Monday Gray Sky

66º ~ nope, not a typo, it's 9:00 a.m. and 66º on 11/22.  We are having a weird warmup for a few days before Thanksgiving, then temps plummet to the 40's ~ trees, sky, yard,  all a mess of gray & brown

Today, I have a list as long as my arm of things that need to be done, errands to run, work that awaits, etc.  However, I did make sure that I put my butt in the chair, as many of my past instructors admonished me to do.  As I've set a goal of submitting poems one way or another on Mondays, that's what I did while in the chair.  The sky is not helping in any inspirational sense.

The view from my window today.

With every ounce of will I have in my reserves at this point in the semester, I resisted the urge to curl up in bed with a book and the cats and wait for the forecasted rain (the humidity is insane!).  Instead, I did submit a group of five poems to three journals, all with online submission formats, one which charged $1.50, a charge I was more than willing to pay.  I must confess, Dear Reader, that I had also planned to submit to one more journal but upon discovering that they still use snail mail, I put it aside for now.  No time today.  I know that this means one less chance of an acceptance, but sometimes that's the trade off.

As for curling up in bed, I must thank my former student, L. C., who sent around the 15 authors meme on Facebook last week.  I'd pretty much escaped it until then, but finally used it to avoid grading.  My list is less important than L. C.'s.  L.C. is a fiction writer so her list was mostly novelists, but she was missing Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, so I urged her to read it and see if it didn't land in the top somewhere.  With that urging, I pulled out my copy and have spent my last hour before sleep re-reading this true masterpiece.  Such a delight.  Reminding me that most of what's on TV is crap, and most of what's in the books on my shelves is amazing & awesome.  Thanks, L. C.  I hope you come to love Ruth and her story as much as I do.