Thursday, May 15, 2008

lost note from Monday

While I crack eggs into the small fry pan, I marvel that I’ve propped a literary journal under a carton of eggs, to read while I cook my breakfast. It’s come to this: I read all the time. Such is the life of a grad student, stealing any minute I can.

My laptop is open and warmed up on the kitchen table, with the two books I’m studying for a critical paper. I spent half an hour with email, half an hour clearing the clean laundry off the couch. The crease in the futon cushion is filled with beach sand, but wrestling the cushion off… that falls under the category of “complicated and time-consuming,” which means it will need to be solved LATER. As with so many things. A bag of stuff to go to the thrift shop, another bag to go to the school book sale, a backlog of winter clothes that needs to go to the attic, but can’t simply be “stirred in” to the existing piles in the attic. The list continues. But yesterday I weeded half of the yard and patio, prepared the vegetable bed, and found the cut-up remnants of our Christmas tree that Brendan used for a “fort” behind the butterfly bush. The lettuce starts and pansies will go into window boxes and the garden, today or tomorrow.

I DID work, I HAVE worked, I WILL work on these things.

Good to be home, looking out the window at the ridge of spring green trees, just past the harbor. The last of the forsythia still blooms. I need to work on my paper, edit my essay, attack my to-do list, and go for a walk, hmmm. I will write a terrible draft of the critical paper—for an hour perhaps, then go at one of the other needs, after. I hope. Meanwhile I’ll finish breakfast, pour more coffee, close the journal and put away the carton of eggs.

I’ll need to find something bigger to prop open the other books.

(Did Work: later I sorted all of the kids' clothes in the attic, put in new labeled boxes. Still lots to do and lots to write.)

No comments: