When Life Gives You A Lemon...

..you call customer support, futz around with them for an hour, get nowhere, then call the computer salesman/tech to find out the return policy.  I knew when he said that the laptop was the demo I should have turned around, spent a few more bucks, and gotten a factory sealed one but I didn't.  Now I'm paying in frustration and return trips to Office Max.  I think I'm going to just return this one and get a different one.  I have no confidence that this Dell will ever be the reliable workhorse that I need.

Last Friday JB asked us what the next step in our writing life would be when we got home from The Clearing and I said that I'd park myself down for a mere 15 minutes a day, timed of course, and that way I'd inch my way toward completing this never-ending manuscript.  The big pink Post-it is for jotting down any crib notes I need to keep the thought I end on alive.  So far in two days (I took Sunday off) I've written a little over 1000 words.  Not bad, if I do say so myself.

MW came over this morning to reset one of the traps and ended up sticking around to trim the dead wood out of the forsythia and then cut it down to about four feet instead of the fifteen feet it had grown to.  I was going to take a walk but I couldn't let him work while I walked so I helped cut and haul sticks to the curb.  Naturally the stick truck came down the street yesterday.  They'll be back.

I got an unpleasant jolt when I saw this little black and gray bird this morning.  It's a junco.  They summer in the arctic where they have their babies and winter here because it's so much nicer here in the winter.  You know what that means, right?  Winter's on the way.  Not that it's a surprise since the furnace is on and I'm wearing flannel and needed a coat to haul out the trash.  *sigh*



I knitted a couple rounds on the latest Two Hour Bag.  I need to felt the two purses I made last week because they need to dry by Thursday night and I also need to sew up a project bag because I need an exchange gift for the Knit-Away Day on Saturday.

15 October--Barbara Malcolm, Horizon. 

         After a box lunch in the orchard near the painting studio we drove to a poet’s cottage.  Stepping into her space was like walking into a sorcerer’s den.  Sari fabric in jewel tones draped the wall of windows like a rainbow, incense and candles scented the air, and she had soft overstuffed chairs all around the room piled with pillows.  She presented each of us with a beautiful, handmade book to write in and encouraged us to carefully choose a writing implement from the pots of them on the table.  Clara and I grabbed a pen from one of the pots and hurried over to claim the couch so we could compare notes on how terrible our poetry was sure to be.  Elena, the poet leading the workshop, was just what I imagined a poet should be.  She wore soft flowing clothes, silver bracelets that clanked when she waved her hands around, and her hair was long and curly.  I whispered to Clara that I thought Elena had dramatic presence.  Clara giggled and then shushed me as Elena began speaking.

         Her words were not what I expected.  She spoke about spilling out our lives and experiences on paper so we could enjoy them again, learn from them, and share them with others if we chose to.  She read us a poem or two, free verse poems like the ones Abel likes, not the rhyming ones we’d learned in school, about summer and then asked us to write our own summer poem.

         I opened the cover of my book and felt a bit intimidated by the blank page.  I peeked at the other women in the circle and most of them were writing.  When I looked at Clara I was amazed that in the few seconds I’d spent dithering she had nearly filled her first page.  As she reached to turn the page, I heard her say, “oh” in a small voice.

         Thinking I’d better get a move on if I wanted to have more than the word summer at the top of my page when Elena told us to stop, I started just making a list of the things I love about summer, the soft air, the long days, the thunderstorms.  Not a real poem, I thought, but when Elena called a halt and asked people to share, most of them were like mine, a list.  Not bad but then it was Clara’s turn.

         She started reading in a small voice but soon she got braver and her voice got louder and a real poem came out.

Iron gray clouds pour over the horizon

filling the sky with dread.

The thunder of their approach

rolls across the day in an avalanche of sound.

Lightning forks stab the earth,

weaving the corners of the storm together.

Cold fingers of breeze snake

through the trees.

The first swollen drops explode on the ground,

laying the foundation for the coming torrent.

Hail dances on the street and pecks at the panes,

bringing a touch of ice to the sultry afternoon.

Siamese twins of thunder and lightning

boom and crack as they race by.

Sheets of rain hammer the flowers,

sluice down the gutters to foam through

parched grass.

The storm, quickly expended,

flicks diminishing drops

that sway in the shifting winds.

