i don’t get to wear my rainboots too often, a birthday gift from a few years ago, from my sister — one gift of thirty that she mailed me, madly, when i turned thirty. but today they kept my feet warm and dry in the big wet.

my house is the big empty this week; boy and maeve gone bush. yesterday, after waking at 5.30am to wave them off into the not-quite-sunrise, i tried to get back to sleep and then stayed in bed until ten-thirty, finishing off the novel that’s taken me many months and false starts and week-long lapses to get through. then, feeling unsettled, i tidied the house. i popped out to buy some art supplies, and lunch from bagel house. the NY reuben: pastrami, sauerkraut, pickles, cheese, all steaming in a toasted dill bagel. i rented a DVD from a hole in the wall. you reserve your movie online, show up at the great dispensing machine on the street, swipe your card, listen to the chunk-chunk of machinery, and then “infernal affairs 3” slides out the slot. (video store clerks? so 90s.) i bought tofu. i came home, and drew.

today, i drew (work) and painted (a dollhouse, pink). put on my boots, went back to the hole in the wall, got out “the devil wears prada”. at the post office, i bought the selvage of reg mombassa’s big things stamps. at about life, i propped myself up at the counter with a bottle of honey ginger beer, and ate a plate of bruschetta: three slices of perfectly toasted, garlic-infused bread, topped with marinated button mushrooms; artichoke puree; marinated peppers with pesto and goat cheese. and then because i could, i stopped at the fine food store and bought a tub of gundowring raspberry ice cream. for later.

i came home and drew some more. i’m working on a publication for an arts organisation — a sort of legal-aid-for-artists organisation. so i sent them a bunch of sketches for the cover design, and thought (hopefully) that they might go for the… dare i say, spunky, quirky, striking one. instead, they picked the ultra-traditional one: drawings of various artists’ tools contained within a grid. sigh. at least it will be the easiest one to produce.

i put on the heater, and a radio birdman LP. i lit my spicy tea-scented candle. i traced the roughs i had drawn this morning. because i have no lightbox, i trace standing up, with my paper flat against the window. i can only trace in the daytime, and it makes my arms ache.

my house is the big empty, and this hole that has opened up inside me, sunday night, things were said about mistakes made, shaky ground shifts again.