The sad thing is, I really love bookmarks.
I have tons of them. Some of them were saved, seriously, from Weekly Reader book orders in grade school. Some of them are left over from when I was teaching – thin slips of colorful plastic with a handy pop-out square to hook over the pages. Educational companies sent reams of bookmarks to my students. I have several of the perforated kind, you pop them out of sturdy cardstock, and voila – your page is marked.
Some of my bookmarks are museum quality. Aquafortis got me a metal one in Italy when she tagged along on the Artist’s sabbatical trip. It looks like a marble mosaic of water and fish. My agent sends me one with each new contract – and his are really nifty carved wooden ones from his various travels. I have tons of the most artistic, unique and beautiful bookmarks, ever, and do you think I use any of them? No, I do not.
Which is beyond pathetic.
Why is it, when I need a bookmark, that I have a headband? Or a sock? Or an ink pen? Or a rubber band? Or the paper tab from the end of a tea bag? Or an eraser? Or a hairpin? Why can’t I just use the sixteen bookmarks stacked neatly on the bookshelf? Would that simply be too convenient???
::sigh::
It snowed yesterday in the hills above the city. We’re not sliding through slush just yet, but it is so, so cold. I’m grateful that I found boots before the weather turned the corner.
It’s strange, but when I first moved here, I was somewhat aghast at the Glaswegian habit of not wearing a coat. Now, yes, I’m from California, therefore I wore flip-flops all through November when I was in college, because winter didn’t get serious until January or February. Here, though, I find like some of the hardcore population, I’m pushing the opposite direction. I am grumpy that as soon as ice starts to stick to pavement and underpasses all day that I will have to retire my cardigan. So far, I haven’t put on a coat since last April. Crazy, isn’t it? It was 36°F the other morning as I hurried to my chiropractic appointment, and I was wearing my cardigan, and nothing else. (Well, strike that. My cardigan and PANTS and a sweater and BOOTS and things, but no coat. This is my point.) Granted, it’s a nice cardigan, it’s knee-length and all, but seriously, at what point do we see our breath smoking in the morning air and think, “Nah, it’s just not time for a coat yet”? When we have lost our minds, that’s when.
I have been in this country for too long.
There’s something hypnotic about swimming in the rain. I’ve never done it without a roof between myself and the drops, but the “bath” where I swim these rain-whipped mornings has a glass roof, and I stretch out into my very sloppy backstroke and watch the water slide down.
It’s meditative.
I’m a person who actually is very bad at all of that yogic stuff. Meditation, downward-facing dogs, breathing deeply, being in the present — but ever since my friend Jennifer bugged and bugged me into swimming, I’ve found that I can actually get out of my head every once in awhile – which is really necessary these dark winter days. (YES, little voice in my head. I know. Technically, winter does not begin until December 20th or so, but I’m already writing you postcards from the edge. Think you could just let the nitpicking go already? Thanks.) Maybe it’s because I’m still half asleep at ten minutes to seven, but in the water, I can think of everything that is stressful, without feeling the stress. I can do worldbuilding, and let it slip away without worrying that I haven’t committed my character’s new name to pen and paper. I can think of my family, and light metaphorical candles for them while I go back and forth and back and forth. Swimming laps, it doesn’t matter, for once, that I’m not getting anywhere.
(I have no idea why a treadmill doesn’t have the same soothing effect. Perhaps it’s the puffing, and the sweat?)
Baking hasn’t got the same effect, either, at least not for me, but it seems to work for Tech Boy. I am happy to report that my friend J-Dawg sent us Tootsie Rolls, after reading my bemoaning of the sad lack in this country, and Tech Boy found cranberries! We now have six bags stuffed in the freezer, and he has made the most tasty cranberry orange bread.
Seriously: sometimes, it’s just the little things.
I may be treading water on my middle grade manuscript – no closer to the end than I was last week (and why am I so anxious to finish? Where do these artificial deadlines come from?), and I may have too many “emotionally isolated” characters in my SF novel and have to revise, and I may have reams of revisions to do for my paid project and am waiting on my editorial letter again, but I have cranberries and Tootsie Rolls. A little bit of bitter and sour. A little bit of sweet.
I tell you, my life is complete.