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Thank you and goodbye…to the boot

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Since breaking my ankle on March 9, I have been wearing an orthopedic boot. Today, I was allowed to take the damn thing off — for good! The break in the fibula is healed. The injury to the talus (or talar dome) is healing and doesn’t need the boot any longer. I’m supposed to take it easy, put my foot up when I can, take Ibuprofen and use ice at the end of the day…oh, and go slow in getting back at the gym. Thank you, boot, for the help, but I will no longer be requiring your services.

On the novel, as of this morning, 6,619 words.  (Thank you, broken ankle, for slowing me down and helping me to finish PEARL’S ALCHEMY and start something new. But I will no longer be requiring your services.)

Progress on all fronts.

Skirt or Skirts?

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I am — honestly — in the last stages of the novel revision, and one of the picky things I worried over today was “skirts or skirt,” as in:

With a flounce of her red skirt (skirts?) beneath her cloak that suggested the young woman she would become in a few short years…

 

My friend Priscilla says this isn’t linguistic — did the Puritans wear skirts (multiple) like Victorians, or just one skirt? Look at pictures, she told me. I finally decided on skirt. I worked about 6 hours today, not all of it on this decision, I promise you — a record for broken-ankle me. I cleaned up 102 pages!

Meanwhile, the prompt for Day 7, over at POETRYisEVERYTHING has to do with Port Townsend and Art Deco lampshades. I imagine that Chris recently visited PT. It seems fair that my poem originates with what I’ve been visiting. And it is in the same spirit — old fashioned.

So here goes.

To Skirt

Here on the skirts of the argument
I shirk the decision, skate
on the fine ice of your scowl,
hide (metaphorically)
in my mother’s skirts,
second-guess, quiver and shake,
all skunk logic, squished,
no escape, still skirting it.