Just a Scene or Two

I didn't write much today. This thing reads more like a play, except it's too long. Mostly dialogue. Maybe I'll write a play someday.

I just watched the last few minutes of "Sunrise At Campobello" on TCM, and at one point I couldn't help crying. Mostly for our poor country, that has slid steadily downhill ever since Eisenhower, who had just enough mischief in his heart to turn into a Republican. Not that there aren't some good Republican politicians, or some good people who are Republican politicians. Or used to be. Theodore Roosevelt. Everett Dirksen. Lowell Weiker. I think there was another one, but the name escapes me.

Yesterday I read in The New Yorker something that Rusty Schweickart thought when he was walking in space and looking down at the Earth.

"It is so small and so fragile and such a precious little spot in that universe that you can block it out with your thumb. And you realize that on that small spot, that little blue-and-white thing, is everything that means anything to you--all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love."

God, keep us.

Time for Another Fight

50,000 words. It won't be long, now.


If anybody ever tells you writing isn't hard work, send them to me and I'll thump them feebly on the head.


Good grief! Is it Saturday already?!!!

Wo' Out!

I just finished writing the first (and maybe the only) real love scene, and I 'm so tired I could sleep for a week. Hungry, too. Do I deserve a pizza? Certainly, go right ahead. Thank you, maybe I will.

I was supposed to do a lot of business today. Pay bills. Call about getting the car title for the Lincoln. Go buy a new telephone. Tow dat barge. Lift dat bale.

"Big Baby, I fink I'm going to be starved to deaf by ve time we get home."

Writing At a Gallop

So, today I reached 30,000+ words. About this time next month, I hope to have this thing ready to send off to somebody, will they, nil they.

It's hard to believe this is the 23rd of February. Specially hard to believe it's the year 2011, when I've been writing about the 1940s all day. All those old folks are dead and gone, except for a few of us who were little children or not born at the time, so I can change them around and make them do whatever I want them to.

On Sunday Ramey and I went to Odenville to Joe's critique group. His house is amazing. It's about a hundred years old, and he has built on rooms and porches but kept it looking old. He and Gail had decorated it with dozens of quilts and antiques and paintings. I asked if he did some of the building onto the house himself, and he said, "No. I write poems and make quilts." The meeting was good, and we're going to meet again next month.

Extinguished

The Only Thing Worse Than Being In Line Behind Someone Having Trouble Checking Out--Being One!

I am just about as embarrassed and aggravated as I have been in a long time. We all know how I hate to shop at Wal Mart, but I made a trip up there, found the right telephone I need to buy, almost filled the basket with curtain rods and spray paint, etc., then got a few groceries. When I finally got through a line to checkout, I found I had left my checkbook and everything at home. Next time I go to Wal Mart, I'll go in disguise. A wasted day--I could've written 5,000 words or so.

GRRR!!!!!

Feeling My Age but Acting OK, I Think

3,000 more words this morning. Then while I was eating a sandwich and a cookie, I lost my arrow and my keyboard and had to turn the computer off and on, etc.

One good thing about getting old is that you quit worrying so much about the future. I don't even dread getting dementia very much. While I worked at the Alzheimer's center, I heard so many funny stories from patients' families. One lady piled her dirty dishes on her kitchen counter, poured a whole box of detergent over them, then sprayed them with the hose from the sink. A gent with advanced AZD still scored 140 on an IQ test. Another patient, who came to the office with her family, followed me all around laughing like a hyena. If I get it, they can put me in a home, and I can go on having fun until the curtain closes. If they'll just let me have my books and computer or whatever toys I might like at the time.

*

About 5:30 p.m.: I read over all I've written from the beginning, and corrected as many typos as I noticed. I wasn't bored at all. I hope it will be interesting to anyone else who reads it.

The only other thing I've done today was put on some clothes and run the dishwasher.

QWERTYUIOP ASDFGHJKL ZXCVBNM

More than 20,000 words into this book. Sometimes I dream about typing. There are some boring places in the original draft, and every time I come to one of those, I try to throw in a fight. Maybe a murder, but nobody has committed one of those yet.

I'm so used to writing with Mo in my lap, I hardly even notice him any more.

Book club meeting is this afternoon, and critique group in Odenville Sunday afternoon. And I've got to go and buy a telephone to go with my new phone box.

My Favorite Quilt

It was in the 1970s, I guess, my mother was making quilts for my sister to sell to finance some project she had going. Jealous whelp that I was, I kept whining because Mama gave Susie so many quilts and never gave me one, so she finally gave me this quilt top.

I quilted it myself. This is the first quilt I ever stuck a needle into, and I love it the most of all. In the years after that, Mama gave me several quilts and tops, and this one, the Mexican Star, is worn and faded, but it's still my favorite.

