Getting Things Done

Yesterday I basically finished Jenny's Persian Puzzle/horse quilt top.

It's not a neat job; the white fabric is flimsy and stretched in all directions, and I had to cut a corner from an extra block to piece one corner of the center block. I think I'll use high-loft batting, and only quilt around the design and on the sashing and border(s), if I add any.

Later in the day, Ramey and I went to the used-furniture store downtown, where I found a treasure.

I had in mind using it for a telephone table, but maybe it'll just sit there in the corner by the telephone.

The color I've chosen for the roof shingles is called "Driftwood." It matches the bricks of the house. Steve the Roofer said replacing the roof will only take "2-3 days." So I guess they can start this-coming week, and maybe be done within the month of June.

Jed has had his kitchen remodeled, granite countertops, travertine floor, teal-colored cabinets, the whole shooting-match. I've got to get over to 'Lanta and inspect it.

If I remodeled my kitchen, everything that takes paint would be painted white, with black cabinet-and-drawer pulls. Soapstone counters, black tile floor, black appliances, white table and black chairs. A multicolored glass tile backsplash behind the cooktop or range. Paint the chandelier black. Get those multicolored Fiesta dishes back when Jed gets new dishes.

Black and white and jewel colors for the kitchen. Pink and green for the dining room. Red and green for the living room. That's about as far as my imagination goes. No brown and orange.

Cruising for a Fight

The checkout counter was bare, but an enormous young woman, in most of a pair of shorts and a little shirt, was waiting for the clerk to get through helping a customer load his basket. When I approached to unload my cart, the EYW backed up against my cart, so I pulled back into the aisle. When she moved forward, I started to unload again, but she ran up against my cart and started peering at a display over my left shoulder, so I backed away up into the aisle. I kept backing up, because she kept pushing at a box on top of the display, and it looked like it would fall on me or my cart.

When the clerk turned around to the register, the EYW turned around, but still blocked the lane while she talked at the clerk. Then she finally bought a pack of chewing gum or something and walked away, but when I pushed my cart up and started to unload, she ran back and pushed against the cart and leaned over the counter and laughed and talked at the clerk.

I mentally saw myself doing what I really wanted to do, and wondered what the outcome would be if I were brash enough to pick up my wine bottle and give her one upside the head. The adventures of getting out of the house. Stifling violent impulses. Remembering old Betty J-----t and other pugnacious fat females who liked nothing better than to pick a fight with an old woman or a little kid.

The incident reminded me of a story W.C. Fields told about picking a fight with a fat woman in a bar. He and his buddy almost got the best of her, but she finally grabbed a beer bottle and broke it and cut them both up pretty bad before the cops arrived.

I dreamed Mo was a 1935 Packard.

I dreamed Jed was driving the big black car that's in my Big Baby book, and he stopped and told me to get in the back seat. The seats were enormous. I leaned on the back of Jed's seat to talk to him, and the upholstery was so plush it tickled my face. Then I woke up, and Mo was on my chest with his back against my face.

So today I made it to TKC once again and had my head CAT scanned. After I walked from the parking deck to Internal Med. and then up 28 stairs to Radiology, I had to sit down and rest before I could talk. Looks like I need to go back on all those vitamins and supplements. I guess more hair will fall out, and I won't feel "normal," but I was probably in better physical shape when I was taking all that stuff. But I'm not going to swallow another pill until the doc says to. He hasn't called me about my blood work yet.

Nothing Brown Can Stay

Nothing Brown Can Stay, by J.R. Cage


My room's first brown was taupe,
The hue of sand and rope.
At first it made me smile,
But only for a while.
Then taupe faded to tan.
So monkey sank to man.
So I'll paint it white or gray.
Nothing brown can stay.

Trip to TKC

I went to my clinic appointment this morning because I keep coughing. Dr. G. beat on my face and found a sore spot over my sinuses, and got me set up for a CT scan on Thursday of this week. Then I went to the lab and had 4 vials of blood drawn. Onae called me just now and said I'm scheduled for a mammogram on June 22. Also in the offing is a bone-density scan, and something else, I forget what. So I guess today's visit counts for my 6-month "wellness" exam, since they scheduled another one for November 22. Isn't that Thanksgiving Day? No, the 22nd is the Tuesday before T'giving. There's always something to look forward to.

The poetry reading group meets tonight at the Arts Council. The writing theme is "future tense," and we're supposed to bring a favorite poem to read, one written by someone other than ourselves.
*
(9:28 p.m.) A poem I read at the group meeting:

Future Tense

I shall means that I plan to,
If nothing interferes;
I will means I'm determined,
In spite of fears and tears.

You shall means you must obey me--
I'll beat you if you don't!
But he or she most likely will,
Even if you won't.

I may if fortune favors
And all the signs are right;
And if  you ask me nicely,
Who knows, my dear? I might.
            (By JRC, 5/23/11)

The "other poet's" poem that I read was "All in green went my love riding" by e.e. cummings.

