winter promises

This morning I answered my cell phone with, "good morning, Deanna speaking" and felt real and and professional. It was a work-related call. I chit-chatted amiably and respectfully and hung up feeling refreshed and ready to work.

Now I'm sitting in a cafe, my notebook open and blank, my thoughts (some strategy for how I'm going to dig into a big new project) are incubating in my brain and I'm just sipping tea and staring into space and trying to gather up all of the ideas and plans and force them to be something real.

Oh, also: it's a new year. Besides a joint resolution with Eric not eat any more McDonald's, I've been reluctant to make self-promises. Everything I want seems too vague. Stupid blanket statements like "be more productive" have never served me in the past; why would I think they'd do me well just because it's January?

But there are a few little things that I want. I want to better organize my kitchen to avoid the inevitable piles of stuff we don't know what to do with. I want to make an afghan out of granny squares like the one my parents used as a bedspread throughout my childhood. I used to picture their bed as a field of flowers. It seems a place I'd like to go to sleep in. I think I want to make another chapbook; of course, first I must write poems. I want to plant more vegetables this year than last year and actually tend to them properly, rather than leaving them to fend for themselves and produce what they will.

But I am not good at keeping promises. So I won't commit just yet.

In the meantime, it is still the dead of winter, but has been unseasonably warm. I can't keep my mind from wandering. I keep thinking about my clothesline. Standing in my bare feet in the grass, hanging sheets and tank tops.