Speed LJ

Am I constitutionally capable of doing this quickly?

1. The reading filled me with energy. I read after Sally, who is writing a series of funny, wrenching pieces about her father's intense illness, and if I hadn't known that I had to read, I would have been crying. Almost was, anyway. It felt so good to get a piece of the new novel out in the air, and to get response back that let me know that people were getting it.


2. I made a lasagna (from scratch! with all of the vegetables from my love's garden! started the sauce the day before!), pulled it out of the oven all beautiful and bubbling and golden in its big glass pan and set it on the stove, went into the bedroom to change -- it was half an hour before I was getting picked up for the reading. I was naked when I heard the explosion, ran into the kitchen, and the pan (which I had set on a hot burner), had literally exploded. There were shards of glass everywhere, and the lasagna itself was still burning and sinking down through the burner. I reached from my mop handle -- glass stuck to the handle with tomato sauce. Looked down -- hunks of glass in my onions in the hanging basket. Much glass in the stove, lasagna starting to drip down the front of the over. Glass all over the vacuum, all over the floor, tiny cuts in my hands when I touched a surface. Eeeek. Didn't get it cleaned up until after midnight, but eventually did. Luckily, Sally had tons of salad and shrimp and Janet brought bean salad, so Toni and Janet from Philadelphia -- and the rest of us -- were fed.


3. I have a beautiful new, bright red, three wheel bike, with a huge white basket in the back and pedal brakes. It's an early birthday present -- I'm turning forty-five on October 17 -- since I was totally shaky getting on and off my old bike (and just got a minor but scary bite from a lunging dog when I rode by.) It is miraculous. I rode all the way to Florence yesterday. I can bring home heavy bags of catfood from the store, no problem. It makes me feel adventurous.


4. My parents cut down the desert willow in front of their house that my grandmother always loved because it was old and they were worried about it causing damage in winds from Hurricane Rita. They say it needed to be cut down anyway. It's such a small thing in the context of so much loss. My grandmother would sit on the couch in the living room in front of the enormous window and look over the porch at the tree, and down the lane, to see whose truck or car was going by on the road.