Personal dither-note; cross and fretful...
I'm cross and fretful this morning, and not fit company for any episode of Gracious Living. I don't mind work, and I'm pretty reliable about getting work done, but I very much mind having work to do and not being able to get started on it properly because of some extraneous folderol. And at the moment, three extraneous folderols are hanging over me.

I'm waiting for the contracts for the second edition of The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense to be finalized, and the proposed new Table Of Contents to be approved -- so that I can get started on the actual writing of the manuscript with a reasonable degree of assurance about what's wanted.

I'm waiting for a university where I have a double speaking engagement next spring to get back to me with the details about what precisely they want me to talk about, and for what sort of audience, and at what length -- so that I can get started writing those two talks and preparing the handouts for them.

I'm waiting for similar information about the two events I'll be participating in at the Arkansas Literary Festival in April 2008 -- so that I can get started preparing for those events and actually writing the materials for the one that's going to be a workshop.

And then there are a few other scraps of waiting that are adding to my state of emotional disarray....

I'm waiting for it to be the-day-before-the-Christmas-tree-goes-up [it goes up on December 1st at my house] -- so that I can do the necessary dusting and polishing and so on and so forth, on the grounds that if I do it any sooner I'll only have to do it over again. Despite the fact that on that very same day I have to do the laundry and bake the bread for the following week.

I'm waiting for "Death and Taxes" -- the science fiction short story which I'm now told will appear in December -- to turn up online at long last, so that I can ask you [youall] to read it and tell me what you think of it.

I'm waiting for inspiration to strike and gift me with at least one seed-line for this year's Christmas filk carol.

It's fortunate that while I'm waiting I can work on writing my January/February 2008 newsletters, so that -- as can be predicted -- when all of that information I need arrives in the same 24-hour period, one or more of the newsletters that would otherwise be competing for the finite supply of work-space and work-time and work-energy will already be finished in cross and fretful rough draft form...

Full disclosure: I am rigorously ignoring the obvious fact that this waiting-time would be an ideal time for me to tackle at least one of those ghastly projects like cleaning the refrigerator, or cleaning the oven, or cleaning out all the kitchen cupboards, or getting all the garden beds clean and tidy for the winter.

I'm a flawed creature.