20150619.0856

Despite my late start to the day, freelance work continues. I read through a new novel yesterday and completed something like a fifth of the write-up that had been ordered. Whether or not I will complete the task today is unclear to me; my wife's father is in for Father's Day weekend, and my own father will be joining us tomorrow. We will be a bit busy, so I am not sure if I will be able to spend the time I need to get the job done in the day. Normally, since the Mrs. is at home on Fridays, I am able to write, but this is not a normal situation. It is not unwelcome, certainly, but it is not normal--however "normal" my life is.

That I am not fully recovered is obvious to me. I still feel the heat of a summer within me no less than the summer without. (And that summer, now that the storms have passed by Sherwood Cottage, will turn hot, and humid before it dries out again. There is standing water in the yard, and while it will soon go away, it needs to go away.) I am still more easily fatigued than I ought to be--although some of that is a result of my not exercising nearly enough, I am certain. There are times I consider trying to take up a more active life, although I realize well that I am not likely to be hired for the work that relates to that life. Why take on a pudgy thirty-something who might ask questions and might look askance at things that might not be entirely ethical or legal and might ask for raises now and again when hard-muscled and pliant eighteen-year-olds will do the work cheaply?

I drift away from the point, though. Matters at home are much as they are expected to be. Ms. 8 rails against things being otherwise than she would have them, screaming in angry frustration at needing to be washed or having a toy set aside for the moment. The Mrs. bustles about, displaying her excellence yet again as she tends to the home and the people within it--more now than usual, but not as many as have been here or will be. I sit still at my desk, pressing keys in advance of pressing more keys and more keys yet, writing freelance orders and filling out job applications and in the few free moments those two things allow attending to such other projects as constitute my part of The Work. (On that topic, a book in which I have a chapter is out. You might buy it or recommend that your library do so. And you thought you'd get away without having a link from me...) It is nothing of which to complain, in itself, although I could wish to see more overt benefits from the work that I do than I do. But I think I am hardly alone in that; who doesn't want a raise?