My life is one of consummate clutter. I spent the better part of the morning going through my papers. The ostensible goal for this project was to clean my room, get organized, and do some prep work for my taxes. It is emotionally exhausting to look at scrap after scrap of your past and decide what’s worth saving. The snake being asked to manage his former skins – the tortoise who fancies himself a snake coming to terms with his inescapable shell. To see in print some of the mistakes you’ve made, financial and otherwise; it’s an unpleasant place to dwell. And then there’s the rain.

Is this the wettest winter on record? It is the eleventh of January and it is pouring outside like an April Missouri thunderstorm. Gray days – gray moods – The City School district has not called back to give details about my supposed Thursday training – the advice from many sides is to forget the city schools and go for teaching in the other districts. I am knee deep in work for Jo and have painted myself into a time corner – as I always do. Procrastinators rationalize that they do better work under pressure. It is time to crank out text – so here I go a cranking.