In Which Things Are Getting Crowded In Here

11 August 2003

Yesterday was much, much better than Saturday. Muchmuchmuch. Mark and I left for Carmel in the mid-morning, around 9:00. We wandered around into shops and galleries, ate good seafood (crabcakes with red peppers in them, yum!), and shopped for my anniversary presents together: a Shona statue of three hugging people (very stylized) and a pair of small sterling dragonfly earrings. We also went to the San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo Mission, pictures forthcoming. We wanted to wander around at Point Lobos, but the parking there was already full, so they weren't letting people in. So we went back and had coffee and pastries and wandered a bit more, and then we headed for Hayward, stopping on the way to get incredibly cheap produce from a stand in Salinas. We got back in time to have spaghetti and salads and a quiet evening.

And I didn't worry about what time it was, or what needed doing, or what should go on the list instead. For the whole day, I didn't care about the schedule or the list or the obligations or the tasks. It was good.

I had grabbed "Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme" because of the line from "Cloudy" about "down from Berkeley to Carmel," and it turned out to be much better Northern California music than the other thing I grabbed for coastal music, which was the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys are very SoCal. This was definitely not the same. They weren't offensive, but they weren't it. Definitely a folkier area of the coast.

The sad news of yesterday is that my best bra, my favorite bra, is dying. It really isn't "best" any more, but I don't have a new best one to replace it. The new ones are all alike but one, and that one is no better nor worse than the ones it's different from. The lace on my best one is curling funny, and the elasticity of the fabric is pretty much gone, and the red is fading pretty badly. I'm going to have to get a new one. I hate that. But I really hate that they stopped making this style completely. I should have gone and bought three or four of them when they were still making them. This is a life lesson that the universe has tried to teach me over and over, and yet I don't seem to learn. Probably because we don't have all that much disposable income yet, and buying bras is not a happy fun time for me. But this isn't the only one biting the dust, so we'll have to see what we can see. With the weeping and the wailing, and also the gnashing of the teeth.

It's been a good reading morning, with Karina's short story and the new installment of Spiders, and I haven't even gotten to the Endicott Studio stuff yet.

I think my brain is a bit crowded. The more I think about it, the more I think that if nothing else is demanding my time after I finish the Not The Moose, I should work on my episodic novel next, so that I can get some short story ideas cleared out, not just as part of the episodic novel but interspersed with those stories, other stories.

I wasn't thinking too much about the crowding of my brain until last night. I mean, I was aware that it's a bit busy in here, but that's kind of the usual condition -- for me, I mean, but I also have a default assumption that other people will be equally mentally busy. But then last night I sat down and decided to do a freewrite looking at a postcard Tempest sent me this summer. (Tempy: the one you said had a Wagnerian ring to it. Hee.) And the first three ideas I scribbled down, in some detail, had to do with preexisting book or story ideas. They were useful for those things, and I'm glad to have had those mini-epiphanies about those particular pieces. And I did press on and get to ideas that were entirely new to me. But that did make it seem like maybe I should be clearing the decks a bit when I'm done with the Not The Moose, writing some of these short stories so they're not rattling around in here quite so loudly.

Reinforcing what I've been saying for awhile, of course. Ah well. Reinforcement isn't a bad thing, necessarily. As long as it's productive in the end, and flexible.

I keep getting sidetracked and doing other things here, forgetting that I haven't already finished and posted this. Oops. I think the multitask is getting a bit out of control, and I should just focus on one thing for a bit. And that'll probably be book. Later, I'll work on short stories, fold laundry, post pictures, read some more Naipaul, make phone calls, clean out bits of the house (on the list: deck closet and sock drawer). And more than that, of course. But for now: post entry, write book. It's sometimes good to have an agenda.

Back to Novel Gazing.

And the main page.

Or the last entry.

Or the next one.

Or even send me email.