More progress

What a great day I had - up early-ish for a 3km run, and it wasn't raining. Did 4 hours' work answering emails and adding competitions and submission opportunities to the website while it rained. Sent some submissions to the Cha (Asian literary journal) 'Encounters' poetry competition. The last 2 sentences have a definite cause and effect relationship.

Did an hour on The Book - 2 more pages done. Spent some time in the garden after it stopped raining again. Did all the necessary reference checks and offered our empty apartment to the couple who really wanted it (yayy! Rent again). Talked to my Auckland phone buddy for half an hour. Watched last Thursday night's 'Chuck', as I forgot it was on last week.

Put like that, it doesn't seem like as much as it felt, but the time whizzed by and I felt like I had a productive and creative day. Thanks, Jen, for reminding me about Bach Flower Remedies - they've really helped me focus.

Sylvia's boyfriend arrived from Tauranga to stay with us for a couple of weeks. Having them in the house added a small portion of my daily conversational needs, before they went out to visit some friends.

I don't normally do a Tuesday Poem (Tuesdays come around far too often for me to keep up), but just because I feel like it, here's the poem I collaged and illustrated in The Book today:

Life is a Grocery Store

My father was a general manager,
stock-controller, check-out man –
a holistic server of people’s needs.

My mother cut cheese, bagged flour
and weighed onions –
maintenance tasks out the back.

Sometimes Mum filled in at the counter,
protecting the till while Dad
made weekly deliveries.

The Grocer had a car.

In Newtown everyone knew
everyone else – and their business:
“The Grocers have another daughter”
(The Queen has had another son).

Feelings were kept on the top shelf
where children couldn’t reach them.


First published in the whole wide world ed. Vivienne Jepson, The NZ Poetry Society, Wgtn, 2000. (That singleton line in the middle is supposed to be offset to the right, but I can't figure out how to make it behave.)

Tomorrow's my writing day, so I'll get 4 hours (or more, if it's going well and the garden is too wet to get into) of working on The Book. Gotta ramp up the production speed.