behindtheax

basement guy blues

I was looking out my window the other day and I couldn’t help thinking that I was looking into a giant snow globe that someone had just giving a mighty shake and sat down. Huge white flakes were falling slowly and vertically without anything but themselves to give them direction. No wind to rush them. No breeze to send them from their perpendicular path with the ground. It was very pretty.

The basement is starting to take shape. The guy that is doing it is very nice but I can’t seem to function at all when there is someone in my house, even if he is in my basement and I seldom see him. It throws my routine off, not that I have much of one but I am always conscious of him down there and so I tip toe around my house like I don’t belong, unable to concentrate on any one task? I can’t do my laundry and I can’t vacuum because he had to remove the central vac and I can’t even do my exercise routine because what if he needs something when I am in the middle of it?? Yesterday I just decided to escape the house for a bit and ended up wandering the streets like some lost soul and finally ended up in the library. I borrowed three books –Atonement by Ian McEwan, Stones by Timothy Findley and Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordon. (Book ten of the wheel of time series) – after just reading over two thousand pages of another fantasy series I have no idea why I borrowed this one and to be truthful I don’t even know if I had read this one or not?? When a fantasy series get too long it get very confusing for me and I can’t remember what book I left off at. There should be a law, I do declare, that the maximum books to any series should never pass seven and should preferable stop at three like The Lord of The Rings. I need closure man!!

Last night I read two of the short stories from Stones. One was called Real Life Writes Real Bad and the other was called Stones – They are my first of Timothy Findley and now I want to read more of his. He certainly knows how to lead you into a story and keep you there. It also had me thinking for the first time that I want to start writing short stories about my mother (or a character very similar to her). I always thought it would be too hard to capture her but I am thinking about three particular moments that with the proper garnish could make one lengthy short story or three smaller ones. Two of the events I wasn’t around for, just heard these stories from her friend and from my dad. Small but compelling events from the 1950’s, early 60’s. I don’t know - I just want to go back there, walk beside her for a while, try to make my memory of her somewhat whole. I have all these smaller pieces but nothing really solid. I would like to give my girls a little glimpse of their grandmother - a day in her life - a look back?

posted by mary j. @ 1:42 PM