Musings & Thoughts for Monday, March 18, 2024, or: Weekend Update, Part the Second…and a New Workweek is Upon Us!

Late Morning/Midday, Monday, March 18, 2024, Madison, New Hampshire

Hi, everyone, and welcome to the start of another workweek. It’s a cold early spring day here in northern New England; the current temperature is 38°F (3°C) under cloudy conditions. With the wind blowing from the west-southwest at 9 MPH (14 KMH) and humidity at 42%, the feels-like temperature is 39°F (4°C). Today’s forecast calls for partly sunny skies and a high of 45°F (7°C). Tonight, we can expect partly cloudy skies. The low will be 31°F (-1°C).

Weekend Update, Part the Second, or: A Restful Sunday

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I had to stop writing the first part of my blog entry because I had to go to Walmart and buy a few things, including a gallon of milk, a couple of inexpensive Walmart-brand frozen pizzas, and a smallish laundry basket. And I did a bit of vacuuming out in the common area, so my Sunday wasn’t 100% a “day of rest.”

That having been said, I didn’t succumb to any urge to work on Reunion: Coda. I did not sleep well the night before last, so I wasn’t fit – mentally or physically – to write anything beyond my daily blog post or the occasional social media comments on Facebook or X (Twitter).

So…yesterday I decided to at least try to get away from my desk for a while during the afternoon hours, which is something I rarely do. As I mentioned earlier, I vacuumed the floor in the living and dining room and then did the same in my office. After I put the vacuum cleaner back in its place, I heated one of the small pizzas I’d bought at Walmart, and while I waited for that to be done, I stepped out onto the front porch, snapped a few photos with my phone’s camera, and sat for a spell on one of the two chairs out there.

I didn’t stay outside long. I was taught by my mom to never leave an oven unattended for a long time, so I was on the front porch for my daily dose of sunshine and fresh air for less than 10 minutes.

When my personal-sized pizza was ready – I baked it in the oven for 22 minutes – I grabbed a Heineken beer from the fridge, removed the bottlecap with my can opener, and set it down next to my late lunch at the dining room table. I don’t drink often, but I’ve been under a lot of stress lately about applying for the same state-issued benefits I had in Florida, including Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Other matters worry me greatly, of course, but dealing with government officials isn’t something I enjoy. (I must say, though, that the Health and Human Services interviewer I talked to last week was not only nice and helpful, but she was gorgeous.)

Though I’ve had far better lunches here, yesterday’s pizza and Heineken repast was enjoyable enough, and I was able, for a while at least, to relax and hold my panicky worries at bay.

I had planned to rewatch Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but – as I so often do – I changed my mind once I closed my office (metaphorically) and wandered into my bedroom across the hallway sometime after 9 PM. Indy V is a good movie – perhaps not as great as the first three in the series, but James Mangold’s series finale is true to the spirit of the Spielberg-helmed installments – but it’s the longest of the bunch. I went to my bedroom earlier than I normally do to watch it, but even though one Heineken doesn’t make me drunk, it does relax me enough to get sleepy earlier than usual. I knew that once I was in bed and watching anything – no matter what genre it belonged in – I’d fall asleep not long after I started. So, I watched the bonus features from my Dunkirk Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy set from 2017 instead of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

And even though I was able to watch most of the featurettes about how Christopher Nolan made Dunkirk, I fell asleep sometime after 10 PM, woke up only once to “use the facilities” at 12:55 AM, and slept relatively soundly till 6:30 AM today.

Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho…It’s Off to Rest (and Work) I Go!

It’s colder than a witch’s tit in the house today, so writing this post has taken me longer than I anticipated. I am wearing – as usual – “layers” and thermals, but it’s still chilly in my office. The low temperatures are something I’m still trying to get used to, and I do have texting gloves I can wear if it gets colder, but the cold is an annoying distraction. That makes writing more difficult than it already is, so a blog post that should have taken me an hour to write took me almost three!

I must work on Reunion: Coda today – it is a working day for me, after all – but I doubt that I’ll start writing Chapter 14 unless I return to my desk with a strong sense of “I know how to pick up the Jim and Maddie narrative where I left off last time we saw them last.”   If that happens, great. I’ll be a happy writer should Calliope come down from wherever she hangs out and whisper “sweet somethings” in my ear.

If that doesn’t occur…well, I’ll be editing and revising what I’ve written so far. There’s not a chapter that I haven’t looked over at least once, though, so if copy-editing is the only item on my To Do list…then I’ll have to study from my three “how to write kissing books” resources, including  Diana Gabaldon’s “I Give You My Body” – How I Write Sex Scenes to learn how to write romantic/sexy scenes well.

In any case, I’m already a tad late for my midday lunch and relaxation break, so I must close this post here. Have a nice day, and ciao for now!