Tues. March 19, 2024: Snow on Spring Equinox
image courtesy of Annette via pixabay.comTuesday, March 19, 2024
Waxing Moon
Spring Equinox
Snowing
Snowing on the Equinox. Yup, it’s the Berkshires.
Today’s LEGERDEMAIN episode:
Episode 173: Plans For the Spy
Shelley has ideas on using the spy for her own purposes.
Today’s DEADLY DRAMATICS episode:
Episode 73: The Angel Tree at the Met
Nina and Tom visit the spectacular Angel Tree at the Met. Which gives Nina an idea.
I love this DEADLY DRAMTICS episode, because it’s set at the beloved Angel Tree at the Met. A Christmas episode on the Equinox is a little weird, but that’s the way it all shook out.
I packed up my lemon cupcakes, etc. on Friday, and joined the picket line for about an hour and a half in the rain. Always worth it.
Then, I had to run errands and get back to work. I turned around both coverages before dinner time, which was a good thing. I hope the next two weeks have more and better paid coverage than these past two weeks had.
Finished reading C IS FOR CORPSE. As soon as I began the re-read, I remembered who did it (and that I thought the climactic sequence was a little rushed). But, overall, I enjoyed it, and I remembered how much I learned from this series. D is on hold; there are holds ahead of me on it, so it must be a book club pick somewhere! I want to read them in order, so I’m not ordering too far ahead. Once D is in transit to me, I’ll order E, and so forth.
Very tired, and slept pretty well, although I dreamed I was at a performance sitting with someone I haven’t seen since college!
Three of the Boiler House Poets Collective colleagues were doing an event at a bookstore on Saturday, so I sent them greetings for a good event!
I did some research on tarot spreads, to jump start some of my own spread creation. For the ancestor work, I’m supposed to create a spread this month. In the land of synchronicity, I’d just been thinking that it had been a while since I’d created any spreads, and it was time to do so. I also want to try some spreads on a couple of other questions. It’s time to experiment.
There was a call for art within a 60-mile radius of the exhibit, and I’m within it. I have some ideas, but I’m not sure I will be able to execute them within the timeframe of the call. While my initial vision was very literal, it’s evolving beyond that, so we’ll see if I have the resources (mostly time and energy, I have most of the supplies) to do the work in April. I have an idea for three pieces (which is the limit); two have evolved to be done in fiber, one in paper. Not sure I’ll be able to do any of them in time to submit, but I might work on them for myself. We’ll see.
Mercury is retrograde for most of April, so everything could go even further into hell without the handbasket. I would prefer it to be a time of quiet and reflection (at least once my play is done), with the focus on all of us healing, and on finishing THE WOMEN ON THE BRIDGE during End OF Play.
Did the morning chores. Did the taxes, which are always fraught, but only took a couple of hours, because I keep my documentation updated and together. Worked on a week’s worth of DEADLY DRAMATICS videos, then backtracked to do the LEGERDEMAIN and ANGEL HUNT videos. Only TikTok wouldn’t let me upload them all. I’m really growing to hate that platform.
I headed out for Heart’s Pace just before 3 and did the tea tasing there. It was a lot of fun. Nice people, excellent teas. I bought a bag of “Olli in Paris” which is Earl Grey, bergamot, and pomegranate, which I really liked. Turns out one of my neighbors is now working there.
Worked on some ideas for tarot spreads.
Made turkey meatballs in marinara with pasta for dinner.
Read Sara Paretsky’s SHELL GAME, published in 2018, which was excellent, and did not pull any punches politically. I haven’t read Paretsky’s work in a long time, and I’m not sure why.
Very tired and slept well. Charlotte’s eye is better; the medication is working. Of course, she started something with Willa and got whapped in the face again. Sigh.
Created three new tarot spreads. I was going to do one, for the ancestor work, but the first two spreads I came up with (which have been percolating for a while) are great spreads, but not relevant to the work I was doing. I finally came up with one that was, but at least I now have three spreads I’ve created. It’s been a long time since I worked on any new spreads. Now I need to test them a bunch of times before I can share them.
I found some images for the inspirational women art piece. Some of them I will need to check for veracity; there will also be times when I have to decide if an image can represent someone where there’s no accurate historical depiction/portrait/whatever. But at least I made a start on that, rather than keeping it in the “work on it someday” category.
I also did some planning for a couple of other visual pieces. One I might be able to keep as mixed media/ceramic; the other, I think I will do as fiber. I’m simplifying the vision for the mixed media/ceramic. I’m worried the fiber will look like a summer camp project, but if it starts going in that direction, I need to push it and go over the top. We’ll see what I can come up with, as far as materials are concerned.
I was so tired I could barely stay upright to eat my lunch. I went back to bed after lunch and slept most of the afternoon. I woke up after a couple of hours, did one thing, then went back to sleep until it was time to get up and make dinner.
