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Lightning of Simmer
Jul. 12th, 2020 07:43 pmDid everything according to best practices, did not get a good outcome. Went to bed early, tried to sleep in, but had stomach pain all night, woke up too early, and felt cranky and crappy all day. I do not know what I did wrong. Sigh. I planned to go dig in the garden some more, but wasn't up for it. I thought "Well, I have to do SOMETHING" so I decided to do some more work on the clusterfudge that is currently my office. I have boxes of old letters, recently sorted tidily and repacked, sitting in a very untidy stack in the middle of the floor, because I wanted to repack some other things that had been behind them in the attic before putting them back in there. If that makes any sense to you, your mind is more orderly than my storage space. The weather is cooler and more tolerable, so I can work in the garret. I hauled out the two cardboard boxes that I thought were full of copies of my novels and started repacking them into clear plastic containers, counting up how many copies of each book I have, so I can label the boxes. It turned out to be more complicated than I thought. I stopped in the middle of the job, so everything is messier than it was before.
It was melancholy to behold again these shiny remnants of a past that seems long ago now. I felt like Fors of the Puma Clan in Andre Norton's Star Man's Son, as he ventures into the ruined cities to scavenge a few artifacts. I remember the scene where he finds boxes of colored pencils and is delighted. At least I still have plenty of colored pencils. I also thought of the epilogue of Roger Lancelyn Green's Myths of the Norsemen, where the survivors of Ragnarok find the golden chessmen of the gods in the rubble of Asgard. Retrieving the pieces from the ashes, they set up the board and begin to play again . . . Perhaps someday I'll brush the ash off the game of gods and play again . . . .
Then I spent my "writing time" going down rabbit holes. My one actual accomplishment was cooking dinner. We're running out of food after eating leftovers all week. I made a rather old-fashioned dish called cheese strata, composed of sliced stale bread soaked in a milk and egg mixture, layered with cheese, and baked until it's puffy and brown. It's rather souffle-like and delicious when hot. I regret to inform you that it's also good with jam, or maple syrup. The Sparrowhawk says I should go back to bed soon, and he's probably right, but jeez, it will be light for another hour or more. What a funny world.
It was melancholy to behold again these shiny remnants of a past that seems long ago now. I felt like Fors of the Puma Clan in Andre Norton's Star Man's Son, as he ventures into the ruined cities to scavenge a few artifacts. I remember the scene where he finds boxes of colored pencils and is delighted. At least I still have plenty of colored pencils. I also thought of the epilogue of Roger Lancelyn Green's Myths of the Norsemen, where the survivors of Ragnarok find the golden chessmen of the gods in the rubble of Asgard. Retrieving the pieces from the ashes, they set up the board and begin to play again . . . Perhaps someday I'll brush the ash off the game of gods and play again . . . .
Then I spent my "writing time" going down rabbit holes. My one actual accomplishment was cooking dinner. We're running out of food after eating leftovers all week. I made a rather old-fashioned dish called cheese strata, composed of sliced stale bread soaked in a milk and egg mixture, layered with cheese, and baked until it's puffy and brown. It's rather souffle-like and delicious when hot. I regret to inform you that it's also good with jam, or maple syrup. The Sparrowhawk says I should go back to bed soon, and he's probably right, but jeez, it will be light for another hour or more. What a funny world.
