Thursday, April 8, 2010

Reflections on the To-do List

Not blogging much this morning as I have too much to do; so much I drank caffeinated tea to help me along. (My husband refers to this as "taking speed.") Maritha Burmeister is having a signing of her first-ever book, The Twelve Dog Days of Christmas in New York, at the Twig between 5 and 7 this evening, so I'll have to leave off reading old newspapers at the library to take either the ten or the nine bus out there; then I can take the 20, transfer at Five Points, and get home later than I usually like to be out. I turn into a pumpkin by 10 PM and late suppers are a bad idea for me.

Okay, I don't have to do that. But, though Maritha and I are hardly best friends, and picture books aren't an area I was ever big on even when I was small, I like her, it's her first book which is a big deal, and the little girls for whom I've been buying picture books are going to outgrow them soon so I better do this while I can. Besides, I want to live in a world in which people go out of their way to go to book signings, and it's my responsibility to myself to do it as often as possible. To myself, and to Maritha, who has worked hard for this day. I actually hope I don't have much of a chance to speak to her, because the only signings at which the author has plenty of downtown for conversation are the ones with no lines, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody!

What Thai did to the glass of tea this morning has rendered cleaning the study more urgent. I totally don't want to do this. The study is the most complex room in the house, and you can't even dust without making decisions about pieces of paper that wouldn't be lying around if anybody knew what to do with them. I've mopped up the worst of it, but that's only the beginning and we all know it.

And dammit, I want to at least get the blouse I'm working on back to where I thought I had it at lunchtime yesterday. I can't get over how much sewing resembles writing. Everything takes longer than you think it will, sometimes when you think you're almost done you blink and recognize what you did wrong so you have to rip out seams, sometimes you rip out the wrong seam, the workspace is always a shambles when you're done no matter how organized and tidy you thought you were being, when you get on a roll you work at it longer than you should, and no matter how much you want to move on to the next, new project if you want to get anything done you really need to finish up the thing you're working on, even though you've gotten to the boring part. (The sleeveless version of this blouse looked so simple, it should have been the ideal place to fuss with the darts...)

And OMG it's how did it get to be 10 AM? It's impossible, I tell you! So off I go.

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