I climbed into bed last…

I climbed into bed last night, had a nice long chat with Jed on the phone, tried to go to sleep -- and ended up climbing out of bed to go write the first two pages of a story. It was cold getting out of bed! The writer's life is a toilsome one, full of misery and woe. And cold toes.

It's kind of a cute story, though. Kids' story, fun to write. Vaguely Aiken-ish. I think I could write silly descriptions of houses for hours...

...They all lived together in a great big house. It was so big, that you might as well call it a castle, though it wasn't made of stone. It was made of good strong wood, and had nine stories. Each story had nine windows, and there were nine steps leading up to the next story. On the first story were the nine bedrooms (so that in the case of an emergency, they could get the babies out quickly), and each bedroom had its own window looking out into the wide wide world. On the second story, there was a kitchen, with a great big dining table with nine sides (a nonagonal table, as they say), and many many chairs, some soft, some hard, and all of them just right for the person sitting in them. On the third story, there were nine bathrooms -- some of the cousins thought it would have made life easier if there were a bathroom on every floor, but the house was built the way it was built, and there wasn't a thing they could do about it now. They were nice bathrooms, though -- each one a different shade of greeny-blue, with mermaid mosaics on the bottoms of the tubs, and fluffy white clouds painted on the ceilings.

On the fourth story, there were nine offices, for when the older cousins felt like getting some work done. On the fifth story, there were nine craft rooms, one each for: spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, carpentry, leatherwork, glass-blowing, candle-making, and fun-things-you-can-do-with-glitter. The middle cousins were especially fond of these rooms. On the sixth story (safely away from the offices) was the playroom, with nine carpeted pits, each full of wonderful things: balloons, building blocks, balls, bubbles -- there were quite a few things that started with the letter 'b', though none of the cousins were sure why. On the seventh and eighth floors was the library, with ninety-nine shelves holding at least nine thousand books. And on the ninth floor, the very top floor -- there was a garden...

Heh. Fun. I'd better put some plot in soon, though. I think I might have a meteor crash through the glass roof of the garden room. Oh no! Whatever will they do?!

Anyway. I need to do some prep for classes today, and then go finish grading. Longish day today; classes 'til 4:30, then come home for dinner and then go back to campus for a reading; we're having a rapid-fire scary reading. I need to write something. I'll worry about that later. All the things which actually scare me do not seem like fit subjects for scary/funny poems. A little irritating. Ah well...