"She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full.
Exactly like indigestion."
-- Jean Rhys (1894-1979) Welsh-Dominican writer
I have best laid plans for today, but first let's catch up a little on why I still think it's Friday:
Volleyball, football and volleyball. We left early Friday afternoon and drove an hour south to go to an invitational volleyball tournament in which The Tall One's high school team was playing. After playing (and losing) two matches, we drove back home and made it to the home football game just before half-time, which is a good thing since The Boy is in the band and we got to see the show. The second half of the game was great, but it was 10:30 by the time we got home, and we had to get up at 5:30 Saturday morning and go back to the volleyball tournament for three consecutive matches at 8:00, 9:15 and 10:30. That was pool play (teams are divided into groups and everyone in the group plays each other). After a quick lunch break, tournament play began, only they forgot to schedule refs for the Silver Bracket (ours, of course) so we ended up having to pull into the Gold Bracket and play single-elimination instead of double, so we were done after losing the first match in three very close, very exciting games. By the time we got home Saturday afternoon, The Tall One, Little Bit (whom I dragged along, but she ended up getting to help at the scorer's table since she manages her middle school's team) and I were so exhausted that we all crashed out for naps.
You can see why I was wiped out. You're probably tired after reading that paragraph, aren't you? And yet, we're still only on Saturday afternoon.
No food in the house. I go grocery shopping once a week, generally on Friday or Saturday. Since my Friday was otherwise preoccupied (between actually getting something accomplished on the WIP and then all that other stuff), and then Saturday up until around 6:00 p.m. was a wash, The Boy and I decided to do our grocery shopping Saturday evening. With little fundage left in the grocery budget. Luckily for me, our local grocery store has a special deal in the meat department where you can "Pick-5" - five items from the specially marked stock (which varies) for $19.99. A great deal, if you can find five things that suit your fancy. I got lucky Saturday. They had so much stuff marked "Pick-5" that I had a hard time deciding what to get. After much deliberation I found my five items and between that and what we still had at home I managed to plan out dinners from Saturday night through Thursday.
The Dunk Tank. We had a very special occasion to celebrate Sunday morning at church. Little Bit "asked Jesus into her heart" (out of the mouths of babes) a couple of years ago, but for various and sundry reasons we never got around to getting the kid baptized. Due to the diligence of our church staff, who kept after me until we finally got it on the schedule, she went into the pool Sunday morning. It was kind of cute - her entire Sunday school class (a gaggle of 12-year-old girls) sent up a great big cheer when she came up out of the water. Yes, we Baptists do it by immersion (Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:9-11). The WGH decided the occasion warranted our going out for dinner (Little Bit's choice) after I finished work Sunday evening. She chose the Pizza Hut Italian Bistro. Ya gotta do the Bistro. They have a pasta dish called Santa Fe Chicken that will roast you from the inside out (jalapeno cream cheese sauce) but it is six thousand kinds of good. Their combo meals - pizza and pasta for howevermany - are the best deals you can get. After an order of garlic bread with cheese, five salads, two pasta dishes, two pizzas and three desserts (split five ways), we came home fit to burst and a little lighter in the wallet, but it was well worth it.
A day of Labor.Does it seem fair that I should have to work on Labor Day? Well, that's my schedule - Sunday through Thursday, and if it's a holiday, tough rocks. Actually, it's not too bad, as I get paid time and a half for working holidays. Plus, it's a cake gig. I have no complaints. I managed to run out of work three hours into my four-hour shift, so the WGH and I set about cooking up an old-fashioned lakeside fry-fest in our kitchen. Dinner was a greasy but delicious affair. Between Sunday at the Bistro and the Labor Day cholesterol-fest, I don't think I'll be able to eat again for ... hours.
Back to the routine. I resumed my walking this morning (probably a wise idea, considering). It's tobacco harvesting time in Tennessee. If you've never experienced the sweetly pungent scent of a tobacco barn during firing, with the smoke on the morning air so thick it's like God pushed the clouds down and left them there, you have missed a true rural treasure. As I've mentioned before, we live in an area where livestock, open air and tobacco barns abound. I love the smell of a tobacco barn during firing season. The WGH tells me what I smell is the sawdust they burn to fire the tobacco leaves, but you can't tell me that some of that aroma isn't the scent of the leaves themselves intermingled into the smoke. I am not a proponent of cigarette smoking (in fact, am vehemently opposed to the nasty things), but I will readily admit I love the scent of sweet pipe tobacco. We have a friend who was born and reared on a farm here in our county who can tell you all the different varieties of tobacco and their various identifying characteristics, how long it takes to cure, harvest and fire the plants, and what kind of market trade is involved. I really don't care about all that, aside from the fact that it's kind of a neat little piece of history. I just love the smell.
I have a lot on my plate today, including pages for Wednesday (good grief, that's tomorrow!) night's BMWs meeting. I'm looking at printed pages on which I've scribbled so many corrections in red ink that it looks like the paper is bleeding. But what comes out in the wash is going to be all the better for my cuttings and scratchings. We're getting close to the end of the tunnel, and I'm finally seeing a little flicker of that light that I know is there somewhere.
Music of the Moment: The Great Gate at Kiev, from Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky). For being a fruitcake, the guy composed some pretty fabulous music.
Read a book! I just finished another really good one - Shirley Tallman's Murder on Nob Hill (see link under The Reading Room list at the left).
=) JB
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