Rambling

Start where you are.

There's a man weedeating at the empty house across the street. The chips of whatever it is he's cutting (doesn't sound like grass!) keep hitting the windows of my house. They sound like hail. There were a few barrages here and then he moved on west. I imagine if I were in the living room, I might hear another seranade. Hopefully nothing will break.

The day is overcast, which if it were like the days of early September would mean it was cool, but the humidity is up today and the air is close--warm and moist--even though it's moving. A cold front is moving through, though so things should shift and change. The clouds are soft and indistinct, trying to blanket the entire sky but missing in a place or two where the sun will break through like a strobe light for a few moments and then slowly diminish. The wind shakes the leaves on the trees visible at my window, though all I can hear is the whirring of the weedeater and the clacking of the keys, the gentle hum of the computer.

I want to turn the air conditioning on, but we have been doing our best to keep it off. It's easier on the wallet. That means we should pop open the windows and turn on the whole-house fan, but that means noise and pollen and sneezing. It's almost worth surviving the stuffiness for another hour or so and then really enjoying the cool dry air as it gradually takes over the house.

It's very quiet because my dh is out looking for work, and my oldest ds is in class. I had trouble sleeping last night. I got up and cleaned up the area around my recliner in the living room. You have to see that area sometimes to believe it. I look at it and have a hard time pinpointing exactly when it exploded again. I'm behind on magazines. I have papers galore, calendars, library books, school material, things I'm studying, and then to make matters work, my ds loves to study in that chair. He is so like me. I was never much for a desk. I studied best sitting crosslegged on my bed with everything spread out around me. He likes to kick back in the recliner with everything spread out around him and his headphones on. Maybe he'd use his bed if it wasn't a bunkbed which pretty much requires a fetal position if you want to sit on it. At any rate, he takes the most interesting notes; he mindmaps rather than jotting linear notes. And not only does he mind map, he does it with drawings and in color. This means that alongside the plethora of books and paper is a wide assortment of colored pens, his iPod, his CD player (why both I couldn't tell you). The end result--no room for anything else. It irritates me at times but I have to smile about the teen mentality. I'm sure I had it. I know I did. I'm not sure when it was that I discovered that there were other people in my life who were impacted by what I did. Well, that's not entirely true, because I was always one to take care of people. At any rate, he sits in my chair and studies and hums and laughs at the crazy things going on in his mind. I take another chair and know that later when he goes to bed, I'll have to dig beneath all his things just to find a coaster. He'll do it for his kid someday.

At any rate, once I moved to the living room around midnight, I decided to go through the stacks around my chair in search of a WD article that I want to use for next week's workshop notes. Never found that, but did find all sorts of other neat things--the best being a hand-written page for my YA novel in progress that I was so afraid I had lost that it was paralyzing me. (I do the most insane things to myself!) It was after 3 AM when I finally made myself try to sleep. It didn't work. My mind was still racing, so I got up to read and after about 45 minutes of that, my mind was ready to drift off, which it did, and it certainly was not ready to be conscious when my ds got up to finish his school work at 7:15. But I needed to be up, so I stumbled to the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher, made coffee, and wondered what I would have to fight my way through when the afternoon sleepies hit later today.

A car just started up somewhere in the neighborhood and I paused for an instant to be sure it wasn't the distant hum of my dh's motorcycle. The one he promised to sell after it almost killed him. Well, that's not true; he almost killed himself on it, and he'll tell you that straight up--no blaming the machine. It was operator error. He's much more cautious though, so I'm not worried. I never believed he'd sell the thing anyway. It would be like selling one of his children. At any rate, he'd never understand why I was here when I'll be here all afternoon for workshop and there are dishes and laundry and floors to tend to. Tell you the truth he'd be right. I really do have to get a better routine in place. Not turn this crazy computer on, or make better use of a timer or something. I have to find a better balance because I know I would feel better about everything.

Oh, I'm rambling and rather enjoying it. I think I'm ready to get busy on two things I'd like to get in the mail on Friday. Imagine that. Submitting something!!! LOL! Workshop is this afternoon and that generally inspires me. I need to look for a prompt. Ah, I ramble......