Short notes.

Dear "May is my writing month,"

I find it so touching now, this declaration, which I based upon analytics that were (a) too literal minded, and (b) just wrong.

As I write the above, I can hear my friend Kim say, "writing is not typing." And she is correct. Today, for instance, I looked into my notes, and I spent some time thinking about a new poem I think I'm writing. For now, the "writing" means "looking into my notes" and "looking up etymologies" and "chasing down medical details" and "conjuring up connections that may or may not be 'real'" and so forth.

Also: fetching and eating snacks, and doing the laundry, and contemplating a nap which I did not, ultimately, take.

So, okay, "May is my writing month," I guess May is my writing month.

Touche,

htms

//

Dear flaky buttermilk biscuit recipe,

I get it. You're super exacting, and you have "data" about how important buttermilk is, and your technique, of folding the dough into thirds like a letter, and doing that a second time, and letting the dough rest, etcetera and so forth and what not, is, like, science.

So when I skipped that part about letting the dough sit in the refrigerator before I began the folding and the thirds and the ins and outs and what have yous, I should have known. I should have known that you would turn into super buttery hockey puck-shaped baked items, and would not rise to the heavenly heights of my previous flaky buttermilk biscuits. So it's on me. I own that. I own it real hard.

Still, would it have killed you to just rise already, into the afore-mentioned heavenly heights? I feel like you were just being super literal-minded.

It's shaking my baking confidence, is all,

htms

///

Dear even more flowers,

So, I know I have just finished planting the last of the previous more flowers, all hundreds of dollars' worth. And the splendor of these previous more flowers is not lost on me. I like going out and admiring them in the first of the morning cool, and in the late morning light, and even in the mid-afternoon. Evening also.

However, the fact remains that somehow my evening primroses and pincushion flowers of yesteryear have disappeared, perhaps displaced by some especially aggressive lemon balm. And no garden of mine is going to scrape by without evening primrose and pincushion flower, as God is my witness.

Also, I needed to buy all the basil. And one pineapple mint.

Also, just two little creeping thymes, and I swear that is it,

htms

////

Dear productivity,

What are you, anyway?

Here's what I accomplished today:

• clean sheets on the bed
• read the entire New York Times except for the sports and the business section
• made a lovely soup and some subpar biscuits (which were, to be exact, architecturally subpar, but aced the flavor bracket)
• made a good breakfast
• talked to my daughter in Scotland
• fretted over the state of the republic
• gave the historian some helpful feedback on the revision of an essay he's working on
• sat in front of some notes and thought about a poem and so forth
• etcetera

That is nine bullets. I'm calling that productive, I don't care what you say.

I mean it: I just don't care,

htms