Drinking ginger tea and thinking.

I would like to have an earth-shattering argument to make. Right now it doesn't feel that way. I would like, then, to have a modest argument to make. My modest argument feels like pfff. Too small. This is, I'm sure, a matter of perspective.

My cough, which I believe is getting better, feels simultaneously like the last throes of a cold and also like I have the husk of a popcorn kernel stuck in my throat. Neither of which I am enjoying, particularly. Hence the tea.

I love an overcast summer day.

I need some paragraphs, stat. Preferably paragraphs that constitute an argument with a theoretical construct to frame the argument.

Now that I have purchased a gray cardigan, I feel I can probably find my way to those paragraphs. I hope.

I need to check on my tiny potted plants. They are too tiny, really. They dry out in a day, which means you've got to remember to water them or they're goners. I just replanted them yesterday. I am hopeful--hopeful that they'll thrive, and hopeful that I won't forget them.

Luckily, there is leftover panzanella. I could just read a couple of chapters of my spy novel.

"A compositionist walks into the curricular room, a room in the house of English Studies."

Plant this sentence in a small pot, water it, maybe it will grow. 

Writing writing writing writing writing: a report.

Here are a bunch of things I would rather do than write, if I am to judge by my performance today:

1.  read the rest of an Irish detective novel that I started last night.

2.  find the book I'm supposed to be reading for my reading group.

3.  take a tiny nap.

4.  check my e-mail and all the blogs and aggregators a truly shocking number of times.

5.  check when The Closer and Trust Me are going to be on tonight.

6.  Twitter.

However:  I did finally bring myself to do it.  I circled around it first by making a revision agenda: what poems in the manuscript are pretty close to finished, what ones are in need of a stiff revision, what ones still need to be fleshed out quite a bit.  Then, I started in on one of them, making notes and looking at the feedback my group gave me, etc. etc.  Also some notes for a new poem or so.  Even the detective novel ended up feeling like not a waste of my time--something about the writing in it, and the way sex and death and curiosity and persistence intertwined in its plot, kept me going while I wrote and wrote and wrote.