Copious Free Time

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That wondrous moment
When one leaf, then another one
Drifts onto my tarp.

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I rake east to west
The wind blows it back again
To show me who's boss.

Things are getting busy. Incredibly, they are not as busy as they're going to get. My art history class (20th century) is a steady, two-day-a-week presence, with the occasional quiz (write write write write) or paper (type type type). Rehearsals are reaching a crescendo. Cathy's going away next week, leaving me to figure out how to get Sarah squared away on three nights when rehearsals go until 10:30. So today I raked leaves instead of going to the Y.

I've been pretty good about getting my exercise. Three trips to the Y a week for exercise machines. Five or six walks a week. Stretching six or seven times a week. Once in a while, though, I'll defer to the necessity of getting some particular task done, like mowing the lawn, which I may get to tomorrow, now that I've gotten about 90% of the leaves off the front. I also attacked and destroyed one of the damn bushes that wants to take over the world by the front doorway. The other will suffer the same fate, and then I'll see how much of the wretched ivy I can get rid of. And saw off the next tree branch that wants to fall when the wind blows. And hey, that'll mean fewer leaves, right? It's got to!

Last night was the night Sarah had to finish her invention for school, so we stepped it up a bit. It's a sort of combination doll house and games cabinet, made of cardboard, garnished with cloth, foam slabs, duck tape, and some rope for handles. Plus bobby pins, which we finally employed as a cunning way of latching it shut. Seems to work. Anyway, it's just a prototype. She came out with Zach from next door (across the back yard), and they joined in the raking and leaf blowing. Zach never helps at home, only at other people's houses. Sarah helps out at home <i>and</i> at other houses.

The weather threatens to come in. We've had two idyllic days in a row. It was above 80 today. I'm about to go for a walk, and expect it will still feel lovely. I'll see how they're doing on filling in the hole in the street that opened up about a week ago. I'll look at the yard signs this one place has to remind myself who not to vote for. I hope for decent weather tomorrow, long enough to mow the lawn and dismantle and stack Sarah's trampoline for the winter. It would be nice if they came for the leaves and the sticks out front before the storm comes through and redistributes them.
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Now that I'm sitting down, I'll magically forget everything. Let's find out.

• I put up a bookshelf in Sarah's room, and she's been working to fill it up and put the room in order. She also is getting rid of some of her kiddie books and board books. So far I haven't even found any I want to pull out and rescue. She told me we could have the closet outside my office back. I said she could still use it, and she said no, Cathy and I could put boxes in it again. On Sunday night, she went up to sleep in her bunk. Soon she was back down here, tearfully telling me she couldn't sleep without a grownup around. I reluctantly went up to sit by. After a while, it just wasn't working out. In retrospect, maybe the first full night of Daylight Savings was a bad time to make the switch. Anyway, I said she could go back to her closet and she said she'd go to sleep on our bed as usual and we could carry her to her beloved closet when she was asleep.

• The A just below middle C was kind of irksome, so after ignoring it for a couple of weeks, I cleared off the piano and opened it up. I picked up the four mutes and put them on top. Only there were just three of them. After searching, I found it down inside the works, resting below a hammer. After some wrestling, I got it out and tuned the A. While it was open, I checked another couple of notes and found that the F where the mute was was now pretty well messed up. A little thin wire that should be straight was twisted across the next key, and trying to play it was correspondingly snafu'd. So I'm back on the auxiliary piano until we can get the acoustic fixed.

• Lots of school stuff. The Art Ambassador project (Faith Ringgold) went swimmingly and is finally over. On the other hand, I forgot completely that I was supposed to be at Sarah's class yesterday for Science Action, so I get a Zero on that one.

• Lots of work stuff. Wrapping up two books with one more (the French version of one of the completed books) on the horizon.

• Enjoying the new car. I'm an SUV drivin' man now, with our used 2006 Honda Element. I'm getting used to automatic shift and electric windows. Sarah's enjoying the legroom. Whenever Cathy takes her anywhere, they use the Element. More good news: the mp3 disks I made when my iPod was in the shop a while back work in the car's CD player.

• Weather's getting better. Sarah believes we've seen the last of snow; I'm not so sure. I can clearly see how much the snowplow man has ruined the lower end of the lawn. When I take walks around the neighborhood, no matter where I go, I see tire tracks through yards. Whoever went through here on the Saturday after Christmas covered a hell of a lot of ground. They crossed our yard, and the tracks are probably still visible under some circumstances, but it's much worse next door, where they turned at high speed before going -behind- the next house. I don't know who did it, but I know it was a jerk.

