Minutae

-Typing with acrylic nails on is a challenge, but much less of one than I thought it would be.
-Having guests in my home is awesome -- I love how conducive the space is to sitting down and talking.
-Having someone come by and offer to maintain my yard every other day, after being met with refusal upon refusal, is somewhat less awesome.
-I found forks! And a drawer I didn't know that I had.
-Smoking cloves nearly exclusively has not only made me cut back on how much I smoke, it also makes the experience more pleasurable.
-I need to figure out what the hell I'm going to write about next month. I'm thinking about weaving together different experiences characters have in coming to figure out how institutionalized education works, and how they come to be educated, or not.
-The hundred words thing has fallen by the wayside in favor of writing something, anything, as long as it exceeds one hundred words, or is prep work for November's novel.
-That said, I made an attempt at the hundred words tonight and failed miserably, but I don't have the heart to cut it down.
It is as follows:

She was averaging two steps per minute – I couldn't help but count. The thud of the walker, then a tiny step. Moments later, another thud followed by another step. She had a tool belt attached to that grey implement – a brilliant idea, she had thought. Sitting down to dinner, she lifts the fork, slowly, tentatively, stabbing at the mass of mushy food on her plate, slipping about, dropping more than she eats. After thirty minutes, and hardly more than three bites, she struggles to rise. Then the thud-thump of walker and slipper, as she makes her way to the den, to watch the Braves. Baseball is a religion, you know. I clear the table and wash the plate, and wonder on my hands and knees where yet another fork has wandered off to, crawling around the dining room.

But after the Braves, after I'd gone home, and after numerous thud-thunks later, she made her way into the kitchen, the forks from more than a weeks worth of dinners tucked away in her tool belt, mustered the strength to stand long enough to wash and dry them all, then wrap them in numerous layers of paper towels, and tuck them away in a drawer that I'd never noticed.

Tonight, I found that drawer, and all the old utensils, unwrapped them and integrated them into the hodge-podge of things in my cutlery drawer, and the house feels a bit more a home for her and my effort.