This is one of those mental bears of a week that are bitey and leave you a little bloody. It's been so damn cold, colder than it should be. I'm looking for those signs of spring and besides one solo boat in the harbor and a coral dress in the window of usually monochromatic Max Mara on Michigan, there aren't all that many. But it seems to be April, nevertheless, and I am doing pretty well on my NAPOWRIMO poems, the secret to the success being making sure to set aside time early in my day rather than saving it all for the very end. While I usually start the day with checking email, I've been drafting instead and then moving on with my day. I'm also trying to be thinking about the project as soon as I wake up, while my mind is still fresh and not encumbered with the day's detritus.
Physically, I'm nursing another untimely illness, so I had to skip my planned trip to Rockford. But, since I had the past two days off work, I lounged around lazily yesterday until I was feeling a bit better and spent today in the studio getting through the better part of a bookstore order that needs to ship Monday. I'm trying to be mindful of my limitations and honest about what can be accomplished when, but I still panic when I feel I am behind. (or I guess I always feel behind and therefore always panicky.) I am moving through January now with orders, and almost caught up on author copies, except the last few recent titles
The impetus for the missed trip was supposed to be a lunch to celebrate what would have been my mother's 71st birthday. Yesterday, I dreamed that she was alive again and living in a house filled with an obscene number of calico kittens and I was trying to convince her to let me take one off her hands. She argued with me about which one while trying on her birthday outfit in the bathroom mirror and then stepped into the hallway, at which point I remarked how thin she'd gotten (and at which point I suddenly remembered she'd been in a wheelchair before , and how great it was that she was walking without help. And oh, yeah, she was supposed to be dead.) At which point I was startled awake. This may be a partner to the dream last week where the entirely of the front yard, right up to the steps, was an enormous swimming pool and we were all floating there, everyone happy and alive, despite something I was uneasily convinced I kept forgetting I was supposed to do.