Blades of sunlight shred

the trailing edge of storm clouds,

summon rain ghosts

to replenish them.

The diamond sparkle of drops

on leaves makes

            prisms as the sun sets.

             When she finished reading no one said a thing, no one clapped, nothing.  Finally, Elena said, “Well, that was impressive.” You could hear everyone let out their breath in a sigh.

             Instead of deflecting the compliment like she would usually do, Clara just sat looking at her notebook like she didn’t recognize her own handwriting.

             I leaned over to her and said, “Wow, that was great, Clara.”

            She looked at me with almost scared eyes and said, “I don’t know where that came from.”

            Before we could say more, Elena was reading another poem and asking us to write again.  I made another list and Clara made another terrific poem.

            It was like that all afternoon; the rest of us were just pretending to make poems, Clara made them.  I could see Elena’s eyes shining as Clara read her words.  When she thanked us for coming and said how well we’d all done, everyone in the room looked at Clara, knowing that something special had happened that day.

           Clara kept staring at her hands like she didn’t recognize them.  She didn’t complain about poetry the way she’d complained about painting that morning.  She seemed almost in a trance.

           As the other workshoppers got up to leave, Clara stayed put.  I could see she was exhausted by what had happened; I was familiar with the feeling since that was what had happened to me when I started painting.

           Elena came and sat down on the coffee table in front of us.  She reached out and touched Clara’s hand and said her name.  

           Clara’s head popped up like she’d had a shock and she said, “I don’t know what happened to me.  I’m so embarrassed.”

          “Embarrassed?” Elena said.  “Why?”

           Clara took a deep breath and said, “I came in here ready to be the worst, like I was this morning.”  I started to deny it, but she cut me off.  “I expected to sit here beside Gail and make fun of myself and the poems everyone wrote.  I expected you to be a silly caricature and for everyone to write poems like greeting cards.  Instead I made a fool of myself writing this stuff like I knew what I was doing.”

           “You didn’t make a fool of yourself, Clara,” I said.

           “No, you didn’t,” Elena said.  “You made poetry.  And that’s what you were supposed to do, what everyone was trying to do today.  Your poems came fully grown, that’s all.”

           I could see tears in Clara’s eyes.  “When we went around the circle to introduce ourselves and tell you a bit about us, nearly everyone had written poems and a few had even been published.  I made a joke that I was only here to keep Gail company and spend a weekend away from Hank doing girl things.  Everyone laughed.  I was happy with that.  And then when you told us to write, I put the pencil on the page, and I couldn’t stop.”

         “That’s what every teacher hopes happens in her class.”

         Clara kept talking like she hadn’t even heard Elena.  “And then when I read what I’d written, it gave me goosebumps.  No one spoke for a long time after I read, not even you, Elena.  I thought it was because what I wrote was so terrible.  And I didn’t want to stop writing.”

          Elena leaned back and a laugh catapulted from her throat.  “Terrible?  Oh, my Lord, Clara, I was speechless, yes, but because what you wrote was so good, so exactly right.”

          Tears were streaming down Clara’s face, and my face, and Elena’s face.  Three menopausal women, all crying over a friend’s triumph.  

        “I hope you keep writing, Clara,” said Elena, as she tucked another of her handmade books in Clara’s hands. “You have a lot to say that people will want to read.”

         Clara whispered, “I don’t think I can stop.”


Tonight I heard a trap snap and looked out to see a chipmunk writhing around on the patio NOT in a trap.  I averted my eyes and an hour later when I went out to see, it was gone.  Hope it just got a bump on the noggin.  I really only want to trap THE RAT.  I put poison pellet weenies in all three rat holes this morning.  Hope that works.  It rained most of today, especially when I needed to be out and about.  It didn't rain when MW and I were working on the forsythia but it sure poured when I got to the ADRC for this afternoon's art lecture.  Then it started to rain when I went out to see if I had a chipmunk to dispose of.  Bah, I'm so over rain.  And if that and a faulty computer aren't enough, I took the old serger that KS gave me last week out of its bag, to discover that the power cord/presser foot in there isn't for that machine.  It's a 1987 serger so I have my doubts that it'll work well but it would have been nice to be able to find out.  Maybe I'll search online for a cord...
--Barbara