There was a time when I was seriously considering becoming a nun. Then I met the Caped Gooseberry, and it became clear to me that this was not the path my life was meant to take. (Glad I got that clear before we got engaged, unlike Jane Christmas.)
This past week, it became clear to me that I might not have made a very good nun. To be frank, after the first day or two, it was chaos. Picture me, realizing it was time for a pray and finding myself in a tree waving loppers around. (Turns out, you can pray in a tree.)
My diary for this last week is full of x and o – not hugs and kisses (I don’t generally record those in such detail) but jobs done and events on.
Slay me if you must, but spare the piano!The week went something like this (please feel free to imagine this in the style of Victor Borge’s phonetic punctuation): x*xo—x>ox xxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxx>xx oo——o>>!— xø>x>xooo
The Wound of Words (draft 2.2) has now been despatched to the lovely people who volunteered to be beta readers, and I… what am I going to do?
I’ll be carrying on with the Grand Productivity Experiment, but doing less writing work and a lot more house and garden work. Especially garden work.
You don’t catch me using a chainsaw in a tree. Or anywhere else. I am attached to my limbs and I would like it to stay that way.
There’s the redcurrant to prune (at last!), the mighty Balrog to hack back again (the shed porch disintegrated and collapsed under its weight this year), and the dozens of poles shooting out the top of the apple tree like some sort of living candelabra to slice off.
And once I’ve done all that (no doubt with the assistance of the Caped Gooseberry’s superior musculature), it’s on to the potting, the planting out and the weeding.
Inside, for those inevitable days of Much Water, there’s pruning of another sort to be done (aka decluttering), and a truly remarkable quantity of mending to work my way through.
Husband trapped in bed until wife mends at least one pair of trousers.At some point, of course, whether sooner or later, it will have to be decided: what writing project do I work on next?