Make Quilts, Write Poems

The meeting went well. Only Ramey, Emily and Frank attended, and Ramey had to leave early for her play practice. But we had a right merry time. We're all pretty doggone good poets, at least at heart. I'm borrowing a leaf from Joe W.: From now on, what I do is make quilts and write poems. And read books, although Walt Whitman would grumble at "living on the ghosts in books."

Right now I'm reading James Flexner's biography of George Washington. That gentleman was more complex than I've always thought, much more of a creative personality than the schoolbooks have painted. He practically had to reinvent warfare for this continent as it was in its primeval state. The last thing the colonists wanted to do was fight. It appears that the last thing Washington wanted to think about was leading an army or a country. But when you've got the alligators in front of you and the crocodiles behind--!

Oops!

I was thinking I had invited the poetry critique group to meet here on Sunday the 29th. But however, an email yesterday from one of the group members reminded me that the meeting is set for Sunday the 22nd--the day after tomorrow! We always meet on the fourth Sunday, and I forgot that May has five Sundays this year. So besides helping the tow guy load the Lincoln onto his truck, what I've done today is clean up the porches and a couple of rooms that were easiest because I halfway cleaned them last week. Tomorrow I've got to get the whole thing spiffed up and do a little shopping besides. Someday maybe I'll rest.

A Very Good Book

Friday at book club, I picked up The Scapegoat out of the boxes of donated books. It had been many years since I read this book, and remembered thinking it was pretty good. So yesterday I read it again, and liked it better than Rebecca or any of her other books. I think duMaurier was one of the best novelists of the twentieth century. Or any other century, for that matter.

The Scapegoat is about a lonely Englishman who, trying not to think about suicide, contemplates going into a monastery. He accidentally meets a no-account French count who looks exactly like himself, and gets tricked into changing places with the count. I love mistaken-identity and identical-twin stories. Mary Stuart wrote one but I don't remember the title, maybe The Ivy Tree. And of course there's Dumas' The Corsican Brothers, and The Man in the Iron Mask which I haven't read but have only seen the movie. I like The Scapegoat better than others of this type that I've read, because the Englishman has no close friends or family and hardly knows the meaning of the word love. Then he gets thrown into the middle of a really messed-up French family and falls head-over-heels in love with the whole bunch.

Oh--Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey is one of the best doppelganger books; I guess I like it even better than The Scapegoat. Dickens had Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay, and Joseph Conrad The Secret Sharer. Even old Dostoevsky wrote one, but I haven't read it. And probably never will.

A good movie on this theme, I think the title is "Dave," stars Kevin Kline as a stand-in for a U.S. president. And probably the creepiest story of this kind is The Picture of Dorian Gray.
*
Jed will be here tomorrow and Wednesday and will be working in Birmingham. Also tomorrow, they're coming to take the Lincoln away. I hope Jed gets here before "they" do, to help me get the trunk open and cleaned out.

Start Over With Master and Commander?

Today I finished the last of the Jack Aubrey books, Blue At the Mizzen. I think they could as accurately be called the Stephen Maturin books. In the penultimate volume, The Hundred Days, Napoleon was put down, and Stephen lost his wife and never said a word about her more--the incomparable Diana Villiers ignored Jack's warning about her reckless driving and eclipsed herself. Maybe Stephen was, while grieved, also a bit relieved. At any rate, scarcely a whole book later, he proposes to a widow. Jack is awarded his blue flag of the admiralty, and everybody is rich and more or less mollified.

I wouldn't pick out any one book of the Aubrey series and say it's the best book I've ever read; but the whole bunch of them made one of the notable reading experiences of my life. The Bible was better. Otherwise. . .

I've been sort of wandering around, lonesome and at loose ends, since Big Baby is truly done. Now it's even worse, with all the Aubrey books finished. Yesterday I had a lot of business to keep me busy--pay bills, get insurance on the Tracker, I forget what-all. Tomorrow I'll probably get the Lincoln towed out of the garage and donated. Friday is book club day, and I'm about halfway through the book, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand.

TGI Sunday

Yesterday I made another trip to Wal Mart and came home in the foulest of foul moods, with a crick in my neck from trying to read the overhead signs. Then I slept off and on until nearly ten o'clock this morning. I think what I need to do is never to buy food at Wal Mart. I can find most everything else pretty easily, with no more than an hour of searching. But groceries--I make a resolution not to go there any more for food, unless I just see something I want/need in passing by the produce department.

The reason I was grocery-shopping, anyway, is that I had to buy funace filters, curtain rods, and other stuff. By the time I found those, it seemed I would save time by picking up what food items I needed. Bad guess.

Our Wal Mart wastes so much space with flowers and seasonal displays, jewelry, baked goods, racks of candy and greeting cards--and the aisles are so narrow you have to negotiate space for a buggy. They need about twice the space for the goods they've got--which are hardly ever the right brands, providing you can find the category you're looking for. And if the store was twice as big, I'd never go there, period.

That's my Wal Mart speech for the month. Or for good, I hope.

Today was somebody's birthday. Douglas's, I think.

Hopefully

I've like a fool volunteered to  host the critique group here on the last Sunday this month. Yesterday I wrote myself a plan to get the house dolled up before that date. So today I started working on it, and I'm already 2-3 days behind.

