10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4….

I am in such a weird place right now. I have been staying up late, getting up late, and the daylight is shortening, and every day is starting to blend into the next. I have genuine trouble remembering what day of the week it is, which challenge day I’m on, or what I am supposed to be doing. I feel distressed and stressed by this lack of grounding. It’s a good thing I only have three days left. I really need more sleep again, and fewer things on my to-do list.

Daily Challenges

Stretching	✓
1SE	✓
Intimate Time	✓
Cooking	Today’s Menu: I ate leftover pastry from yesterday, along with some fruit, for breakfast; Guy went out to lunch with a friend at Cantina Leña and brought home Cadillac nachos for me, which isn’t strictly to plan; I suppose we could have compensated by not having pizza for dinner, but we didn’t. Pizza was delicious.
Reading (Poetry)	“I Have Lived My Whole Life in a Painting Called Paradise” by Diane Seuss tells the story of life inside a painting. It is from a collection called Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl, a title which I love. Her imagery is phenomenal, and I particularly like the way she broke up certain phrases by starting a new line or stanza.
Reading (Fiction)	I have 69 pages remaining in The Poisonwood Bible (cue Beavis & Butthole snickering.)
Reading (Nonfiction)	I consumed nothing in the way of nonfiction today, save briefly reading about ghazals and villanelles wondering if the poem of the day is one of those (it isn’t.)
Music	New challenge: play music for each of the remaining three days of the month. (This should happen naturally as part of the songwriting challenge, and my challenge to record “Ain’t No Sunshine” with Guy.)
Postcard Poem	I will miss these social justice puppies, but I hope they’ll find good homes! I have not done an acrostic poem since third grade. I generally find them juvenile and unimaginative. So I challenged myself to write one, and try not to make it those things. It also works as an anagram: Dancing: Innumerable Vibrations Igniting Nonstop Explosions – Sarah Reebs 10/28/2019
Trash Pickup	Today I never went on a walk with Howie. Tomorrow.

Today’s Challenges

Monday night is dance class night! My body is still pretty angry with me, especially my shoulders. My personal dance challenge: what if I had no arms? I felt okay during the warmup and the first exercise, but during my dance (fortunately I was up first) I felt my back starting to get really tight, so I called it a night. I didn’t go home, though, I hung out to watch my classmates dance; that’s an improvement over last week, when I was too bummed even to sit and watch. Anyway, I have class again tomorrow night, and Thursday, so I need to take it as easy as I can.

Mary Berry’s Victoria sandwich cake is an absolute breeze. I didn’t have self-rising flour (not a close enough reading of the recipe) so I upped the baking powder, and I just hope it turns out tasting okay. My baking powder is expired (isn’t everyone’s?) but the cakes seemed to rise just fine, if not maybe a tad too much. They smell….like cake. I still need to put the jam (which I didn’t make myself, in part because I’m busy but also because I couldn’t find jam sugar, and I didn’t bother to look up alternatives) and buttercream (extra from the candy corn cakes) between the two layers. Here’s a photo, but they’re really nothing to look at just yet:

I’ll post a photo of the final product tomorrow, before we devour it in celebration of a birthday.

I had hoped to record something today, but then….I didn’t. I’m not really sure where the day went, because I don’t feel like I did anything, even though that is objectively not true. We did meal planning, and I went grocery shopping, and I did all the things listed above, plus I relaxed and watched a little TV with Guy. I’m just feeling frustrated because I didn’t do everything, again. I am looking forward to having my regular life back….I guess I’ll have to wait until December for that, since NaNoWriMo is next. At least it will be a change!

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Featured image by Elisa Riva on Pixabay

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