Real Human Girl-ing

[mallorys_camera]

This was the day I red-circled on my calendar: TODAY you will become a real human girl again!!

I made a To-Do list!

And I am checking items off my To-Do list. Ping! Ping! Ping!

But I'm seriously thinking, Being a real human girl is overrated, 'cause I can't say I actually want to do any of the things on my To-Do list, nor would the consequences be particularly severe if I blew them all off, if I did what I actually want to do, which is to sit by a window with my eyes slightly unfocused.

The garden is the only To-Do with a time stamp on it.

But I already murdered a bunch of marigolds and strawberry plants by putting them in the ground way too early, and frost is forecast for tonight. True, I could always weed and rake up mulch, but it's like 47° out there, cold, so I don't want to.

Supposed to warm up by Thursday.

I'll garden then.

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Real-life Daria texted me yesterday to gush over Chapter 6 of the Work in Progress.

I had forgotten all about the Work in Progress!

Even though I took the Schlock job to earn enough cash to give me some time to work on it without worrying about money.

After I talked to real-life Daria, I took out the manuscript and stared at it.

The manuscript said nothing to me.

Words on a page. As if there aren't enough pages with words on them already.

So, I put it away & went for a walk.

###

Malloy Road, the road behind my house, goes up a hill that the property developers around here have named Harrier Ridge. (I see no evidence that anyone ever called it "Harrier Ridge" before the Age of McMansions.) As recently as five years ago, this was all dairy farms and the cornfields that fed the cows during the long upstate New York winters, but now there are a dozen or so of the ugliest fuckin' houses you have ever seen on that hill, all with a price tag of $799,000 according to Zillow. It's amazing to me that people will spend that kind of money to live in Wallkill in a shit-ugly house, but apparently, they will.

The newish housing on top of the hill actually made an effort to blend in with the countryside, with cunning little water features and ornamental coppices of weeping cherry. These houses were constructed 15 years ago when property developers had better taste.

There are still a number of the old farmhouses up there, too, and a handful of farms—though many of those have branched out beyond dairy cattle into other livestock. The people at the upper end of Malloy Road keep llamas!