Muddling through the dullness

A whole week since I've posted! I must have been doing something pretty amazing to distract me from my favorite form of recreational writing, but I'd be hard pressed to explain what. I've been walking a little, writing a lot, complaining about the rainy gray weather. Walked in the cemetery and saw eastern bluebirds. Went to Columbus to see the musical Rent. Read Kate Atkinson's Transcription, a novel I'll now never be able to read again without knowing what's waiting at the end (but it's well worth reading so go ahead). I guess that's one of the hazards of being on sabbatical: most of my days are too dull to interest anyone other than myself.

But even while muddling through the dull middle of a sabbatical project I can find a few bright spots. I spent most of last week in Jackson, for instance, but when I came home Sunday afternoon I was delighted to find my daffodils and crocuses blooming and, even more surprisingly, two indoor plants producing spectacular blossoms: upstairs, a potted geranium that has kept blooming on and off all winter, and downstairs, a hibiscus plant left behind by a retired colleague who couldn't take it with her when she moved to Minnesota. It's kind of unusual to see hibiscus blossoms in the basement in the early spring chill, so that spot of color has been cheering me immensely.

Outside below the bird-feeders I see a towhee, filling the black-baked bird gap left behind by the absence of juncos. The resident woodsman left a pile of firewood on the porch which has served as an attractive playground for chipmunks--but I've seen and heard no mice or signs of mice in the house, hurrah. A female cardinal keeps trying to pick a fight with the bird she sees reflected in the picture window. The buckeyes and rhododendrons are budding out and the grass is greening up, and before you know it I'll be needing to get out the mower.

But first I'll need to sit down and write some more. Who wants to watch me write? Moments of drama are few and fairly subtle; today, for instance, I restored the bulk of a paragraph that I'd deleted in full last week. It just doesn't get any more exciting than this, folks. I can go on like this all day.