The picture (from Country Living) is just a simple color- and fabric- suggestion to me, when I start to make a cover for my cat-clawed sofa. I've probably got enough muslin to make the whole thing, and then make covers for all my throw-pillows out of all the red prints I can scrape up. Wish I could get a room or two painted this month. I don't know why it's so important to get it all done for the meeting, because there'll only be 4-5 attendees, if any. But it's an incentive to get some spring cleaning done.
***
Approximately the last half of "My Fair Lady" was on TCM, and I made the mistake of standing there looking at it for a minute, which stretched on until the end. There'll never be another Rex Harrison, another Stanley Holloway, and I'm sorry for that. And I've never cared all that much for musical comedy, or any other kind of screen comedy. But this movie is incomparable, even in its faulty restored condition.
***
I had an email from Jack yesterday. He said he's doing all right, that he and his boss had been riding around viewing all the storm destruction.

Blackadder!

On the Front of My Monitor

Aggravations--or challenges: (1) There's a limb on top of my house. I can get ahold of it, but it won't come loose. Tracy is across the street, working on Charlotte's lot, so if I can get his attention, I'll see if he'll deal with it.

(2) Trying to print out my manuscript, I put in a new cartridge. Now it says "cartridge missing or undetected," and won't print except off of the Tricolor.

(3)  I have to go for my annual checkup tomorrow. Decided I'd just turn myself off till it's over, but I'm hungry, and I didn't want to eat much until they draw my blood. Don't want Dr. G. talking about statins again.

Other than those little pesky points, I'm okay.

Will It Ever Be Done?

I've added quite a bit to the novel, and this morning I was almost ready to print a proof copy, but then I seemed to hear Mary Loggins say, "Phil, I'm afraid of them old Ku Klux."

I just have not got the stamina to get the KKK in gear because Mary and Philip have harbored the draft dodger. With all the subsequent changes I'd have to make in the manuscript. And the trauma to poor old Philip. A really big mess this time that Mary has got him into. If I decide to do it. Maybe I can save it for another book. I'm tired of this one.
*
Pat called a few minutes ago and said their electricity is off again. They only had it on for a few hours.

Betty Jo hasn't called me back, so I guess she hasn't been able to get in touch with Sandra. There are so many missing from Tuscaloosa, it's terrible.

The jo-ree is back on the windowsill. I apologized for misleading him yesterday, and told him to go about his legitimate business. This time he isn't just cheeping, he's singing a tune! If I were more superstitious, in this tumbled landscape, I would hope he's not trying to tell me something.

I've worked on the book--AGAIN!!!-- all morning. Remarks from Ramey keep sending me back to clarify and elaborate on a few points.

Stormy weather used to be something I could joke about, even sing about. But never no more! The devastation is too terrible to comprehend. I sent an email to my friend Sandra H.B., who is a consulting professor at the University. She has an apartment in Florence, Italy, which is where I hope she was when the monster rolled over Tuscaloosa. I hope to hear from her. Sandra B.H., Hoyt's widow, lives up toward Gadsden somewhere, on a lake, and I hope she's OK, too. Yesterday, when I went to see about Susan, I passed Betty Jo's and Carole M.'s houses, and they seemed to be OK. In fact, I don't think I saw any real damage on Ziegler Road or close to Susan's house.
*
I called Betty Jo, and she hadn't heard from any of our far-flung classmates. She said Sandra has children and grandchildren who live in Tuscaloosa. She also said a bunch of people were killed in a retirement home near Leeds, probably in St. Clair County, and a daughter of our 1950's police chief, John Pledger, was one of them. Betty said something about Joyce Earle, but not that she was hurt.

I also emailed Jack, but haven't heard from him yet.

Well, Come On In!

A pure-dee, Peterson-Plate-56-perfect, rufus-side towhee (jo-ree) is on my office windowsill, acting like he wants to come in. This is one of the most beautiful birds, to me; not quite as big as one of our full-grown robins. His breast is white, with a black V from his throat, like a meadowlark. The two wide sides, like a cutaway coat, are a deep terra-cotta color, and his back and tail feathers are dark gray with white spots. His head is black or dark gray, and his eyes are supposed to be red, but they look black to me. This bird has hopped around in front of these two windows for at least five minutes. I told him, "If I let you in, you'd want out again five minutes later. Just like Mo." Now he has the sun in his eyes, and they are dark orangey-red. He makes a little "cheep" whistle every few seconds, which I try to copy. Scratching fleas or mites.
*
Yesterday was Jed's birthday, which I forgot in all the tornado trauma that was going on. Tried off and on all day yesterday to call Susan, but her phone was out. I drove down there this morning to check on her, and all is well. I think she even has the power back on now.
*
Now the bird is pecking and scratching at the window-glass. What's going on here? Maybe my whistles have fooled him into thinking there's a bird in here?
*
I went outside and followed the bird with the camera, but could never get a clear shot at him. I found what he was whistling at, though--a nest in the privet hedge, with a mama bird sitting on it. I guess he thought she had somehow got behind that window-glass.

