Monday, January 02, 2012

Nine Ladies Dancing

More or less. The bee doesn't count, she's working, not dancing.

The ninth day of Christmas was okay, after the Piker Press was up and I was able to stop swearing at my laptop and its penchant for wacking out on me when I'm trying to edit articles.

It starts like this: Grumpy because I've left working on the Press until Monday morning (when I've vowed every Monday afternoon for years that I'm going to get everything ready to roll the Thursday prior to Monday's publishing), I immediately tackle the "difficult" articles first -- the ones that need close attention and editing. An article that has misspellings and punctuation gaffes can take an hour to edit and format, depending on how rough a draft I've been handed, and how many interruptions in the process.

Every link has to be checked, every book that's reviewed has to be available on Amazon (since those links are our only income, piss poor though it is). Every Peek of the Week has to be mined from galleries, examined closely to make sure there is no blur, and on Monday mornings I can barely remember how to button my shirt correctly let alone who all has given me permission to look through their galleries for potential photos.

Halfway through the process, I'm already stiff and itchy, and then the laptop mousepad gets over-sensitive and buggers up lines I've typed. I should know better, yes, it's true. The only thing to do is get up, walk away, and go watch the birds for a while, drink a glass of ice water, run a load of laundry. The madder I get, the more mistakes slow me up. Bleah.

But once the Press was done, the ninth day was fine. Laundry was a-cookin' in the machines, there were plenty of leftovers for lunch; I took a walk around the block, read an uplifting article about liturgical norms, tackled three small sewing projects, and with Bernie's help, sanded off the old finish on the paper towel holder from the kitchen.

I got to thinking about a picture of 'nine ladies dancing' -- and thought of photos of cherry blossoms. So beautiful, and on a day that dawned with thick gray Tule fog, cold and damp, I found myself longing for Spring already.

As I looked through the photos, I spotted something I had missed last Spring: a bug staggering through the photo shoot.

Merry Christmas Season, Bug! You're a star!





3 comments:

Bernie said...

So are you going to do this type of thing for the 240 or so days of Ordinary Time? I think that would be cool.

Cheryl said...

Kinda raises the bar for Advent 2012, doesn't it?

Aser said...

Both of yez can stuff it.