On a recent sizzling hot summer day, my husband and I were doing a little divide and conquer with property maintenance: he on weed-eating duty, and I cleaning the garage.
The main focus of my garage cleaning was this large green workbench we’d received as a housewarming gift. It’d been filled with my experiment paraphernalia on one side, and Husband’s tools occupying the rest of the drawers. But now, everything was getting reorganized into bins and moving to the red shed.
But even in the garage, it was hot. The shade offered by the walls gave some respite, even though my lizard nature handled heat very well. It was short of the walls peeling, which I assumed that’s what happens after temps rise above 120F. We had yet to break out of the one hundred and teens. Still, I took breaks to bring my husband tea and interrupt his weed-eating of the fruit trees near the front.
And that’s when things got irritating.
“Can you bring me some gas for the weed-eater?” he asked. It was ’round the house, which meant walking through the desert to get it. But I brought it anyway.
“Where’s the branch cutters?”
“You asked for the gas can.”
“I asked for both.” So now, sweating and irritated, I trudged back through the hotness, around the property, and grabbed the cutters.
“Can you bring me my gloves?”
“Excuse me?” These trips were not only more time spent under the gaze of the killer sun, but also extremely inefficient, which makes me very annoyed.
“You are wasting my time and yours. Is there anything else I can get you?” He shook his head no. So off I go to get him a pair of gloves.
And wouldn’t you know when I get back? “Can you bring me some more tea? I’m out.”
I just stared at him, this man that supposedly got things done efficiently at work. He smiled sheepishly.
“I will get you this tea, but this is the last trip I’m taking out here for the moment. So if you want anything else, you can walk over and get it.” I brought the tea and that was the final word of the blazing hot disorganized trips.
But guess what? I’ve been very efficient recently in other ways.
I finished the self-edits of Catnip, Plushie Balls, and Q-Tips and sent her off to the editor a few weekends ago. This past weekend break I worked on my rough draft for the book after Q-Tips, and I got the Q-Tips edits back. The coming weeks: I will continue going over the Q-Tips edits and eventually send out to beta readers while working on marketing aspects. There’s still a lot of little details to sew together, but my spreadsheet is smiling at me for being on track.
Between sitting on the front porch (during rare cloud-covered moments) and lounging on the couch, I’ve been working on a slightly different approach to cat poetry for a future release down the line. And then I’m also doing a slight pivot on my to-write list, tweaking projects to be more in line with my strengths. I hope you like what’s coming.
Where have my cats been all this time? Elsa sits on my empty computer boxes, directly in line with the morning window rays, and Socks likes to perch on the cat tree, staring out the window to look at butterflies. I don’t think they really care that I’m writing about cats, or that they’re featured in my up-and-coming book, but do enjoy the extra pets when I finish something and celebrate with scratches.
An excerpt from the rough draft of Catnip, Plushie Balls, and Q-Tips:
