to do it; she's four inches taller than I am), tied the middle
one's shoes, and ran upstairs to write notes to two of his teachers
(he had the flu, on and off, and missed six days of school, with
consequent assignments. Problem is, he's too shy to go up and ask
any of his teachers for a list of what's missing).
The boys from next‑door‑but‑one came and knocked‑‑they'd
missed their bus, could I take them to school? (no good asking
where _their_ bloody parents are. There's a reason they live
_here_ half the time). Loaded up everybody, picked up my purse to
get in the car, when the housekeeper beetled out and said we're out
of X,Y,Z, especially washing powder.
Dropped the kids‑‑adjuring Sam sternly to be sure to deliver
notes to his teachers‑‑went to the drug store, where I got all the
cleaning supplies and checked for the homeopathic flu cure my friend John recommended (felt a sore throat coming on). While driving to and fro, kept thinking of snow (no good reason, it's about 85 F. here). Went home, delivered the window cleaner et al, came upstairs and spent my usual hour having breakfast (Diet Coke and Milky Way Dark) and reading/answering messages and E‑mail, seeing in the back of my mind footprints dark on the snow, and heaped wet leaves, crusted with ice, the dark furrow in the leaves where someone had been lying under the shelter of a log.
Set in to work as usual at 10, stoked to the gills with
Vitamin C and occilococcinum. Read through a half‑done scene in
progress, added a couple of paragraphs, then was overcome by a new,
vivid image‑‑I was following the footprints in the snow, and there
was a dead hare, caught in a snare, furred with ice crystals, stiff
across the path. Switched to a new document and started the new scene, to get it underway. Fell into the state of mind in which I walked off the staircase, feeling the worry of the woman following the footprints. Why didn't he stop for the hare? Where is he?
Settled nicely into the first paragraph, when comes the
dreaded summons from the foot of my stairs, "_Es un hombre a la
puerta_!"
Hombres at the puerta are always an intrusion, but usually
brief, as in Fed Ex or UPS, now and then the exterminator or the
man from the feed store delivering horse pellets (this is a _large_
nuisance, as I have to go collect all the dogs and shut them in the
garage, then go round and open the big gates into the backyard for
the truck to come through).
This time it was an hombre from the phone company, come to fix
the FAX machine's line (cf. staircase, above). Showed him the
miscreant FAX, helped him track the phone line‑‑which had been
installed by one of my husband's programmer employees, back when he
had his office in that room‑‑then left him to it.
Diana Gabaldon Busyday Attachment
Start from the beginning
