notes & things | 5/6/2023

Spring creeps in a little further each day, raising my mood even if it's still a little too chilly to have the windows open for long. I have been devoting some time to submissions and collages and procrastinating on final edits on the home improvements series of poems I worked on earlier this year (thankfully the NAPOWRIMO ones only require minor modifications but I have no idea what sloppiness I was victim to earlier in the year.) I've been finalizing the cover design for the next book and making fun little reels about inspos and aesthetics. I've been researching Mesopotamian bloody baby-eating goddesses and writing about Celtic Queens and cupboard doors and bathroom towels that won't make you hate your life. In other words, much the usuaL

Last weekend in Rockford was rainy and cool and we mostly just hung out, ate food, and watched 80's and 90's movies, which was a nice and much more relaxing stay than the chaos of the fall trips to Rockford. We stopped over at my dad's house to pick up some things and it feels like a shell that doesn't quite belong to us anymore, the memories swept clean from the rooms except for bits and pieces leaving only empty walls and spotty carpets. The people who once lived in it, now gone, and not even their ghosts there. Not even us. Or maybe the absence itself was a kind of ghost while we carried random things out to car in the rain and gloom. My sister's old paintings and my mom's high school yearbooks we've no idea what to do with. 

This weekend, I am heading downtown to pick up some more covers and hoping the weather will at least be nice enough to walk over to the park for a while. With the rain and spotty weather, I have been inside of late more than outside and it seems a damn shame, spring and all, and how much I've needed it. I even almost missed the yearly magnolias on the tree near the bus stop, since most of my outdoor trips of late have been a beeline to the mailbox on the corner and back inside. They take a minute to fully bloom and are usually on the ground within a week.  There have been years where it started in March, and colder springs where it was happening around my birthday. Friday, they were about half fallen and I imagine by now, completely gone.