I was supposed to accomplish two things today. I was supposed to finish re-staining the new-to-me/used cabinets going in my utility room, and clean out my car. I made it through half of one of those (the cabinets) before I got sidetracked on a project that I had to put aside at 9:45 this evening, so that my eyes can relax and my back can stretch out. My daughter is preparing for a trip to California, to some hip internet gaming sort of gathering that is just not aimed at my demographic, and she asked me for help putting together an outfit to wear to the big event. Apparently it's going to be held in the same building (or at least the same complex?) as the Academy Awards, so she decided rather than going in the classic uniform of a gamer nerd (pants and the t-shirt of whichever group is hosting the event), she is going to step up her game. She wanted to wear a dress, joking a couple times to me that she's prepping to go to the Oscars. She went to a thrift store and got a simple little black dress, and then picked out some bright green spandex and fabric paint. Once I finish sewing in the neon green gussets to make the dress resemble a classic 1980s cheerleader costume (at least the ones I remember from high school), she is going to paint the logo of the group on the front of the bodice, with her handmade stencil. I must have convinced her that I could accomplish exactly what she envisioned for the outfit, because she totally trusted me to cut up the dress and have at it. After eight or nine hours of carefully pinning and cutting, and stitching painstakingly slowly, I think I might have pulled it out. All I have left on my end is hemming the green sections. The paint will be up to her tomorrow.
I started the first round of rewrites on my flash fiction from last month. Not sure it will still be called the Jade Slipper Suite when it is all said and done, but that theme will still be there. It already has twice as much detail, and the whole sequence has changed. I think it will feel much more coherent. I just need to force myself to focus on it, and not get distracted by the new story that started dancing in my head this afternoon. I just made a few notes for the new character, and asked her to wait her turn. I'll just do more research on Austrian history, and that ought to keep me lumbering forward in jade slippers.
Mr SP/X did a somewhat mediocre job of communicating his schedule to me today, and I didn't quite get the message that he wouldn't be home when he said he would. He was hours later than he had predicted, and his dinner sat cold on the stove. I felt myself getting a full head of steam about the failure to communicate, but then I caught myself and shook out of it. This is an adjustment I need to make and make quickly. He's only going to be here another couple weeks, and really, he isn't answerable to me for anything anymore, not even dinner. In two weeks, it won't matter whether I can make heads or tails of what his texts say. They're going away when he does. It won't be my job to plan around him. It won't be my business where he is in relation to me anymore. After almost three decades of scheduling around him and his whereabouts, it's going to be a very difficult adjustment indeed. Time to learn to plan around my own bad self.
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