The Method, Please

I've discovered my perfect work method. Wake up, coffee, read. Between 8 and 9, position self on too-high crisp, fluffy white bed with matching white Notebook. Write steadily all morning (for me, about one page, unspaced 12 font Times). Oh, and this helps:

A window-perfect, gauzy fog, rain.

If you follow this method faithfully, you will end up with a ten page paper (and growing), and all without delving into the cigarettes or eating all the cashews in the house (note: I do not smoke, and never will because of this winter. But sometimes the wrist-slitting intensity of writing makes me want to really bad. As for the cashews? They're why I've taken up Pilates. Now back to our regularly scheduled program).

Results not guaranteed for anyone without an Anna brain. You blessed, blessed people, of whom I am very envious because surely you do not like climb the stairs a dozen times acting like different characters (I was running stairs. I needed something to make it interesting. So far I have climbed as Scarlett O'Hara, Miss Minchin, the ubiquitous gullible person that climbs into the attic and gets eaten by the monster in countless horror films, and Anne getting married in Anne's House of Dreams. I think I'm ten years old . . . don't tell college).

Anyway. Write all morning. Editing and physical tasks in the afternoon. It's a needed balance. You've no idea how much I enjoy mopping the floor and cooking supper after I've forced myself to sit and work. And you've no idea how empty the mopping and cooking can seem without the blood-sweat-tears thinking work.

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In other news, I just picked the first tomato from our tomato plants and I am going to New Mexico tomorrow.

(Left the Sweet Dog at a bona fide boarding place. Broke my heart to leave the stinky lug of shedding hair. If it's this bad with an outdoor pet, how much harder to leave a kid in day care . . .)

I'm excited because from what I've read, Santa Fe is all about art, history, outdoor-sy stuff, and good food. Wonderful! I'll be sure to post photos on return.

Also of interest: I read an article in yesterday's paper about how you can travel around Europe living at people's farms and working for room and board and this is what I want to do. I want to go to Switzerland and live like Heidi.

But first, one more year of school. And my but I'll be surrounded by such good people. For this, I'm thankful.