Hitting the ground

After cabin fever started getting to me, the last two weeksI’ve been going out, twice last week and four times this week.  I actually overdid it, slowing down and actually reversing the healing process of my badly sprained ankle. I’ll try to take it easy for the weekend, before my always strenuous Monday.  I’m hoping to get back the healing I lost.  Yesterday, it really hurt a lot again. Another reason I went out so much this week is that I wanted to get a number of errands and appointments done before snow falls.  I can’t get on an ordinary snow boot over my lace-up ankle support boot.  All I can wear over Das Boot are bedroom slippers and a pair of sneakers where I modified the left one so it can go on over the therapeutic object. 

We’re supposed to finally get more snow than a dusting tha tvanishes within an hour – supposed to fall on us this weekend.  We’ll see. This has been a mild rainy season so far, with an occasional quite cold day.  Today is still in the middle to high 30’s, but it has been cold enough at night for Wellfleet Bay to begin to freeze in the marshes.  The ponds haven’t frozen yet.  It’s spotty with the vegetable beds. The weathermen say we might lose power this weekend on the OuterCape where high winds and high tides are forecast.

I have filled my June poetry workshop.  Somebody already dropped out and my first alternate has joined the group.  I’m finished with reading mss. for that.  If any more come in after it has been posted on FB and on my website. I won’t read them but will just remind the poet that the workshop is now closed. I’m working with the accepted poets to answer transportation questions and help them find lodging here they can afford. 

However, I now have 150 mss to read for the two poetry contests I’m judging.  One is theRegional Jose Gouveia WOMR contest; the other is the national. one  I’m starting with the regional entries.  I hope to get them judged this weekend. Then on MLK Day I can start on the national entries, a bigger pile. So far in reading the regional entries, some are excellent and some are doggerel. And some are okay but not superior. The first two days I read them, I put all the rejects in one pile, then the entries that have a chance in the other pile.  This weekend I’ll go through the better pile probably at least twice.

Woody is doing what I did two years ago: going through all his books to see which ones he will never reread or read and those that are still valuable to him.  The discards all go to the library sale, held in July and again in August to raise funds for the Wellfleet public library. In the meantime, they go into storage.

The seed ordering is done – that is, until notices come from one of the seed sources saying they are out of some item.  That happens every year.  I keep a couple of catalogs around from places I only order when some other order fails. I will be starting the perennials orders next week, although most of those orders have  to wait until we are way into spring. 

Before I started on the first pile of mss for WOMR, I had enough time to write and rewrite three poems. Sunday we’ll watch the Conference games --if we still have power and cable. It’s going to be very hard for thePats to beat the Chiefs.  Doing it atGillette was a lot easier than winning at Arrowhead.  They have a poor record playing there. 

We had supper with acquaintances whose cat was in heat.  I petted her and Mingus woke me in the middle of the night nuzzling my hand.  Guess her pheromones rubbed on me.