Blue-Footed Musings

I got out of bed this morning, and I fed the children their breakfast, and I packed up their lunches. That was 100 times more than I felt like doing, so I’m going to declare this morning a great victory. I am the champion, my friends, and I’ll keep on fighting ’til I climb back into bed…

I was bitten by two ticks yesterday. They were so small that I only knew they were there because they had caused two itchy red spots on the back of my knee. I only guessed that they weren’t blemishes because there were two (one I could believe, but two in that area seemed highly unlikely). I had to take pictures using the macro feature of my camera to verify that they were ticks. Even after they were removed, they looked like nothing more than bits of dirt. I’m pretty sure they were larval ticks, not only because of the size, but because they appeared to have only six legs, not eight. That means they probably didn’t infect me with anything.

But I still haven’t learned my lesson about ticks, have I? Walking around outside at this time of year is dangerous. If I’m going to do it, I should wear the proper clothes and take a shower afterward. And we ought to tick-check ourselves and the kids every day if we’ve been outside. How many tick bites must we get before I finally get this through my head?

I finished Gaiman’s “The Ocean at the End of the Lane,” and I am now reading “The Trouble With Goats and Sheep” by Joanna Cannon.

Last night I spent some time working on my novel. Today, too. Now the word count is over 45,000. A couple of thousand new words over the course of two months is nothing to brag about. But, considering that I had recently lost all interest in writing and had decided that my story was the dumbest, lamest thing anyone had ever thought of, getting myself to work on it has to be looked upon as nothing less than a miracle.

Today I created a character for the purpose of killing her to make another character even more unhappy than she already was. Sometimes I think I must not be a very nice person. But, you know, if there was anything to be learned from that hot mess that was the Star Wars prequel trilogy, it’s that you have to show a character’s descent into madness before you can set them to doing mad things.

Now I must stop messing around on my computer and go do some real world stuff, like laundry and dinner.

Here are the first paragraphs of the three books that I’m thinking about reading.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman:

It was only a duck pond, out at the back of the farm. It wasn’t very big.

Secondhand Souls by Christopher Moore:

(Selected from the Great Big Book of Death: First Edition) 1. Congratulations, you have been chosen to act as Death, it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. It is your duty to retrieve soul vessels from the dead and dying and see them on to their next body. If you fail, Darkness will cover the world and Chaos will reign.

Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen:

Last December a woman entered my apartment who looked exactly like my wife. This woman casually closed the door behind her. In an oversized pale blue purse–Rema’s purse–she was carrying a russet puppy. I did not know the puppy. And the real Rema, she doesn’t greet dogs on the sidewalk, she doesn’t like dogs at all. The hayfeverishly fresh scent of Rema’s shampoo was filling the air and through that brashness I squinted at this woman, and at that small dog, acknowledging to myself only that something was extraordinarily wrong.

Which one sounds the most interesting and ought to be the first one that I read?

This week nearly wrecked me. It was the first week of summer camp. Summer camp is worse than school. I have to get up just as early to feed the kids breakfast, then I also have to pack lunches for them and coat them in sunscreen before they leave. Then I have to unpack and wash all the lunch containers when they get home. I have to plan their lunches in advance and shop for them, and do extra things, like find T-shirts for tie-dye day. The kids make more laundry, because they have to shower and change when they get home. It’s hard to keep up with it all. I know I’ll get into the swing of things in a couple of weeks. For now, though, I am so glad that it’s finally Friday and that this first week is behind us.