*

A tree is down in Mrs. Adams's yard, across the street. But it fell away from the house, fortunately. There are several houses on this street with trees laid across the roofs. Many people died in those tornadoes yesterday, mostly in Alabama. It's heartbreaking.

"...Scarcely/ Dare we hope oak galls."

Something has given one of the hickory trees a tremendous shake, as the bark is in strips all over the ground. I gathered up some of the bark, in hopes that one day I'll get around to redoing the dolls' house, make some rustic furniture for the garden and porches.

As for Browning's poem, I've always rather identified with Brother Lawrence. He may be, as accused, a lecher and a hypocrite, but he's certainly more likable than the narrator. I think it was in China Court that an old lady said, a little hypocrisy sometimes makes for better manners.

After I passed the age of twenty-one years, I tried very hard to stop writing in books--except for textbooks, of course. But this Patrick O'Brian novel, The Yellow Admiral, tempted me beyond endurance on two pages, and I made tiny light red marks. Forgive me, J.D.

You'd think that after 15 or so books about the same bunch of characters, the author's inventiveness would wane, not to mention the reader's enthusiasm. But, to me, these O'Brian books just get better and better.

Tracy's son Aaron is out there cutting the weeds/grass again. Got to go see if I've got enough wherewithal to pay him.

Airs Above the Ground

Okay, so here are Jenny's horse blocks, all laid out and ready to be stripped together. It took a week just to get the strips cut, but first it took a lot of thinking, which accounted for most of the time. I thought about sewing the quilt top together, then taking it to a quilt conservator or something to get it cleaned without wrinkling the horses or disturbing the embroidery. But I'll probably just finish the top, put it together and quilt it, then spend a day hand-washing and smoothing until it gets dry. There won't be much quilting on the horse blocks, so it should turn out all right. I want to embroider something on the sashing, inspired by a quilt of Joe W.'s, maybe a piece of one of the designs on the horses' blankets.

Also this week, I finally got the tag for the truck, but that was just yesterday. I don't remember everything I did before that. When I presented all our paper work on the Tracker and said, for the third time, "I want to register my car," the courthouse lady studied everything, then said, "Did they inspect your vehicle when you were here before?" She noticed the blood draining from my face and the tears springing to my eyes, and laughed. But she took care of that computerwise, instead of telling me I had to make a fourth trip.

One quasi-UFO I got rid of was a bagful of old bed and table linens that wouldn't allow me to close the drawers of the chest in the foyer. What you bet that I'll eventually forget that I donated them, and wonder what happened to Mama's old red tablecloth with the cigarette burn in the corner, or the beautiful set of napkins and placemats that never got used in the 15 years that I owned them? Not to mention four new ready-made dining-chair covers that Jed gave me (sorry about that) because they didn't fit his chairs, and of course didn't fit mine, either.

One reason I didn't get to the courthouse until Thursday:  I was reading The Commodore by Patrick O'Brian, and lines in it kept inspiring germs of poems that I had to write down. And think about. And mull over. Something in the book made me think of what "mad" Nijinsky said, in perfect iambic pentameter: "I simply leap into the air, and pause." And that made me think about the horse quilt, which looks to me like the Lippizaner stallions in their dance.

I'd give a pretty to have my old photo program back, that would let me brighten the pictures and Photo-shop them a little.

*

About Big Baby: Before I start torturing myself with years of trying to find an agent and laboring in hopes somebody will publish the book, I've decided to enter it in River City Publishing's 2011 competition. The winner will get published and receive a pittance of an advance against "royalties" (yeah, right). I'm aware that Big Baby is not your great American novel, and if it could get published some easy way, I'd feel that I had fulfilled Betty Smith's (or some woman author's) instruction on how to live the full life: "Have a child, plant a tree, and write a book." Even if it doesn't win, maybe somebody will read it, and maybe somebody will comment.

What makes an object irresistible?

NW-J-203-E is the underglaze mark on this little "fairy lamp" that my mother gave me about 50 years ago. It was complete and as near-perfect as most antique china gewgaws get. The only thing lacking was a chimney. I always knew that someday I would find a chimney to fit. Well, about a month ago I found a new one online. One-and-a-quarter inch base, eight inches high. Thirteen dollars, plus $7.95 shipping and handling. Gad. But I would have paid twice that, or more, for an antique one with etching, faceting, or scallops around the top. "Vanity, all is vanity, saith the Preacher." This is surely a minor example.

When I was about eight years old, Bonnie Ann had a miniature oil lamp, about 2 inches high, made of plastic or some antiquated equivalent. She gave it to me. It was a good thing, because if she hadn't, I might have stolen it.

*

Once more, I think Big Baby is finished. Might-nigh 80,000 words. Every time I read through it, I find a few more typos--quotation marks left off, names unchanged, etc.

"Shootin' gives a man an appetite--"

So does writing most of the day. I had to fix lots of things in the book, and now I feel like I could "eat the heater." All I've got in the refrigerator, except frozen stuff, is one old potato and some mozzarella cheese. Sounds good to me.

"I dream of a [pink] rose tree..." - R. Browning

The Cecile Brunner is about to take over one of the oaks. I wish it had climbed that high several years ago. Probably would have if I had never cut it back.

