Yesterday’s Challenge tasks:
- Write one article a day.
Yup. Did. A review for Untrained Housewife of “The Gift of the Christmas Cookie”, a book that tried far too hard. I know now why reviewers are tempted to give good reviews to items they get for free; it seems very unchivalrous to look gift swag in the mouth. But there you go. The book was weedy.
- Do one thing every day to make the new house look more homelike
I got rid of a bunch of packing boxes (thank you Freecycle), and potted up a bunch of seeds. The pig emptid out the pot containing my nasturtium seeds and the packet of snow pea seeds, and tromped for some time on the resulting pile. Very homelike.
- Do one organisational thing a day
Forwarded mail for previous tenants. I’m going to spend my life doing this.
Everything else
Nuh-uh. I was going to henna my hair, but the lady came to pick up the boxes at 7 and I didn’t feel I could carry off the encounter with green eyebrows and a plastic bag on my head. I will do it tonight, or even this afternoon if the pig allows it. Too long have I hidden my roots under a hat, in direct contradiction to Scripture.
Today I took the piggie into town, always a fraught manoeuvre these days as our pram is on the fritz. She tends to conk out halfway home and have to be carried, while I clutch my purchases in my other arm and feel my arms slowly slip from their sockets. Still, we needed to return a library book. And while at the library I did something daring. I’ve been complaining lately about not knowing any good contemporary authors. Mostly being a classics girl, I haven’t read much recent literature more arcane than Harry Potter. And given that I don’t know the scene, I’m not even sure where to start - mostly I pick up books on the grounds that I saw the movie, or heard that author referenced by another author, or heard someone talk about it. But I never pick up books cold, on the grounds that the title looks interesting. Do people ever really do that? I don’t. But anyway… today I did. In fact, three of the books I chose simply because the snortlepig picked them randomly out of the bookshelf and the dust jackets looked OK.
We will see how it goes. If I were a braver man I’d just start at the As in the fiction section and read my way right through, figuring that if someone liked it enough to publish it it probably wasn’t absolute trash. I’m not currently quite that brave (or well-endowed with spare time), but this is a start. I feel v daring.
Right. By a minor miracle the pig’s asleep without me, so I’d better go slap some henna on my head and make a milktart.