09.08.04 - 6:01 p.m.

It has been raining for 24 hours now, a steady, soaking rain with winds that come from the wrong direction - south and east rather than north and west. My office faces east, and so does the window in my bathroom, and one of the windows in my back bedroom (where I am camped for the duration, until I decide how to decorate my bedroom, what sort of bed I want, what sort of color I want on the walls, what sort of theme I'm going to make. I'm currently considered a rich crimson/scarlet lady/chinoiserie theme and a cool green theme. Once I finish all this moving stuff (heh!) I'll change my focus toward planning that, but that's a long-term study rather than a short-term "I-must-do-this-now" thing, and I'm not going to do it haphazardly.) faces east as well. The wind never comes from that direction here, except when the remnants of a large, slow-moving hurricane finally make their way overland to us in Appalachia. It's still a surprisingly powerful storm: all this rain, and all this wind, all these many miles later.

I should have called in sick today, stayed home and enjoyed the storm while piddling around my house, but I have too much to do at work today. Last night I didn't get home until twenty til ten, and then I had to put away my laundry and take out the trash (most of which I piled up on the back deck, so it was several trips to the alley, in the rain, laden with several oversized cardboard boxes losing all consistency of form or function after being soaked through several times over) and bring in the groceries and put them away. I got most of my errands done, but I still need to buy honey, orange juice, cranberry juice, eggs, cupcake wrappers, and muffin mix.

Look at this: yet another entry stunted by my unfortunate addiction to material things. If I wasn't so damn greedy, I wouldn't need to work. If I didn't need to work, I could pursue any line of meandering thought that happens to present itself as long as it presented itself, rather than buckling down and working. Hours and hours later - eight or nine - and it is still raining, and the wind is still wrong, and the light is still gray, watery and diffuse. It's one of those reflective days, where the quality of light never changes and it is always brighter inside than out. There's no difference between this horizon and that one, and the hills are lost in a sea of soft gray mist. For whatever reason, some gray days depress me inordinately: stuffy gray days with fitful bouts of spitting, ugly rain and air as saturated as the exhaust from a sauna. Other gray days - like today - do nothing of the sort. If it must be gray, I suppose, I want a steady rain and cool air, the shifting texture of the mist, bright lights inside, and something dark and green and growing as a cool contrast to the storm outside.