The little pink oxalys-type flower, original stock from Granny SDS's garden, still pops up here and there in the yard. Before Tracy started cutting the grass Monday, I dug up some of it and put it in the big pot with the surviving lily-of-the-valley--which, by the way, had one tiny raceme of blooms earlier this month. Last summer, I transplanted a lot of the oxalys across the back of the lot, but of course the floods washed it away.

I almost planned to go buy a tag for the Tracker today, but it's thundering in the thicket, and storm watches and warnings abound. So I decided to hunker down today.

I think today was SDS's birthday. Either the 15th or the 14th. She would be about 121, if she were still topside. So would Maw Maw and Paw Paw.

When Money Goes Out the Door, Penury Comes Inuendo

I've decided to get fat. I mean I've decided to quit smoking, which is saying the same thing. I've always had a sort of Vettie-Ramey-like superstition, that I would die if I quit smoking--as if Karma would say, "You can't outsmart me!"

In recent years, my logic has been that I'm so old, why quit smoking now? The reverse of that is, why not quit smoking now? If I die from wanting a cigarette, which isn't likely, it's better than dying because I wouldn't quit smoking. Is that clear?

Anyway, economically, it comes down to Eat or Smoke, and I enjoy eating, just a fraction of a hair more. So I'll probably get fat, and more slovenly. When you're all the time cooking stuff like bacon and ham and biscuits, it increases the amount of slove.

It Was Monday, a Good Day

I hired a local Landscape Artist to cut the weeds. We'll see how he works out.

Also yesterday, I revised an old, old poem:

Desiderata

Could I write with my heart, and not my hand,
each poem would rise, original and plain
as the great oaks that on the mountain stand,
or a quick shower of September rain.
I fear I'm marked by all the poems I've read,
in neighbors' gardens sniffing all that bloomed,
till stems and blossoms hang about my head,
a patchwork veil of all I have consumed.

If muses do exist, then let them flood
my soul with light to wash my verses free,
nor dip my pen in alien wine or blood
to counterfeit the heart's true currency.
Let elements as rough as tears and mud
and rainbows, all my ink and parchment be.

A Great Meeting

Yesterday evening Joe W. send an email around reminding eveyone that we had rescheduled the poetry critique meeting for today, since the last Sunday this month is Easter Sunday, and the 17th is something, I don't remember what. So today Jed and I ate lunch at Cracker Barrel, then he went on to Atlanta and I went on to Odenville. It really was a fine meeting. The other five poets included a lady I hadn't met before, and all of them had outdone themselves. I had not outdone myself; the poems I read were old ones that are not too great. But I'm very glad I went. Joe showed us a bunch of the most fabulous antique quilts I've ever seen. My favorite was a star pattern that I've never seen before, in pink and white. Made me want to go home and make another quilt.

The Day the Monitor Died

I've been without computer access since last Monday, when all of a sudden the monitor went un-re-light-ably black. I had to wait until the Chief Fixer, Jed Cage, came over today and fixed it. Rather, trashed it and hooked up my old monitor. Seems the new one had blown a gasket or something.

It was a week of various aggravations, due to which I couldn't get anything done that I had planned for the book club meeting until Friday morning. At which time, I was scurrying around like a madwoman, when Susan phoned. She said she'd had emails and phone calls from the members, and nobody was coming to book club except her and Ramey and me. Susan hadn't finished reading the book, and Ramey hadn't started it, so I said to heck with the whole thing. So we didn't have the meeting.

A man came to service the air conditioner and furnace, and went into a frenzy because he said the AC is leaking freon and must be replaced, which is what they've been saying ever since the blamed thing was installed in I think it was 2002. Since it still works perfectly, I told him to talk to my son, and lots of luck. So he harassed Jed for a while, then phoned me about half a dozen more times trying to get me to sign a contract, which is becoming more and more something my hand refuses to do.

I didn't get the curtains and tablecloth made. I didn't get the house cleaned up until this morning (Saturday). And I don't plan to do anything else useful until I finish reading the biography of G. Washington that Jed brought me. And maybe the two Patrick O'Brian novels he also brought. Next Wednesday, I may june around and get something done; that's the day I'm supposed to go to The Kirklin Clinic for my annual checkup

I had an appointment last Wednesday for my checkup, but the office called and said Dr. G. had a death in the family so the office would be closed, and they changed my appt. to next Wednesday. I aim to ask the doctor what meds I need to start back on, after he gets my lab results back.

Something strange: I have tapered off and just plain quit all my meds and supplements. I don't think I've swallowed a pill in the past two weeks, and I feel better every day. My "affect" is returning; by that, I mean I feel some emotions other than aggravation, remorse and disappointment. I may even write a poem. Tomorrow is Joe W.'s poetry critique meeting day, so I need to write one anyway.

The Big Baby novel is finished, ausgepast, done with. I changed her name from Betty Lou to Barbara Lee, but kept the nickname. Jed's going to print it out on his laser printer so he can read it comfortably. Maybe we'll search for a publisher or an agent or something, but I'm already pretty deep into a novel I started in 2005 and expect to be writing that for the next few months. I know I need to concentrate on geting published, but writing is hard enough, without all that straining for fame. Maybe all these novels will be my opera posthumi.

