I am doing very well with my list today.
I have managed to get a very long way down it and have hardly added anything new at all.
Mostly I have done the Advent calendars, because that is the biggest job on the list. Indeed, it is so big that I have had to break it down into little bits for listing purposes, in order that I actually have some satisfactory achievements. To have written: Do The Advent Calendars would have taken me weeks and weeks to get it crossed off, and so I haven’t done that. There is no point in having an impossibly unattainable goal. Instead I have written manageable things, like: Paint The Snow. This would make my list completely incomprehensible if it were to be discovered in a hundred years’ time by some investigative archaeologist, but gives me a target which I have got some small hope of spearing.
The problem is that there are loads of them and so every addition has got to be done loads of times. I like doing them but would like it more if I didn’t have anything else to do.
Still, I am managing very nicely, despite a late start this morning. All of my dreams were tranquil and undisturbing, with the result that I didn’t wake up until ten o’clock, and then felt cross with myself for wasting my morning.
Partly this was because I was late to bed last night. I stopped working at half past eleven, but alarmed by ominous predictions of an incoming cold snap, I went out to the camper van to let the water out of it. This took ages because it needed a screwdriver, which Mark told me was awaiting me under the doormat beside the heater, but it wasn’t, so I had to go back home again, much to the puzzlement of the dogs, who were very pleased to be having such a prolonged midnight excursion, and who galloped up and down the pavement sticking their noses underneath the outflow of water and sneezing.
When I took them out again this morning I discovered, rather to my horror, a large dead rat in the shed. It had clearly been murdered by a passing cat, since it did not appear that anything in the shed had fallen on its head, and I had to get a shovel and remove it to the dustbin. I covered the remaining liquid unpleasantness with sawdust and resolved to sweep it up later, which of course I completely forgot to do. I will have to remember before Mark comes home and walks it all over the house.
There are a lot of rats in Windermere. I do wish that cats didn’t need so much door-opening. They are very efficient rat-vanquishers.
We had a very cheery walk, crisp and sunny and fresh, although with far too much stopping and chatting to be got out of the way speedily, and it was lunchtime before I came home and dashed about to peg the washing in the yard whilst there was still some hope of it drying. Of course it didn’t dry, because it is November, and then I forgot about that as well, and had to dash about again later, bringing it in to drape over the stove after it had gone dark when I was already late for work.
After the washing I had a happy half an hour chatting with my story-writing friend on the computer thing, and then I am very pleased to announce that I did the first of my Christmas shopping. I went into the village and bought a couple of Christmas presents. This list is making me very virtuous indeed. I can hardly believe how well-organised I have become. It is only November and already I have done Christmas Things.
I have not finished the Advent calendars, though. They are the urgentest Christmas Thing of all. I rushed back home and spent the rest of the afternoon peacefully absorbed in painting.
I am making good headway, although I am going to slow myself down a bit. My friend and I have resolved that we will have some more of our current stories to talk about next week when we meet up for our computer chatting. I have promised that I will send her some by Sunday.
I will have to add it to the list.
