Look at that — my very own white picket fence! It’s taken a couple of weeks, and when the guys first came to build it, somehow we’d agreed on a four-foot fence (to match last year’s big investment, the board fence on the south side of the yard). When they put the posts in I nearly had a heart attack — at four feet, it was going to look like Fortress Charlotte. They were nice enough to cut the posts down some, and build the three-foot fence I’d envisioned. So I spent my Memoiral Day weekend painting the fence — just like Tom Sawyer, with my paintbrush. It wasn’t a bad chore, but as a man walking past my house yesterday said — “There’s a good, tedious job.” By that point I was on the last section, and, I must admit, I was getting kind of bored.

But there’s something to be said about tedious physical work. I’ve been having a hard time figuring out the next part of my memoir, and two days of sitting on a milk crate painting pickets gives a girl a lot of time to think about things. I’m not sure I have much more sense of the structure of this section, but it did give me time to think of some other scenes I want to add, and to sketch them out in my head.

And so, back to the real work, as my old prof Gary Snyder would say …