It came up in Book Club that it would be nice to have notes about what people enjoyed or didn’t enjoy on our book club reads. So here’s the nutshell information about what we read and how we felt about it.
I’m sitting in the dark, writing on my phone as the long still moments of the dusk slip into night. My favorite human is asleep on the couch, finally home from vacation and business travel.
Sophie-dog is laying by the sliding glass door, watching out hopefully for another groundhog to blunder into the yard. She got one on Tuesday, and now her surveillance of the back yard is eternal.
Poppy-cat is likely on the dining room table, based on the sound of the little bell on her collar. I don’t have the heart to shoo her down tonight.
I’m not sure where Mojo-kitty is Mojoing at the moment, but that’s hardly unusual. Mojo is our timid baby and slinks about on his own schedule.
I should probably start the process of putting the house to bed, but there’s something comforting about everything being right in the house after weeks of displacement. I just want to sit in the stillness, in the dark, and appreciate it for a few more minutes.
We were gifted a chimenea in the shape of a fish that had broken at the top of the fish’s tail. It has since been carefully reconstructed but will never be safe for a fire again.
We took it, knowing it wouldn’t be safe for a firepit with the idea that we were going to turn it into a planter. It has sat by the doorway for a couple of years now, but I never made the time to plant anything in it. This year I bought some fancy succulents from several growers on Etsy.
I’ve had them all for about half a week. Yesterday I finally took the time to get everything planted.
I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen. The green ones are supposed to turn yellow as they mature, but I like the colors just the way they are if they don’t.
I might add a taller plant in the back that likes semi-shade, but I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet. I kind of want to see what happens with what’s in there now before I make any additons.
We’re doing some planting for the future. The 2020 Derecho took so many trees, so we’re trying to rebuild the population of native trees.
This wagon is the best. I love you, little green wagon.
Of course the bare root trees arrived well before we’re going to be ready to plant them, so I’m giving them a temporary home to help keep them alive and healthy until we can get them in the ground.
A mix of native species, straight from the DNR, just hanging out in the spa.
Everybody in the pool, friends. Enjoy your little mud treatment spa days.
My plan, bit by bit, is to make a garden inspired by the lyrics of Waking the Witch by Kate Bush. I started with the pinks and posies because they’re less expensive garden plants, and several years back now, I received the red, red roses as a birthday gift that would keep blooming in my garden.
This year they decided to bloom pink.
For reference, this is the same rose bush as the pink roses above.
The same rose bush in 2021
Maybe it’s the unseasonably hot weather we’ve had this spring that has confused them. Maybe they’ll go back to blooming red. Maybe they’ll never be quite the same again.
I’m not going to complain about roses. They’re still beautiful, just not exactly what was planned.
If I were a member of the Addams Family, I’d be Inertia Addams. *sigh*
Me, Facebook, 6/1/2022 (since deleted)
Burn, candle. Burn.
I’d like to be able to say that I lost my creative identity during the pandemic, but it’s not as simple as that. As a person with multiple ongoing health issues, keeping the energy up to continue as a high performer at my day job, which is both necessary and important, and at the same time dry and dull, often takes priority over priming the pump and other self-care.
For a long time, I’ve been able to keep up things up by shoveling tomorrow’s energy into today. But there’s been a cost. It’s been this way for a long enough time that I’ve whittled away whatever energy reserves I may have once had, and my creativity, put on hold for everything else, feels like it’s circling a black hole.
There are all these stories inside me. I can feel them dying. I just haven’t been able to find enough energy to overcome my creative inertia.
Self-care and priming the pump cannot be my last priority any longer.
Giving myself time to exercise, time to do physical therapy, time to get out into nature, to bike, to knit and crochet, to read things that are purely for enjoyment? These things are not just fuel for my writing: they’re the fuel for everything.
So, this month, I’m burning down Inertia Addams and rebuilding myself from the ashes, one little blog post at a time.