Good Movie

Jed got back to Atlanta from Phoenix Friday, rested up Saturday, and came over here yesterday. Last night we watched "Shutter Island," and thought it was a good movie. I complained that there were too many "spoilers" in the movie, as compared with the book, but if I hadn't read the book, I might not think so.

So now, I have what seem like the labors of Hercules in front of me--getting the house and the self ready for our book club meeting on Friday. I wanted to have new kitchen curtains and tablecloth by then, but it probably won't happen. Where does the time go?

Head noises

I keep hearing tiny bells. It's something the computer does when I do something, but the tintinnabulation gets mixed up with my tinnitus. It made me go back and read "The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe. That man was daffy as a duck.

*

Here's one of the "germ" poems I read at the meeting last week:



"Up There"

There--it is up there that souls set free
do sail, hail and hallow Maker of all made! We
below believe--Believe? Long led, we
hope, hail and hallow, worship with wild
wailing or soft sighing. Faith, either mild
and hoping, wild and groping--Either, child,
behooves us, stamps and proves us not beguiled.


I'm sure I knew what I meant when I wrote it, nearly two years ago.

"When I wrote that, only God and Robert Browning knew what it meant. And now--" (quoting Robert Browning)

*
I sort of know why I wrote that poem. I was thinking about putting Stevie Weidman in my "Big Baby" book. Stevie was autistic or something. He looked and sounded intelligent but very nervous, and he had this tic of saying "up there," apropos of nothing. I remember hearing him talking to Paw Paw, and he would say, "Uncle Reed (up there), yesterday (up there) I was over at the spring (up there, up there)--" Sometimes he would get started saying it and couldn't stop. Anyway, I thought maybe Stevie knew something that was going on Up There.
*
Mr. Jarrett, who could hear them talking in that town "up there," had two sons. The older one was named Hoyt, and he's the only one I can remember. Mrs. Jarrett had a refrigerator with the motor on top, and that's what I visualize when I talk about the electric refrigerator at the boarding house, in the Book. But probably, by the time the boarding house got one, the motors were enclosed. I'll Google it.
*
*

This is the 1935 Frigidaire, probably what would have been in the boarding house in 1941, when Betty was showing it to Mary and Philip. 

This is like the gas stove in the story. It's also like the one that was in Granny SDS's apartment in Powderly, about 1945-46.

They Call It Anxiety

Heavy, Heavy, Hangs Over My Head!

And I don't know why. Yes, I do: Next week I've got my annual checkup appointment, plus book club on Friday, and poetry critique group the week after that. But those don't worry me. It's just this general clinging feeling of something important left undone that bugs me nearly all the time.

The only unpaid bill is my UAB insurance, and that will take about a minute and a half to dispose of.

The basement? Well, doesn't 'most everybody have a basement that needs to be shipped to Timbuctoo?

Coughing, sneezing and crying while I'm working on the book? What else is new? By gosh, I hope this book affects everyone else who reads it the way it moves me. As many times as I've been through it, I still cry at the sad parts and laugh my head off when anyone says something funny or crazy. But Ramey says I have to change all the names. I knew I'd have to do that, but what can ever replace "Billie Jean"?

The feeling is almost like I've won the lottery and have to file a tax return. I wish.

One More Cthse. Trip

I shouldn't dread trips to the Courthouse in Birmingham. That's one of the friendliest places I've ever been, not to mention an attractive building to look at, with the park out back. Everybody you meet smiles and says hello or something, although I've never seen a sign that says you must. Anyway, I applied for the title to the Lincoln, but have to make another trip, because Jed signed the Tracker title "James D." instead of "James DeWitt." Costs us two bucks to get an application to change the signature, which we'll have to do before a notary. Then I'll have to go back again to get a tag for the Tracker.

It was a pleasant drive today, not too much traffic, and the weather cool and nice. Back in the City of Valor, I went to Wal Mart and BOUGHT A TELEPHONE! Plus some of the prettiest cotton fabric I've ever seen in my life, to make a table cover and valance for the kitchen.

Yesterday evening I went to the poetry reading at the Arts Council. We had so many good poems to enjoy, and everyone was kind about the ones I read. We had a good crowd--eight people is a "good crowd" for a poetry reading.

Ker-Blam!

Middle of the night, and it sounded like rocks hitting the roof. So I jumped up and grabbed the camera.
*
Jed went to Phoenix today. Hope he has a good trip--not all work.

Busting the Leaf Quilt

All this week I've been working on the unquilted parts of this. There are just a few more blocks at one end, and then the border. And then the binding. And then laundering and trying to remove 10 years of dirt, cat hair, and pricked-finger blood. I copied the design of this from an antique appliqued quilt shown in one of Susan's quilt books; I wanted to do it in patchwork instead of applique, so I designed the blocks, including the pieced leaf pattern of the white fill-in blocks.



Bond James Bond

 




REGRETS DEPARTMENT:











**********

The Last Lily to Open
Parts of the bouquet lasted for ten days.

