eBay Sales: salad plates, 3 books, flashlight, and… other stuff which I have forgotten because it has been such a long time since I bothered to actually update this site. *winces* I was trying to be an every day blogger, but then… 2020. Just 2020 man.
#MilWordy Update: 101,083 words (3379 words/day to complete on time)
Craft Projects: Zero completed. Zero started. It’s looking increasingly as though these will not be completed this year. And that does not shock me. My brain has been overloaded by stress for months now.
Today’s big adventure is the chair that collapsed underneath me today while I was working. I have a feeling that I will have bruises in the strangest of spots tomorrow. I mean, my bum is expected. My shoulderblade, the inside of my finger, the tip of my nose, not so much. It was a modern chair in the Victorian style that I bought second-hand. It looks as though it had been repaired previously. It still annoys me. And I’ll need to take some pain meds in hopes of forestalling the aches and pains which will inevitably creep up overnight. On the plus side, I did not hit my head, so no concussion worries.
So now I am using an *actual* Victorian chair that’s made of solid wood in the Neo-Gothic tradition. The upholstery makes me cringe. (It’s radioactive caterpillar puke green. Appropriate for a Victorian chair, but with less arsenic. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.) I was planning to use it as my weaving chair, but needs must. At least it will enforce appropriate posture. Have you ever tried to lean back in a Gothic chair with carvings? Ouch. Made for corsets to contact, not an unprotected back. Maybe it will help my back? Eh. Who knows.
Nano was a wash, as you know, but MilWordy is still going strong. And I think I can get back on track. I know that three-thousand words a day sounds daunting, but it’s still doable.
I started digitizing some of my work from the nineties. Poetry most of it. And… yeah, the nineties were not great for my emotional health. College was not a fun time for me. And I really wouldn’t want to go back to it. But, it’s the holidays and I have fond memories of one person. I don’t even really remember her name — if I ever knew it.
We would meet up maybe twice a year. She was a sorority sister. I think I remember her wearing her letters. It was never an organized thing. That would mean that we’d exchanged names and phone numbers. Or that we emailed each other. I don’t know that we ever actually had a class together, though I vaguely think we had a core type class — stats or something.
But on a random day, evening usually, we would end up in the basement of the library. It was dark down there, with lights on a movement switch. The overhead lights would go out, but there were desk lights in the study carrols. The stacks down there were the space-saver type that you could crank open or closed. And no one, but no one studied down there — except for me. And her. I think I’m going to call her Jenny, just to have something to use. So, in that dark evening, in the quiet of the library, we would talk. Jenny and I talked about everything. Absolutely everything. Class troubles, interpersonal issues, missing home, and future plans. And it was like dropping secrets into a well.
And then we’d not see each other for another semester. It was often just before finals, or just after a big test that we’d find each other and talk.
And I don’t know if she understands exactly how much those days helped me. That strange intimacy that never saw the outside. Let’s call this my thank you note. Jenny kept me from crying on the phone to my mother in that library basement. Kept me solid when I was having issues with my roommates. And kept me on-track to get out of that place with my sanity intact.
That library and its inhabitants saved me more than once. And to “Jenny” whether she was a ghost, an angel, or just a human girl who felt the need to reach out: Thank You. You made a difference. And I hope I helped you in return.
