"Poem"

Random quote of the day:


"Every word was once a poem."

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Poet," Essays and English Traits





( Illustrated version. )

A bunch of random things make a post

• Mom's feeling good. I am a very grateful girl. Everything else is of minor importance.

• We haven't lit a fire in the fireplace in the three years I've lived at the house, and I suspect it hasn't been lit for a few years (at least) before that. So I called the chimney sweep. He's coming a week from tomorrow. Busy season—that's the soonest we could get him. And yesterday, we bought ourselves a Xmas present of a new fireplace screen and matching loggy pokey things. A steal at Target. I would have done almost anything to avoid going to the actual Target store, but the roommate balked at the $30 shipping (apparently fireplace screens and loggy pokey things didn't qualify for the as-advertised free shipping). So, I spent Sunday at Target. Oh the humanity! =:0 But the hearth looks so pretty now! It made us both happy.

• I haven't written a damned thing since Mom got sick. I haven't been in the right frame of mind, and I got sick myself (minor stuff, finally feeling better). I may get started again when I'm on vacation, but we'll see. I always plan a lot for my Xmas vacations and then do a full body collapse.

• I will be on vacation (in town, at home) from December 24 through January 4. I so need it!

• The electrician is coming out to fix the track light that the painters broke last summer. We discovered yesterday that it was hanging from an exposed wire. Oops. We've been living with it in this state for many, many months, but knowing is different from ignorance and we're sure it's going to cause a fire. The electrician doesn't think it will be too expensive. Alas, the heating man did not have such "good" news. We're going to need a new furnace to replace the misfiring thirty-year-old in the attic. That's going to hurt, but we can probably scrape it together between the two of us and shifting accounts around. We do not have a mortgage, thank Ggod/dess, and are in no danger of foreclosure. In that, we are truly blessed.

• I've starting crafting things again—mostly small assemblages, jewelry, minor league textiles, things I used to do a lot but got out of the habit. I'm really loving it. I found I needed to do something with my hands as well as writing. It makes me feel more balanced.

• Friday I'm having two crowns done on my upper left jaw. I broke a tooth a few weeks back, and I've needed a crown on that back molar for some time. I may have let that one go too long. He won't know until he gets in there whether I'll have to have a root canal.

• For some reason, when I feed Min in the afternoons when I'm home on the weekend, I am now required to pet her and say, "Yummy food, yum yum," before she will commence eating. If I do not engage in this ritual, she looks up at me as if to say, "Get on with it. I'm hungry." As soon as I engage in the ritual, she eats. She doesn't pull this in the morning when I feed her, nor does she pull this with the roommate when she's fed afternoons on the weekdays (she has a whole separate ritual with her, but I won't go into that). Min's a precocious little darling. You do something once and it becomes a ritual. And she's extremely odd. I don't know who has spoiled this cat so badly. Cat spoiling ninjas, most likely.

• And I got a new Oster food processor for Xmas! It's so pretty in stainless steel. Now I'll have to knead some dough or grind some meat or something.