Also, this is the style of quilt I like best--patchwork, hand-marked and hand-cut pieces, hand-sewn and imperfect. But I like appliqued quilts, and the modern machine-stitched, precision-cut works of art, too.

Around Christmas, I finally got the Una quilt bound and hung on the wall.

Someday I want to make a whole quilt like the top center block in the Una quilt. I don't know the name of the pattern or where I found it, but it looks pretty simple to reproduce.

All Tangled Up

I spent just about the whole day, much of it on the (cell) phone with Jed and the Vonage man, trying to get online and find out what's wrong with my telephone box. What was wrong was apparently the telephone box, which is apparently dead, and they're sending me a new one.

But before I found out the box is dead, I stayed tangled up in cables and wires for hours, unplugging and plugging and pushing buttons, all of it unnecessary because of the dead phone box.

Yesterday I made a great pot full of beef stew, and it was really good. I had enough left over to freeze three containers of it, which I feel hungry enough now to eat all of.

Don't Just Sit There--Do Something If It's Wrong!

I slept very very late today, like until noon. I woke up wanting to write some more on the book, but haven't done so yet, just been wandering around Facebook and people's blogs and the Spider. What I need to do is get up and clean up the house and cook something. Yesterday I had cornbread and spinach with grated cheese on it. So far today I've only had a milkshake--got to cut that out, I've gained five pounds since Christmas.

Sometimes I need a jump-start, like somebody ringing the doorbell, or an annoying phone call, or Mo throwing up on the carpet, to get me out of my pajamas and into human mode.

More Flurries

I've been watching as the wind blows snow off the trees. It looks like more snow flurries, but what's on the ground is melting pretty fast.

I read Catcher in the Rye last night and this morning, and almost wish I hadn't. I'm afraid Holden Caulfield ended up like Seymour Glass, for different reasons.

Well, I'm 8,000+ words into the book. Just got through writing a fight between the James brothers, and I'm sort of exhausted. I'm craving cornbread and greens.

Progress

At last I've gathered the rags of my determination around me and started totally rewriting the book. I'm changing it to first-person viewpoint, which sounds much more natural, but less gramatically precise. I wrote more than 3,000 words today, and I'm enthusiastic about it again.

Friday Buffy and Philip "ran away" and got married, and then ran back home. Pat called and invited me to come up and celebrate with them, so we ate pizza and cake and I don't know what all. I hope they'll stay happily married forever. Philip has two little girls, and Buffy has Reed, so they've got their ready-made family.

Marsupial Strabismus

Marsupial Strabismus

I had a little possum,
Her name was Lana Rose,
And both her little beady eyes
Turned inward toward her nose,

Which caused her to see double
And be prone to accidents.
I wept to watch her try to climb
The shrubbery and the fence.

Though cross-eyed possums are unique,
Or surely very rare,
I saw eyeglasses advertised
And ordered her a pair.

And now I love to see her watch
TV or read the news,
And climb the neighbors' highest fence
Without a bump or bruise.

jrc--02/05/11

Paging Becky Young

Hi, Becky! I just read your post from yesterday, inquiring about the Silver Pine china. I sold the demitasse cups and saucers, but still have the full service for eight dishes. I really would hate to ship them a long distance, but would like to sell them if you're close enough to pick them up or to be pretty sure they'll arrive safely. My asking price is $300, because of the cost of shipping. But I'm open to offers, especially if you're not too far away. You can email me - jocage@charter.net.

***

Just got back from the store. This time I stocked up on cat food, etc., so I won't have to drive if the streets freeze over again. Yesterday I looked out the window, and the deck and areas under the trees were white with ice crystals. A pretty sight, but I'm glad for the slight warming-up and the rain.

This morning I filled the bathtub with hot water and bubbles and floated for a while in a rare tub bath. "Since I left Pine Tree down in Tennessee, that's the first time I've been warm."  If I turn the thermostat above 71, the house gets too warm, so I keep it low. But some spots in the house feel like the South Pole, and they happen to be the spots I spend most time in.

While I was in the tub meditating, I realized that the novel still needs lots of fixing. Like a complete rewrite. Save us and bind us!

Voila! (I hope.)

Been working on the novel all morning, and I think I've reached the point of calling it done. So now, figure out how to get some of it to whatever agent will read it. There's still a scene or two to write, and then read it to see if it all hangs together, but basically it's done. And I've got to change Aaron Hatfield's name; that's the title of an Edgar Lee Masters poem. I've added about ten thousand words to the original 50-odd, so maybe it'll be a respectable length.

After this, I plan to dig out my Dreadful Hollow piece of a novel and finish that.

I'm so hungry, I could eat the heater.