• Sarah got a good report card, so we went out last night for ice cream.

• It's ant season. For two or three weeks, ants have been a fact of life. See an ant, kill an ant. After a while, sweep up dead ants and discard. I looked up from piano playing (still managing, with maybe one exception, to play every day) to see Sarah and Lulu smashing Cheez-its in the driveway. The next morning when we were waiting for the bus, I mentioned the Cheez-its. "Lulu and I did that," Sarah explained. "For the ants. When they see the Cheez-its, they'll eat them and not be interested in going inside."

• As mentioned in passing, I'm taking walks through the neighborhood. It was cold enough a time or three that I used the treadmill instead, but any time I can go outside, I do that instead. I usually pick up the phone and talk to one of my sisters or Dad. If they're not available, I can't seem to think of anyone else to call, so then I just walk and maybe listen to the iPod.

• Phone guy came over and quickly found the cable that was making a constant buzz that drowned out all voices on the landline. Mice had gnawed through the insulation. Thanks, phone guy!
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Yesterday was the busiest day of the week for me. In the morning, I had 'Art Ambassador' for Sarah's class; my first time as classroom coordinator. For this, I get a mixed grade. I did arrange the date with the teacher and get it on the calendar. I did not inform the other volunteer parents for the classroom. I got there and realized that nobody's going to do that for me this year. I was going to tell the teacher we'd have to reschedule, but as I got there, the substitute (both classroom teachers were out sick, as I recall) was telling the class we were about to do the project. I conferred with him and we decided to go on and give it a shot.

I went through the checklist, locating most of the items except for copies of the handout, so I took the master to the office and requested twenty, and for the next hour we kept the kids supplied with brushes and watered glue and tissue paper strips to glue down. I showed the Eric Carle video and the display board one of the other parents had made. Sarah had been present for the session where I was shown these things, and she was a valuable and very forward volunteer in helping get things done. We proceeded from step to step. After the glued parts went off to be hung up for drying, each of us took a group of kids to wash their fingers for the second part. I took the girls, with Sarah leading the way. Oh, she loves being in charge.

Things got tricky when we brought out the stencils (one kit for a caterpillar, one kit for a butterfly), but we managed to enforce sharing of the kits and of the limited scissor supply. I headed off some potential difficulties by telling them to number the pieces like the stencils so they'd know if they had a complete butterfly or whatever.

The handouts arrived before they left. As kids were finishing, I praised their work and urged anybody with free hands to pick up some of the leftover trash. They left, and I finished cleaning up and putting things away, with just enough time left to hasten homeward for the anticipated installer from Sears, bearing a new dishwasher. Sarah and I had gone a couple of weeks ago to pick it out at the store. There were phone messages, and I thought it was going to mean some delay with the appliance, but it turned out to be the author of a book I had just converted, telling me that one of the photos had vanished in the PDF. I fixed that and sent him the corrected file with apologies.

It turns out the installer was running late, so I was done with lunch when he came. That part went fine. Old dishwasher out and gone, new one in. Still, I had less time left than I thought, so I had to wait on the next part of my day until Sarah was home.

I told her when she got off the bus that we had to go out and do some things together. She suggested an alternative, but when I checked with the other parents involved, it was not workable. We went to the fire station together, and she got to see me get a flu shot. Then we went to the post office and I sent a thumb drive back to the author. Then we took a Pokemon tape back to the library, and I paid the overdue fine. Sarah vanished into the children's library, and for a while I just browsed the shelves. Libraries can be quite enjoyable. I'd been there on Tuesday for a luncheon honoring volunteers (of which I am one), and if I'd known, I could have returned the tape then. We got home half a minute before Cathy arrived. She had been at the grocery store, finding out that I had forgotten to call in a refill of Malathion for Sarah's head bugs. Oops.

A package arrived. It was the replacement for a shelf in the door of the fridge that had broken some time back. I put it in place with a sense of accomplishment. Then I relaxed a little and fiddled at the computer. Cathy made a tasty supper of stir-fried meat and Southwestern vegetables. Sarah helped me collect household trash and recycling and get it out. I couldn't tell exactly if I was required at rehearsal, so I went anyway and found that I could return home. I did find that our choreographer's husband was doing better (the car they were in was hit head-on by a drunk driver a few days ago, and he was badly hurt; she was injured, but not as much) and passed the news to another cast member who showed up as I was leaving.

