198: Friday is Plaid + Stripes

I could fill my rooms with these simple designs--the twiggy browns, the long lines of sky and horizon.

Currently:
- Last night I stayed up late finishing an advance reader's copy of The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey, a novel in which the protagonist descends into Alzheimer's. I found my heart thickening, my eyes stinging in those last forty pages, when the character's speech and patterns mimic so much of my grandfather's in his last days--the unfounded accusations, the absurd comments.
- Our shower pipes froze. Again. Rumor has it Minnesota is breaking some records with those negative temperatures, and I believe it. Outdoors is painful these days. We're attempting to fix it ourselves this go-round, so yesterday and this morning I took a bath, which is utterly calming (especially if you have the right bath suds) and made me feel like a little kid again. I don't think I've taken a bath for the actual cleaning in a great long while. Unfortunately, our attempts failed and the plumbers are quite busy today, but come tomorrow, showers will be the norm again.
- The pipes freezing, the dumping of snow, the negative temperatures, this is all very helpful in my anticipation of next week's Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Classes begin again at the university, and I have to clean up my syllabus, collect textbooks for my own coursework and whatnot, but that nervousness at missing out on this week will fade rather rapidly when my days are filled with t-shirts, sandy beaches, and the horizon divided by a thin blue line (instead of that thin white line).
- This song, introduced to us by Shari.


Thanks for color week! It was good to celebrate the colors in winter, especially when outdoors is so cold and gray.

Stay warm this weekend. xo