Circumlocution

Do you know about avoidance writing? Last week I started writing some dumb thing that will probably never see the light of day.  I had intended to finish the meeting minutes for our neighborhood association meeting, and then started writing something else because I’d rather do almost anything than write, revise, and proofread meeting minutes. 

That was last Sunday, a picture-perfect day. Now it’s Sunday again, and raining. We have had summery sunny weather for over a week, and now it’s going to rain for a few days but the warm temperatures look likely to continue for another week or so. Maybe we have seen the last of the cold. Between the sustained warmth and the rain, it’s wildly green outside, overgrown and almost tropical. This is what I like about Maryland. It’s crisp New England one day and lush Louisiana bayou the next. Maryland is like a box of chocolates.  You never know what you’re gonna get. Never a dull moment in the Free State, I tell you what. 

I did eventually finish those meeting minutes, slowly and reluctantly and with the worst possible attitude toward the whole endeavor. But I’m going to judge myself by results not attitude. The minutes are done, and they’re as good as they’re going to be. Never mind my sighing and muttering to myself like a surly teenager. 

*****

It’s going to be a busy week, work-wise and at home because my mom is here visiting. My son is also coming home this week and although I can’t wait to have him back at home, I’m a little shook at the idea of all his stuff arriving here and joining all of my mom’s stuff (she owns the largest suitcase I have ever seen, and she packs it full to bursting when she comes here, and then she wears the same three outfits on repeat all week and oh my gosh, who am I to talk). This house is small, and neatness is key in a small house, especially a house that contains a person as tightly wound as I am. But it’s good to have a few days of chaos, honestly. It forces me to go with the flow, which is something that I am not very good at. I like for things to be the way I think they’re supposed to be and for things to happen the way I think they’re supposed to happen. It’s good to have the occasional reminder that I can’t control everything. 

*****

I finished those dumb meeting minutes just in time for today, the first Tuesday of the month, which means it’s time for another monthly meeting. Now (in addition to a whole new set of meeting minutes, of course) I have to think about what else I want to put out on this blog, because I do appear to have a small but loyal reading public, and I can’t keep writing about the weather and household routines and my personal neuroses. Although who knows? Maybe that's why people show up here. 

Yesterday, I started writing about the book I’m reading now, which is Dickens’ Little Dorrit. I can already foresee what’s going to happen between young Amy Dorrit and Mr. Arthur Clennam, and I can guess the secret that Mrs. Clennam is keeping from her son, but I don’t yet know HOW all of this is going to shake out, and that’s what is so great about reading Dickens novels. This is going to be my year of Dickens. Little Dorrit is shaping up to be almost as good as David Copperfield; and reading Dickens will also give me something good to write about when I’m avoiding this month’s meeting minutes.