This gave me time for stretches. I'm taking physical therapy to try and stretch some of my muscles and keep flexibility in the sacroiliac area. Only there are so many stretches now, that it takes the better part of an hour to do them all. Still managed to get to bed a little early and sleep pleasantly until morning. I got up and heard Sarah bossing her imaginary big brother, Sean, in the living room. Sean can't seem to do anything right. Her imaginary brother Alex doesn't get nearly as much criticism.

I didn't find out until today that Soupy Sales had passed on, which made me a little sad. He was a funny guy. Sarah mastered shoe tying earlier this week. I heard her tell Cathy that she didn't need Daddy for that. This is, of course, a good-news/bad-news thing. Daddy likes to feel needed, but then, Sarah says it was Daddy that taught her how to do it, and she just suddenly realized what Daddy meant. She seems concerned now that she doesn't tie them quickly, but I told her that will come. I put her ponytail up for her. We didn't play catch this morning because of the light drizzle.

Today is a day bright with promise. I showed Cathy a card that had been placed in our mailbox from a local piano tuner, and after I called them about their rates, she said I could get the piano in the music room tuned, and the sticky key unstuck. I'm looking forward to that. Tuning it myself has been gratifying enough when it comes to making bad notes stop being so bad, but I lack the chops for putting the whole thing in tip-top tune.

It's been a busy week, but Thursday was definitely the busiest day of it.
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Signs point to spring. "TO SPRING," they say, with a futureward arrow underneath. The snow sometimes sprinkles, but doesn't stick. It sprinkles water more often. Today, the playful zephyrs shake the house. Playfully. This morning when I went out to the bus with Sarah, the driveway was full of worms again.

I stepped around them, thinking of the Peanuts cartoon with Snoopy chicken-footing his way around. I chatted with Sonali's mom after Sarah kissed me goodbye and the bus left. A struggling worm caught my eye, and I picked it up. This took a while, as it struggled. I tossed it into the yard for a better shot at survival, because at least it was trying.

Then my eyes got more attuned to the worms, and I could see that they weren't all moribund. Among the rubber bands and overcooked pasta curls, there were some still morphing along, trying to get somewhere. I bent down and saved as many as I could. I am become Life, as it were, the savior of worms. I wormed my way to the upper part of the driveway, where there were fewer candidates for a return to the welcoming turf (the green, green grass of home). I saved a dozen or so; probably no more than two dozen. I thought of the story of the man throwing the sea stars back into the water.

Then I was back on the porch, which was free of vermiform specimens. I thought back to a day in Massachusetts when I seem to recall the porch having red worms all over it. Now, how the heck did they do that? Did they work their way up the steps, one by one? Did they stand on each others' backs? Did they creep up the bushes by the porch and drop off of overhanging branches? Or did I imagine it?

Anyway, I did my bit. Yay me! Then I went inside and messed around at the computer a while before going back to bed for another hour and a half. I still feel like I have something I shouldn't. There's the cough and the overall malaise. Feh. I finally need my strength back, because I need to get the newsletter and a brochure done for the Friends of the Library so it can go to the printer, and then I hopefully have at least one paying job in the pipeline.

Sarah and I are back to the YMCA routine, getting in the better part of an hour diving for rings at the deep and, followed by some time in the Adventure Center, where she gets to run around vigorously.

Something else to look forward to: tonight's going to be a new South Park. Yeah, I know, but some of us enjoy the thing.
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Speaking of 'mission accomplished' (see my previous post, or my next post if you're reading LJ in the order they offer it), I got the cover finished and uploaded to the publisher, and, despite the number of appointments I have had to take Sarah to this week, and despite her having Tuesday off of school, and despite feeling like my trachea has been rubbed with heated steel wool, I have finished the draft of the book and sent it back to its editor to dissect. When they got it back to me, they were in a hurry, of course, to have it finished. As a precaution this time, the editor isn't going to show it to the author. Last time I sent them a draft, he kept it for three months and turned in a completely different book.

We took care of a neighbor's cat for a week while they were in Florida. Sarah was almost in tears because the cat was somewhat standoffish, despite her attempts to befriend it. I think she was doing okay before she picked up the cat (which nobody does at the cat's home), and after that, the cat preferred to walk away from her overtures. I managed to be calm enough that the cat would let me pet her, and if I sat in my office chair, she'd come up and signal an intention to hop on my lap, after which I was permitted to hold her. To Sarah, this was a sort of unjust favoritism on the part of the cat.

