Thursday, September 06, 2007

Had some trouble sleeping last night. My brain got locked up again in a circular train of thought. I tried a lot of different things, even counting sheep, which actually worked pretty well for me when I was a kid. It didn't seem to help last night--I tried to picture the sheep as clearly as possible, from the slight aura of brown dirt on their wool to their leathery eyelids over black eyes. But I couldn't stop giving them simple cartoon legs.

I swear Victoria the cat helped me eventually get to sleep at around 8am. She was sleeping in my closet, and all of a sudden I had this extremely clear vision of a number of mice scrabbling about one another; I saw tiny pink legs struggling for purchase on the small white fur backs of other mice, pink tails whipping about. And the whole vision was upside down, like a reflection on a camera lens. I honestly think Victoria lent me her dream when she saw my brain couldn't come up with one. I slept until noon.

No maids to-day. It's a different sort of Thursday--the new maids only come once a fortnight. It was weird firing Margo, the old maid, who'd been the maid here and at my parents' house when I lived there. She'd been cleaning my room for maybe a decade, and she never did a very good job. No amount of years could teach her to put things back where she found them, or to treat delicate items carefully. I had to hide things from her. But I guess when you've known someone for so long, firing them is bound to be awkward. Which is probably why the duty was foisted on me.

I wrote another six hundred words on that short story yesterday. I'm still not exactly sure how I'm doing, but I'll keep at it.

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