So today I woke up later than I'd have liked to, made coffee and toast, peeled and ate my daily grapefruit, looked outside in wonder at the 17'C sun and warm west wind, and set out to begin a short story I'd just thought about yesterday. I wrote for about 1 1/2 hours. Got of good start (7+ pages in a Moleskin).
Having spoken with Dad just before the writing began, I knew that I'd be heading into Winnipeg tomorrow for Aunt Susie's funeral, which means that in a very real way, this is second last day of holidays. Tomorrow's taken, as is Friday, by a family trip to Steinbach for an Easter gathering. Saturday should be free, so that's my last day of holidays. Sunday's as good as back to the grind.
Then Armin Wiebe phoned just after I was finishing a lunch of leftover steak on a bed of spinach on a slice of harvest bread toast (excellent) to say could he stop by to pick up a bunch of Rhubarb #24s in order to continue the saga of sorting out the mailing to the American contributors to the issue. He sounded a bit miffed about it all, but when I offered to bring the mags in tomorrow, he said he was coming out anyway, to have dinner with Joe and Lois, et. al. He said he'd be by around 2:30 PM.
I decided that in the time in between (sorry DB) I'd try to install the stormdoor I'd made out of barn wood, with a sliding window insert. This is on the south doorway (the door under that ladder that Margruite is on - this picture is from last summer when she and Bekah and Sara painted the barn). It will diminish the pressure of the wind on the steel door there, and look a lot more barnlike - a lot more aesthetically consistent, if you ask me. It's my barn and I'll say what I want. So I changed into work clothes, put on work boots, hauled the requisite tools out, carried the door out, and began the installation. Just to limit the suspense, the installation went quite well. It's in right now and, except for a little shaving needed on the bottom left corner (from the inside), it's working well too.
I had the door hung and was working on the latch when Armin showed up at around 3 PM. I asked if he wanted to have a beer. He said he did. We went up to the balcony patio off of the studio and sat in the sun and the wind and drank my last two bottles of Fort Garry Pilsener (not the best but not the worst beer ever) and talked about things - writing, Rhubarb, free range chickens, the web, teaching, and so on. At 5:30 PM he left for his dinner date in his (well Mildred's RIP) SmartCar, with the box of Rhubarb.
I finished the latch on the door, and while I was doing that Margruite and Bekah drove up. Once I was done cleaning up the tools and so forth, supper was ready. After a supper of "Tuscan-style chicken pizza" and a lovely pear and spinach salad the evening seemed free. Until Tim Mendel phoned. Since he still owed me a bottle of Scotch (I asked for Talisker, but the bugger went and drank more than half of that bottle, so he gave me a 15-year Dalwhinnie (not bad, but not as good)) for some design work I'd done for him earlier in the year, I thought that, since talking with Tim is always a good time, I'd go pick up my bottle. I had a shower, headed into town, talked and drank Scotch with Tim, then picked up Sara from a friend's place, and headed back home.
Came across a post on Metafilter about Spalding Gray and his work. I love Spalding Gray. Here's a link to Swimming to Cambodia which is now posted on YouTube. Somehow Gray's work, on this the eve of April 1st, seems appropriate.
What I'm going to try to figure out tomorrow is how going to the funeral of my Aunt Susie, on April 1st, make sense, not that it has to.
No comments:
Post a Comment