In Common with Humans

I’m feeling very sleepy tonight, and I still have workout to do. It’s too cold for the middle third of November. I’ve been burning fires in the fireplace the last several nights. I pulled two heavy old wooden crates out of my crawl space and cleaned them out for wood boxes. These crates have been in the crawl space since I moved in and they’re probably 50+ years old. They make great wood boxes. I can fill them up with firewood in advance, and completely eliminate the mess I used to have when I just hauled in a few log carriers full and dumped them on a tarp for the evening. Man, I have actual wood boxes–I guess I’ve turned into a serious wood burner.

I went shopping today, and that seems to have worn me out. I never did my shopping errands on Monday, which is my usual day to take care of everything. I did the laundry, but then I had to be here for the chimney guy, and I never went out. On Tuesday I went to the transfer station, but I still didn’t want to do any shopping. It was so great to have no more big “extracurricular” projects on my plate in the immediate future. I was finally getting to backlogged e-mail and publishing work, and I didn’t want to stop. All I wanted to do was work at my computer. Then this cold snap clamped down, with sub-freezing temperatures and gusty winds, and I didn’t even want to stick my nose outside. Yesterday, the high never went above the freezing mark. But I was running out of groceries–and, I need to start Christmas shopping.

So, today, I finally went up to Nashua. I got some Christmas shopping done, and I got groceries. I needed food for a potluck dish for the Youth group on Sunday, and for Thanksgiving with my dad. I got a turkey for 48 cents a pound! I had to go to two JoAnn Fabric stores for a pattern because it was out of stock at the first one, so I drove further than I planned.

All that shopping must have worn me out, because I’ve been a vegetable since I got home. *sigh*

the other reason I didn’t go out yesterday

Nudges madrigalist…

Hey, Mav, your cover image just went up on Amazon! 🙂

The chimney cleaner, Paul Farynaz, was just here and pronounced my chimney so pristine it didn’t need to be cleaned at all! So all I had to pay for was the inspection! I hoped that those very hot fires* I burn kept the flue pretty clean, but now I have professional confirmation of that. He says I should have the furnace’s flue relined within a couple of years, but the fireplace flue is good to go. I expected to have to pay twice as much!

Plus, I had a very interesting chat with Mr. Farynaz, who is self-employed, about marketing techniques. *g*

Now I need to get the laundry hung up and decide whether or not I want to run my errands today or wait and go tomorrow. This is a transfer station week (trash and recyclables), so I need to do that tomorrow. *sigh* I need a personal assistant! (or a wife!)

*how hot? The flames are mostly blue and I’ve melted three fire grates. Almost all the wood I burn is oak and maple.

Good news: My church service for tomorrow is entirely done! I just need to rehearse it a bit and print everything out. Hymns, children’s story, opening words, chalice lighting piece, reading, sermon, closing words, all set. 10:00 a.m. tomorrow at the First Parish Church of Ashby (Unitarian-Universalist), all are welcome! 🙂

Bad news: There is a tornado watch up until 2:00 a.m. Good grief. It’s NOVEMBER!!

It’s been a weird week. I have never seen the ‘Net so dead. I think the Internet has become passe, and everyone is just texting from their smart phones and Blackberries. E-mail, forums, e-groups, blogs, Facebook…there’s nobody out there.

I’m posting some long newsy entries for people who are interested in what’s going on in my life. If you’re not one of those people, you won’t miss anything by skipping these.

November 3-11

I’m posting some long newsy entries for people who are interested in what’s going on in my life. If you’re not one of those people, you won’t miss anything by skipping these.

October 27-November 2

I’m posting some long newsy entries for people who are interested in what’s going on in my life. If you’re not one of those people, you won’t miss anything by skipping these.

October 19-26

Several people have posted “In Flanders Fields” to their journals today. I’m posting another thoughtful poem from that time…

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

~~~~~~~~Rudyard Kipling

I am just so tired of being abused by self-righteous bullies. *sigh*

Just for variation, here is a post that has nothing to do with politics whatsoever. 🙂

The book I’m currently finishing, The Longer the Fall, has been marked throughout its evolution by a series of “life imitates art” coincidences, some of them downright eerie. Things I write in the story keep on cropping up in real life, sometimes literally, sometimes in analogous or similar forms. It just happened again.

I’m using a repeating theme in which the main character, Diana, has visions or dreams of a tidal wave engulfing her, as an omen of disaster looming ahead. I wrote the following, which is part of a dream sequence, a couple of months ago:

“Gods, what is that awful smell?” They’d stopped at the end of the concrete ramp, which was farther than they should have been able to walk. The Bay was no longer there. The water was gone, and there was nothing but dry sea-floor between them and Isleboro Island. Mounds of seaweed glistened under a bronze-colored sky, and fish flopped sluggishly in the mud. The air was filled with sea gulls, circling silently like buzzards. There was an overpowering stench. Moira gazed serenely out over the devastation.

“It’s the end of the world, kiddo. You really did it.”

“Where’s the water?”

“Oh, it’s coming back. You see–there it is.”

Diana followed Moira’s pointing hand and saw a long shining line rising up behind the island. As it grew higher, she saw that it was a great wave, dark below and sunlit above, about to pour over the entire island and crash down into the empty basin of the Bay. It rose and rose above the treetops, dwarfing the misty green island, rising taller than Mount Batty, the peak that overlooked Camden, and still growing. There was a deep roaring coming from beneath her feet, a sound that had begun below the threshold of her hearing and was slowly rising in pitch. Diana’s bones were vibrating with it. “Moira, we’ve got to run,” she shouted, hardly able to hear herself over the din.

The story is set in a fictional town on Penobscot Bay in Maine, which is not noted for tsunamis (that’s the whole point, of course, the vision can’t be something real). In yesterday’s Globe, I found this story:

Massive waves a mystery at Maine harbor

There are times when I wonder what is going to happen when I actually finish this book. 🙁