Spent a fair amount of the weekend getting ready for Mother’s Day, helping the kids put something together for their mom on Saturday and then spending Sunday getting the house squared away, shopping for groceries, and making dinner for Keeley’s mom and dad. All in all, not a bad way to spend a weekend if there’s no time to write.
Although . . . I did manage to sneak in a couple of moments here and there where I started working my way through Dave Sim’s Cerebus the Aardvark for the umpteenth time. As many times as I’ve read it though from cover to cover, this is the first time I’ve done it as a divorced man with a very different perspective on women, men, and God. I’m up to Book Nine: Reads, so there’s still a long way to go.
Jolie Holland has a new album out and I have a brand new little boy crush on her all over again. That voice of hers is really quite something.
(I mean, it’s not Keeley singing “Cheek to Cheek” or anything — which is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard with my own ears — but I really like Ms. Holland’s music quite a lot and I was delighted to download her new album from iTunes just in time for springtime. So there.)
Still unpacking after the big move. Both of the kids are going to need some help getting their rooms squared away. And I’ve still got three or four of boxes of books to put on the shelves — mostly film scripts and miscellaneous movie reference. You’d almost think I was somebody who knew somthing, eh?
After this last move, with almost forty boxes of books, I’m starting to think that I’m the Imeda Marcos of books — or, at least, that I’m in the running. I’ve even read (most of) them, too . . . but there are lots and lots that I haven’t. Maybe at some point I’ll do a list of Books I Own But Have Been Too Lazy To Read.
Maybe.
Imelda was kind of a babe, come to think of it.
Anyways . . . the move took a fair amount of wind out of my creative sails, but there’s a new gust now that most of the house if getting squared away and late nights now you’ll find me at a big square table with a candle and some Dragon’s Blood (typically with a spirit at my elbow) scratching away, glancing up every so often to check in on what’s happening in the corner of my eye.
Tonight: The Shaggy Man went fishing and dropped a handful of additional hints here and there about the trouble with cats. I also got to write a smattering of lines that Gorey might have penned under one of his less-favored pseudonyms, which was fun.
Best line of the night: “At the sight of it, the cats gathered around him like stormclouds around a mountain. They watched, tails flickering like lightning, as he reeled the fish in.”
We’re almost to the Elephant House. I was very happy tonight to discover that the name made sense, in the context of the story. It’s almost like I know what I’m doing.
(This is the third section of the novel, by the way, called “Purgatorio” and it’s the last section, really — apart from a simple epilogue that’s already been written. It’s all coming to an end.)
And then, of course, I checked my e-mail, wrote this, and went to bed.