A song, a poem and a book

The novel is tugging at me. I think I need to hang about 10,000 more words onto the end. Ramey says you have to keep fooling with it till you feel like it's perfect.

*

Poet for the day - Tennyson (from "Ulysses"):

"I am a part of all that I have met,
And all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
....
". . .this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought."
*

A favorite song ("Little Moses" by the Carters - link at left):

"Out by the water so clear,
the ladies were winding their way,
when Pharaoh's little daughter stepped down to the waterr
to bathe in the cool of the day;

Before it was dark, she opened the ark
and found the little infant was there..."

"Music, when sweet voices die,

...vibrates in the memory..." - P.B. Shelley

I have been known to avow
that music is hateful to me;
now while I'm living, let me mend that great lie,
and tell it the way it should be;

When the dear human voices sing words that are true,
then listening and weeping are all I can do;
when I listen to music, nothing else can get through,
and you might as well talk to a tree.
*
Folks may think I'm mad as a loon
as unprovoked tears start to flow,
when all that I'm hearing is some plain old tune--
How can that move a grown person so?

Most any sweet ditty by Tammy Wynette
or Elvis or Twitty, or a Mozart quartet,
can start my tears raining and make me forget
all the grace and good manners I know.
*
If you must play music to me
when I'm trapped and unable to fly,
remember, I warned you, and just leave me be--
I hate it when folks see me cry;

When my heartstrings are jangled, the years roll away,
and I'm back in the fields where my friends used to play,
and my lost loves crowd around me, and whisper, and pray,
and it hurts when the sweet voices die.


by JRC - 3/19/11

Incroyable!!!

I woke up thinking in French. And considering how few French words I know, that didn't involve much thinking. Then this afternoon, I received this gorgeous bouquet (that's a French word!) from a secret admirer, congratulating one upon reaching the denouement of one's literary creation.

"Big Baby" is the book, not a newborn infant. Thank goodness.

It's the first day in a long time that I didn't wake up thinking about the book, so I guess it's really done.

Exhausted!

I finished the book today, at least until somebody tells me to rewrite it again. The ending is sort of truncated and abrupt, but I can always add more if necessary.

Some Call It One Thing

It amazes me how few adult people I meet who grew up in this town. I get right tired of spelling "Rowan" for people, and they always say, "Oh, Roe-an!" It wouldn't serve any purpose except my own venting, to tell them that people used to pronounce it "Ryan" or "Rhine." My friend Sandra H.B. still says "Ryan Road," but then she's almost as old as I am. About in the 1950s, people started saying "Rau-an," which is right, when some of the Rowans got tired of getting their names mixed up with the actual Ryans. I wonder how they like being called Roe-an by this gormless generation.

"Gormless" is a word that Grandma Hatfield in my book uses. When she said it, I had to look it up in the dictionary. Fortunately, Grandma with her archaisms doesn't last very long. The book, by the way, is at 70,000+ words and still growing. When it's done, I may have to get a wheelbarrow to haul it around in. That's a "wheel-bar," if you're even older than I am. But who is?

Making Haste Slowly

The past few days, I've only written a few hundred words on the book. But I've got some glitches worked out and sort of know where it's going.

Yesterday Ramey and I went to the Big Saver thrift store before the flood got well started. This morning the lot looked like a river, but it's draining off pretty fast. The basement is ankle-deep, though. I wonder if I ought to put the truck out on the driveway. Decisions, decisions.

During the writing hiatus, I've worked on the house while I thought about it, and I've got my bedroom cleaned out and most of the blankets, pillows and things laundered. If the story keeps going this slow, I might even clean out my closet. I took a load of stuff to the thrift store yesterday, but it didn't make much of a dent.

Jed went to Florida today. I hope he gets some time to enjoy it instead of having to work all the time.

I Hit a Snag

If I ever ever ever get this novel off my hands/mind, I'm going to make about a hundred quilts. Well, maybe one or two. While I'm doing that, I'll probably be wanting to write a novel. Doing something is how I get inspired to do something else.

I knew it--this contrary main character in the book is about to fall for the wrong man. If that happens, the droves of readers and fans that I don't have will hate and abandon me. He's a real bad 'un--hates dogs and other underdogs--or at least that's what he said. Smug and self-righteous and refuses to fight.

Sweet Music

I just threw in the possum picture because it's pretty. I guess this is what the singing possums looked like in Ramey's book.

*

My book gets longer all by itself. Every day or so, I get to thinking it's worthless, no story, nothing to it but some old stuff about the family. Then I sleep for a day or two, and it looks good again. I killed off my great-grandma and felt bad about that for a day or two. At any rate, it's over 60,000 words now, and I don't see the end. Vickie Covington said she knows a story is done when her main character turns around and looks at her. Big Baby hasn't looked me in the eye yet. If she marries the wrong man, then looks at me defiantly, I may have to start all over.

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.

A Long Day's Journey

I went shopping at Wal Mart. My cart was only about half full when I checked out, and it had taken me half a day to find that much. There were shoppers with carts piled high, and I felt like asking them if they started yesterday. It takes me forever to find anything in that store, unless it's fabric, and then when you find what you're looking for, they don't have your brand. I'm wo' out, as Mable says.

