Argh Ink

I just dropped a bookcase down the stairs.

I have this thing about moving everything myself. Probably a single mother thing. Don’t need no stinkin’ man to help me. So I’ve been doing great, I even moved my weight machine by myself and only took out some duct work and the top of a doorway.

Then I got to the bookcases. You may have seen them at West Elm, twelve squares, three across, four down, white, look deceptively light? They weigh the earth. And I got the first one down about three steps and it just . . . went. When it landed, it disassembled itself. Which is okay, I assembled it in the first place (and a bitch it was, too) but it turns out that when you drop a really heavy bookcase from a great height, it doesn’t just come apart, metal things bend.

So I pick up the pieces and I get my mallet and I start putting it back together and after much swearing and cursing and shoving, I get it all together except for the top which won’t go on because one of the metal things is bent. And this metal thing, unlike the others, does not respond to my pushing and shoving and swearing. So I’m staring at it in disgust and my contractor comes in and says, “What are you doing?” And I say, “You know those eight bookcases I told you I was going to move by myself? You’re going to have to get some help and do it because I dropped this one and now the damn thing won’t go back together because of one lousy screw.”

And he said, “You tried to move this yourself,” with that Bob Look on his face. It must be a universal male look, attached to the Y chromosome. I said, “Hey, I moved the weight machine by myself.” He said, “Don’t do that.” Then he yanked the bent screw out and I put the top back on the bookcase and we went upstairs and I showed him these two gorgeous turn of the century art glass doors that needed to be moved and that I could not figure out where to put, and he said, “How about there?” and damn if he wasn’t right. And this time, without the Bob Look.

So tonight I have to clean out the last six bookcases and get those ready to go downstairs with the treadclimber. I hope he brings a lot of help.

And tomorrow I go home for my mother’s birthday. I’m taking Milton. Veronica’s nerves would never stand the trip, so my mother said, “Bring Milton.” Milton and I in a car for four hours. God knows what we’ll talk about. Probably me dropping the bookcase. He stood at the top of the stairs and watched, and I swear when I looked up at him, he was wagging his tail and he had that “Do it again!” look in his eye.

At least it wasn’t the Bob Look.

I’m THIS close to finishing D&G but my guilt over Argh is getting in my way. I’ll stop and read the comments later, but for right now . . .

Picture of the Red Thing:

See? Huge anti-climax. But the pleats are wonderful.

And I love the detail on the back.

Back of the Red Thing:

Picture of the Horned Altar:

Picture of Dogs and Goddesses in Rewrite Hell With Track Changes:

That’s what I’ve been doing 90% of the time I’ve been gone, interspersed with:

Picture of My Attempts to Find the Right Window Trim Color Before the New Windows Go In:

Actually, I kind of like it this way, but I am going to have to pick one color.

Picture of Veronica Who is Two Today:

Veronica shares her chaise if necessary, but everybody knows that’s Veronica’s Chaise. She just OWNS it.

Picture of Bathroom from Hell Which Needs Painting Which I Must Do Before New Stuff Goes In:

Everything goes, including that awful floor.

Picture of Milton, Digging Hole to China:

If the dogs didn’t need to go out every three hours, I’d never see the sun.

Picture of Wolfie, Critiquing Hole to China:

Picture of Place where New Garden Shed will be:

No, I’m not building it, but we’re all supervising:

And this is what I’m going back to now:

See you when the damn thing is done which will be TODAY. Or else I’m throwing myself off the deck.

I knew I should never have left you alone this long. You plot.

I’ll take a picture of the red thing tomorrow, in between trying to finish D&G and answering my contractor’s questions (there are ten million little things that need done here and he’s trying to do them all before he starts a big project) so I can have all the lights in my kitchen working and a door at the bottom of the stairs to keep Milton from harassing Bob when he comes to stay and lights by my back door so I can see out at night and . . . well, you get the drift.

At the moment I’m trying to get back into D&G. There’s a time when the window closes on a book and it’s done, you can’t see that world or hear the voices anymore, and that happened with D&G. I can do minor edits after that, clean up, but I can’t fix major problems. But Jen had some major problems with my characters which meant a major rewrite, so after I hyperventilated and stared into space, I thought, “Well, you know what you have to do.” Which is reinvent the book so it’s new again. Problem is, it’s a collaboration so I can’t violate Krissie and Lani’s finished plot lines or characters. So it’s tricky.

But I went back to the music and the collage, and I kept humming and cutting and pasting and now it’s midnight and I just made a horned altar out of styrofoam. There’s a reason Bob screams.

But I think I’ve got a new way in. Maybe. And I checked with Krissie about some changes I wanted to make in the relationship between her goddess and mine, and she’s good with it–actually she’s great with it–so if I can just stay immersed in this do-over long enough to fix my stuff, then I can go on and write AKMG which I have to do because it comes before Wild Ride and Bob has just killed his henchwoman (whom I think bears a startling resemblance to me; he took a lot of pleasure in telling me she was history) so he’s on his way out the door on that. After that he’s got Who Dares Wins and then he’s gonna be knocking on my door asking what Mary Imogen is up to, and I can’t even remember her last name.

And in the meantime, I have to discuss bathroom vanities with the contractor–because nobody is impressed with the utility sink in the first floor bathroom now–and paint this horned altar gray and, oh yeah, take a picture of the red thing. It’s going to be a HUGE anticlimax, I’m telling you now.

And I do not want to hear any chanting about POTHA, either.