I then went to bed early.
Did not get any of the spring cleaning done. I will try to build in a half hour to an hour every day so maybe by, like May, it will all be done! We have lots of lovely moldings around windows and doorframes that’s a delight, but it takes time to deep clean properly. I mean, it’s not like we ignore the regular daily/weekly cleaning, but the deep cleans twice a year make a big difference.
I had weird dreams. One was at the hotel I keep dreaming about – this time I was checking in, not already a guest. I keep assuming it’s the Marriot Marquis in NYC, but the configuration is different, as is the location, so I don’t know what the heck is going on. The second dream had to do with taking over a job at a bar (I hope, for all our sakes, the position had nothing to do with the public) to cover for an old friend from a bar I frequented in Edinburgh, who had to take a leave of absence because his wife was having a mental health crisis. Not sure what that was all about.
The cats rousted me out of bed at the usual time on Monday. We were preparing for another snowstorm. My mom wants to do more around the house, so she is doing one or two things per day for a few days, then, if she feels up to it, adding in something else, so that we have the balance of keeping her active without overdoing.
Then I had to sit down and face LEGERDEMAIN.
So, of course, I sat down and did the March newsletter into the new version MailerLite forced us onto. I hate it, it doesn’t give me enough graphics adaptation capacity, but at least the newsletter got done and out I write chunks of newsletter as things happen, and then it’s pretty much the overall edit and popping in text around chosen graphics. I like to keep it simple. It seems to have worked. I will sit down and play with the graphics sometime between now and June, when the next newsletter goes out.
It was, of course, a procrastination tactic to avoid LEGERDEMAIN. It needed doing (the send date was going to be on Thursday), but I got it out of the way today instead. Which means more LEGERDEMAIN time on Thursday, maybe? Yes, I’m procrastinating on L. I need to get over it, because I can’t allow Amazon’s corporate frufrah to ruin a project I love.
I ran the taxes to the post office (because it was more than a single stamp per envelope), picked up a few things at the grocery store, and did a library run.
Did I work on LEGERDEMAIN when I came back?
Nope. I did the video for “Plot Bunnies” (which is under the Ava Dunne name) instead. It’s a backlist title, which happens around Easter, so I’m promoting it. You can watch the video here, on the Delectable Digital Delights page.
I did the three versions: the TikTok, the wide version, and the Insta version. I will get them uploaded to where they need to be in the next few days, and start running the PB ad, too, where a video doesn’t make sense.
I did the social media rounds for DEADLY DRAMATICS.
I turned around the small script coverage.
I edited three chapters of CAST IRON MURDER. I thought I’d done more than I had; I’ve only edited six chapters so far. Well, as of the end of the day, I’ve done nine. But I need to get going on that, if it’s going to get out the door by the end of the month. It’s not a particularly long novel (by choice) and I’m tightening it up a lot, especially language-wise. I know where I want to submit it; it’s just a case of finishing it and getting it out the door.
Got a very nice, albeit negative response to an LOI I’d sent out. They’re going with someone who has a Master’s in a subject I do not. Which is fine, and the note they sent was so kind and respectful that they are on my “good companies” list.
Cooked dinner, read for a bit, went to bed. Woke up early to go to the laundromat, saw it was snowing, and decided there was no way I was going out in the weather. I’ll go later in the week.
Dreamed I was at the Clark talking to someone named Pat .Um, okay?
Settled on the couch and dozed off. Charlotte tap danced on my ribs for a bit, and then took a nap, too. Felt better after that; I’d felt like crap when I woke up. I’ve had a bad headache for the last few days. Stress and exhaustion, I think.
I’m perplexed at all the panic-stricken articles about the April 8 eclipse. It’s a solar eclipse, not an apocalypse. But these articles are acting like no one’s ever lived through one before. Stock up on food? Come on, it’ll get dark around 3 PM for a couple of hours.
Am I looking forward to driving back from my play reading that day? No. More because it’s during Mercury Retrograde than because there’s an eclipse. We were on the road last year during a partial solar eclipse, and it was eerie. I’d planned to sleep in and make my way home leisurely. I will probably get on the road a little earlier than planned and not make the lunch stop I intended, but just get home by lunchtime and not have to worry about people running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Although I don’t really see that happening around here. People are more likely to sigh at darkness making it like winter again, and get on with it.
Anyway, today’s agenda: LEGERDEMAIN, promotions for the serials, promotions for “Plot Bunnies.” Hopefully, some script coverage comes in; if it doesn’t, I’ll do some more work on the CAST IRON MURDER edits, the contest for which I’m being paid to read, the book for review, and some spring cleaning. Spring cleaning in the snow. Is that satire? Or irony?
I’m scheduled for yoga tonight, but I’m not sure I’m up to it. I’ll see how I feel this afternoon.
Have a good one, my friends. Here’s to another week.