My right hand is swollen and numb. I didn't feel like quilting today, anyway. I think I'll just take a long nap, and when I wake up, I'll start cleaning up and cooking for tomorrow's dinner.

A Quilt Called Q

Taking a break from working on the leaf quilt. If that thing ever gets done, I'll call it the Main Quilt that I've ever made, even more tedious (and ultimately satisfying) than my old Broken Sash quilt, that has over 6,000 tiny pieces.

But I expect the Bear and Geese (at right) will still be the prettiest; it was easy and simple and a joy to make. But that was when I was young and nimble-fingered. My fingers are still nimble at typing; it's holding those tiny quilting needles that has got so tedious.

I remember Betty Lou telling about how she and Bobbie used to finish a quilt in a day. Maw Maw made quilt tops in squares cut from worn-out men's clothing, flannel underwear, or anything that was warm and available. Bobbie and Betty Lou would hang one from the ceiling, take huge old needles and coarse thread like crochet yarn, and just sit there and stab in inch-long stitches until it was done in a few hours. 

I've got to start preparing for Sunday dinner. It's a little late, but sometime this evening or tomorrow, I'll get enthusiastic about it.

***

I, Mechanic

I often talk about some appliance or other "healing itself" after it wouldn't work for a time. Actually, what happens, I guess, is that I keep punching, kicking, and fiddling with the things until sometimes they go back to the way they were. Anyway, both the printer and the camera seem to be working now.

One of my UFOs was a drawer full of fabric rosettes that we quilt people call yo yos. I got tired of that project so quick it was funny. Yesterday I was about to throw away the remains of an old crocheted rag rug that was coming all to pieces from the center out. Instead, I tacked some of those yo yos over the holes. So it can be a rug again for a while.

I count this as a UFO Bust, because I stuffed the rest of the yo yos in a pretty tote bag that I'm going to donate next time the EC truck comes around, and I'll never have to look at them again.

I've only been awake for about an hour and I still feel dopey. Need more coffee. After I get limbered up, I'll try to work on the book. Or the leaf quilt. Or something.

Getting Somewhere

Spent a couple of hours this morning on the manuscript, clearing up some junk. Thanks to Ramey for the article on agents who accept queries. I explored three of them, but 2 of the urls go to websites and I couldn't figure out where to send a query. The third one only accepts queries by snail mail. Don't know yet just what I'll do about it, but I'm glad to have the information. The trouble is, I can't quit making changes, and buckle myself down to writing the end of the novel, not yet.
*
After I got the cars started the other day, I went down every few hours to start them again. The second time I tried to start the Lincoln, it wouldn't. I guess it needs a new battery, among all the other stuff it needs.

On Sunday (January 30) I've invited the sisters and their entourages here for Sunday dinner. We've decided to take turns feeding each other on the last Sunday of each month.

Joe W. has started a poetry critique group at his home in Odenville to meet once a month. The first meeting is set for February 20, a Sunday afternoon. Seems it will be a small group, and I'm looking forward to it. We're supposed to bring a poem we're still working on or have recently completed, to discuss any problems and/or ask for comments.

So, in 2011 I'll have somewhere to go/something to do at least twice a month, to get me out of the house and into human contact.

China Court

China Court is a novel by Rumer Godden. In my opinion, she was a second-rate novelist who wrote one first-rate book. China Court is not about China, and it's not about a law court. It's about a house on the Cornish coast of England that is not haunted except by voices.


Since we sisters started the book club in--was it 2003? Gad! Every month when it has come my time to host the meeting, I have longed to select China Court for the discussion. But I always pick something else. I remember the first time I read it, in 1968 or thereabouts, and how I was confused by all the people and voices. You have to read it over a few times to remember who everyone is, to get so involved in it that you cry over almost every page--not because it's so sad, but because it's so beautiful.

China Court is like one of those medieval hand-illuminated, painted, gilded manuscripts or page borders: The more you look at it, the more beauty you discover. The book isn't medieval; it's about an English family, a couple of 20th-century wars, and a funeral. But most of all, it's about books, which may be the reason I like it so well.

A few days ago, I ordered some cheap copies from Amazon.com, thinking I would definitely select it for this-coming April, and make sure everyone has a copy well ahead of time. But it's hard enough to get all the book club members to read one book a month. I'm sure most of us wouldn't consider reading a single little book more than once, especially when, to quote Jane Austen, "it's only a novel."

But I feel sort of sorry for any home-loving reader who will never read it. And a bit envious of those who haven't read it yet but might someday.

Giving Thanks

Thanks for my three wonderful children: the Star, the Dreamer, and My Good Right Hand.

Thanks for my loving (and much loved) sisters, nieces and nephews.

Thanks for sweet Cookie, who passed away last week.

Thanks for dear Jackie, and frail Leon who calls out in the night to friends on the Other Side.

And thanks for all my loved ones and friends Over There, whom I hope to meet again.

Thank you for the food we eat,

Thank you for the friends we meet,

Thank you for the birds that sing,

Thank you Lord for everything.