rounds

A different kind of orb.
I've started to cut away small portholes in that vast sea of green.

Sometimes there's something good underneath, sometimes not. Then I have to fiddle something into the hole.

The messages are falling into place: my characters are speaking to each other again and I am eavesdropping and making notes.