Poem for Thursday

A Winter Morning
By Ted Kooser

A farmhouse window far back from the highway
speaks to the darkness in a small, sure voice.
Against this stillness, only a kettle's whisper,
and against the starry cold, one small blue ring of flame.

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Short, though perfect, poem because this must be a short entry too. I was crazed today; except for a phone conversation that replaced going out to lunch with someone I really wanted to see, I spent the last day of Chanukah doing things that absolutely had to be done. Some of them were fun, like finishing my fic on my Palm while waiting for my older son at the bus stop (it's over 4000 words, though some of those don't really count, and way too much dialogue, but there are parts of it I really like). Some of them were not fun, like reloading everything on said Palm when it decided to have a fatal error and crash and demand to be reset. Some of them sucked, like needing to get Dell on the phone and not doing so, and not getting one word of work done though I had not officially said I couldn't work today.

And some of them were charming, like the holiday concert at school (though middle school intermediate band playing "In the Hall Of The Mountain King" is only a small step up from my cats meowling along to Andrew Lloyd Webber, heh). The chorus sang six songs, including an absolutely lovely version of "Oseh Shalom" and concluding with a patriotic medley that said made him think of a Bob Roberts song, but at the end the chorus teacher got the audience to sing "My Country Tis Of Thee" while the chorus harmonized with different lyrics and it was quite nice. The orchestra, jazz ensemble and band were widely varied in skill and repertoire but there were some excellent soloists and an eighth grade pianist who plays at Peabody when she's not in middle school with my son. There was also a bake sale for which we brought cookies and where we ate overpriced but good brownies.

So I still owe a bazillion comments, have not done any drabbling at all this week and have not even looked at fic communities because I had to finish my own first. I have received several wonderful holiday cards, am so grateful and happy to have them, am not going to say from whom because when anyone says they got one from me I become terrified that someone else will be upset that I didn't send one to her...I did not dare do one of those "tell me your address and I'll send you a card" polls because if everyone actually answered it, I could have afforded neither the cards nor the stamps, but I did try to send one to everyone I expected to send one to me, plus a couple of people I consider RL friends even though I mostly know them from here, which consists of less than 1/20th of my friends list. Put that on your list of "more reasons sucks!" if you wish!

ETA: I lied. I decided to look at the challenges for the drabble communities this week in case sleeping on them I should wake with an idea, and the next thing I knew, had made me write "Tokens", mostly because a small bit of the idea already appears in my fic which won't be posted for ten days, and I wanted to make sure no one else posted something like it first!

Tomorrow is my early morning because the hubby has to be at work early for a phone conference every Thursday. I shall drive younger son to school instead of walking because it is supposed to be Damn Cold. Then I believe I will be seeing later in the morning for a much-postponed lunch. Are we actually going to eat out, my sweet, or stay home and watch porn movies? I thought about taping Lost, but figured that if I was really meant to watch it I would have been home for the rerun, and we did get home in time for all but five minutes of The West Wing which made me cry twice even though I was doing twelve other things while it was on. Martin Sheen can have his Emmy nomination for the season, and I know this is a very, very unpopular opinion among many of the slashers on my friends list but Josh so needs to get his crap together and go grovel to Donna so they can get ON with it already. I mean, I won't complain if he ends up doing it with Jimmy Smits' character instead, since the love is obviously there, but in realistic TV shipping, it's way past time for the Josh/Donna fix.


When the chorus finished singing, they all sat down on the steps to the stage while the orchestra played. After awhile they started to look a little bored...