Sarah was very helpful otherwise, putting food and water in the cat's dishes, and (for the first few days) scooping the litter box. Scooping got tiresome after a while, and she decided she'd rather hold the bag while I scooped. Then she decided she didn't want to do that either, but I made her do it anyway. Looks like it took five days from her to go from doing everything to not wanting to do anything. Fun fact for later, when she will resume her campaign to get a turtle, which she will, of course, take care of.

She was home from school for Veterans' Day on Tuesday, so we were together most of the time. The channel that shows Power Rangers thoughtfully scheduled a marathon of episodes, so I could count on her to be in the family room watching if I wanted to be at the computer. I snuggled with her for a couple of episodes. There wasn't much going on otherwise, with her number one playmate on a family trip, and slightly yucky weather. We went out for some lunch at Wegman's, and headed to a used book store afterwards. We found that the store closes at 2:00 on Tuesdays, which is exactly the day and time we arrived there.

When Cathy got home, I decided to take a coupon and go see what was worth buying at 40% off in the nearby Borders. I wandered around the store and picked up a couple of CDs (the coupon was for CDs) and got home right at 7:00. Cathy informed me that there was a meeting at the Library (I am now on the board of our Friends of the Library group), so I headed back out to join them in progress. They said they'd put me in the loop for meeting reminders, and I thanked them. I have homework for next month, to find out about online book valuators who tell you what you've got with the stroke of a bar code reader (or typing stuff in, of course, for older volumes). I grabbed a bagel for supper, not having eaten yet, and arrived home just in time to go sit with Sarah while she went to sleep. At 10, I slipped out and toasted it and ate it with some cream cheese, and went back to work on the book stuff, which I finished just over 24 hours later.
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On Saturday we went to Target to try out glasses for Sarah. The nicer ones weren't available in her size and she ended up choosing some heavy-looking rectangular ones.



They should be in around Saturday, and should make it easier for her to read (the diagnosis was actually 'slightly farsighted with some real astigmatism'), and maybe she won't need them when she's dancing or playing outside. We'll see (and so will she).

Saturday was also malibrarian's birthday. We breakfasted together at Friendly's, and Sarah and I gave our present and card to her. We went out foraging for a festive lunch on Sunday. First we tried the Lebanon Cafe in Springfield, to use the coupon I got at Taste Of The Valley, but they were closed for a private function. We proceeded to Northampton and a diner Cathy had gone to before, but they were closed for some other reason and ended up going to a Hunan place nearby that also had sushi. I decided to try their Singapore Mei Fun, along with a couple pieces of unagi. It was a nice place, and we'll probably go back.

Yesterday I got a nice surprise when the client whose book I'd finished e-mailed, asking for some small changes. I named a price of $50, and made most of the changes with him on the phone. One or two were tiny typos; most of them were things he decided to add in after seeing the proof.

With that out of the way, I went back to my self-appointed task of converting the Project Gutenberg etext of Spoon River Anthology to iPod format (text files no larger than 4k). I put each epitaph into its own file (about 1k average) so that they'd be findable by name. The Spooniad took four files. The Epilogue wasn't included, and maybe that's no real loss, even for a completist like myself. (Has anybody out there read the New Spoon River Anthology? Is it worth looking for?)

After that, I spent the rest of the day finishing the fifth Harry Potter book. If Cathy's library has #6, I'll probably go right on to that. Time's a-wasting, and people are working hard to spoil #7 for me. I've already had some of #6 blown, so I might as well hurry along. Too bad I don't know anybody around here who's already finished their copy of the last one. Short of buying a hardcover, that seems about the only way I'd get one any time soon.

By the way, if anybody has an iPod and wants "notes"-formatted etexts, I can offer Spoon River, King Lear (I forget offhand if it's quarto, folio, or conflated version), and Shakespeare Sonnets (original spelling). Also on my pod are the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Bierce's "Devil's Dictionary" and a version of Roger's Profanisaurus, but those three are partly reformatted for optimal reading. I first loaded them in using a program that broke them up automatically, which also broke up definitions in the middle of a line, and the line lengths are jagged and awkward. Now I know what to do with things like that, but it's very time-consuming to fix the files.
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I might have made a difference. Then again, who knows. Anyway, a co-worker asked me where I got my Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker, and as a result, I'm bringing a spare sticker in today. It gave me a thrill, it did. I was a little reluctant to put it on my car -- I haven't put a bumper sticker on a vehicle since 1976 -- but it seemed important enough, and I can probably keep the stickum from taking up permanent residence if I pay attention. Sooner or later, we'll want to sell the car, and I suspect that old bumper stickers are a minus. That's for later, though.
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