Some lovely mail arrived yesterday afternoon. Author copies always ship early; the book is still available for pre-order from Paraclete Press and wherever fine books are sold, including Bookshop (NB: affiliate link).
Today: doing some minor sweeping and other cleaning, as well as having walked and bathed the dog, who went wading in a mud puddle on our walk. She is now unhappily in her crate, where she will stay until I've washed my hair.
I put my Camellia dress back on for these morning activities, but I'm about to bathe and change, and will most likely wear my rose-patterned linen dress for a change of pace, as well as coolness. We walked early this morning, but already the air was swampy and heavy, with all the last spring freshness gone. Last night a line of thunderstorms moved through --- poor Dora cowering and refusing to go outside last thing before I put her to bed --- and the gardens got good and soaked, which is a plus. BUT you know it's summer when rain sweeps through and leaves things: wet. Not cooler, not refreshed. Just wet.
The day's plan: some emailing and research for the poetry job, then I hope some writing. I've been playing with Sapphics, a form I've never been able to do well, though as I've been concentrating on exercises in metrical precision over the last few months, I find I'm far more able to stay on top of its demands: a quatrain, 3 lines of which are 11 syllables consisting of two trochees, a dactyl, and two more trochees; then a fourth line that's a dactyl and a trochee. I used just to think, eh, that's too hard. But suddenly it's not so hard.
THEN my friend is coming over, and we're going to make quiche and drink wine and hang out.
OK, bathed and dressed, with big wet-hair splotches on my dress:
Going for one of my "3" slots in my July 4/3 Challenge with, as predicted, the very old thrifted rose-pattern linen dress with blue EVA Birks (again, because easy).
Better let Dora out of her crate, now that she's semi-not-soaking-wet.