Finally snow! And lot’s of it, relatively. For this winter anyway. The plow just went by out on Mud Bay Road, and we have yet to shovel out the house. Morning Muscles was canceled. Marnie said to get our workout clearing snow.
I have been panicked, slightly, with the play– my lines must be learned by tonight’s rehearsal, more or less. We will have a prompter. (The show is the last weekend in February, so there is time.) And Baby James is here, and my new book’s publicity is making me a tad wiggy. So far it’s all good, but I hope it lives up to the publisher’s expectations, and some magazines want essays from me to tie in with it– wise life-lesson sort of things– and at the moment I feel neither wise, nor able to concentrate on locating lessons anywhere. Well, I do have one. Steve, who works at the Post Office, is Father Jack in the play, and at practice he asked me how I wrote an obituary (former Bible Church pastor Wendell Terwilliger, 87, died after suffering a heart attack while sweeping the church he’s been at up in Indian for the last 21 years), a column for the Dispatch (on the Main Street art), and did all the family stuff, exercised, and learned lines this week, and I started to say that I did it all badly– but that’s not totally true, none of it is that bad. I do the family thing well. The secret is not multitasking– not at all. Rather, I do my best to concentrate all my thoughts, energy, and intention on the thing at hand– the thing I’m doing right now– then I do the next thing, from laps in the pool to holding a baby to writing. (Next is a proper visit — do I sound Irish?- and a proper breakfast with Eliza and wee young James and Chip.) While we do that, you can enjoy my shameless photos from yesterday :
