Suzette Haden Elgin's Blog, page 7

Thursday...

I thought I'd post today about some of the things I see around me in my room when I lie down at night to go to sleep. I see...

A basket of buttons that belonged to my Grandmother Lewis.
Plastic egg cartons inside which are many of my Grandmother Lewis's Christmas ornaments.
Two tiny vases of bright feathers that I've found out in my yard over the years.
My WisCon Guest of Honor mug.
My tiny stuffed animals in a row across the top of my television set -- cows, and possums.
A glass Christmas ornamen...

Thursday; weather...

We've got thunderstorms coming today, which may mean that I won't be able to do a proper Thursday post.

Wednesday...

Bless you, one and all -- but I can't take money from you. I don't need it; I have enough money to do what has to be done.

If you want to help me financially, the way to do that is to buy my books -- new copies, not used ones. I'd be grateful for that.

And the fact that I've turned you down doesn't mean I'm not grateful for the offer of Just Plain Money. Thank you very, very much.

Tuesday; postscript...

I am so grateful to all of you, for all your suggestions and wise advice and useful information. I am especially grateful for the suggestions about the things on my list that you feel do not have to be done.

Now I have to fall back and re-group, I think. I need some time to reorganize my head. I need some time to think about how to deal with the sizable Inertia Quotient lurking in my environment.

And there's one more thing I have to say, while I'm here: The idea of having a primitive campout ...

Tuesday...

Here's the list of the tasks that stand between us and moving...

1.

Our office [one room of the house:] has to be completely cleaned out, and its bookshelves cleared. This includes taking the bookshelves on the back wall off the wall -- they're molly-bolted to the wall -- so that years of accumulated mildew can be scrubbed off that wall. It includes packing up years and years of magazines now in storage boxes and taking them to the recycling center. It includes getting rid of that copier I tol...

Monday...

George and I have made a serious mistake -- one I want to tell you about so that you'll be warned against doing the same thing.

I agree with all of you who've been posting comments saying that we absolutely must move from this place into town. You're absolutely right. However, there are half a dozen very large, very labor-intensive, tasks that have to be done to make it possible for us to move. And we have put all of them off too long. We've put them off so long that now neither one of us is ...

Sunday...

I've had death on my mind lately, and not just because of Michael and the thunderstorms. It's because George and I are now of the age when either one of us could simply die, when one of us could wake up in the morning and find that the other had passed away peacefully in the night. That's not being morbid; it's just facing the facts.

And without any question, it would be so much better if I were to die first. George wouldn't be someone living way out in the country and not knowing how to drive...

Saturday...

Today I'm grateful that I don't have to go anywhere for the Memorial Day weekend. Don't have to pack, don't have to kennel the dog, don't have to get out on the road.

When I was a child, what we did on Memorial Day was go to the cemetery, where we tidied up the family graves, cutting the grass with scissors, removing any weeds that had turned up since the previous year, putting flowers -- real flowers -- in vases in front of the gravestones. And of course while we were there we spread a table...

Friday; postscript...

Oops. You're right -- we had the quesadillas and guacamole Wednesday night, not last night. I lost track.

Friday...

Yesterday my first task on the consulting contract was One Of Those: I had to assemble an e-mail document for my agent [who's in charge of the contract:] from a batch of sources that meant hopping back and forth between software programs, cutting and pasting pieces together, and checking a half dozen details on every cut-and-pasted line as I went along. [And it's not over yet; I still have to translate it all into a Word document.:] That hopping around is hard on my aged eyes, but I didn't mind...