Hail and farewell cont’d.

Several afternoons this week have been devoted to going through my friend’s apartment, sorting her stuff into things to throw away,give to the GoodWill, and save for distribution to friends and family. I am deeply grateful to the several friends, some of whom did not even know her, who have volunteered to help me. So far we have found many many packets of beads (she did wonderful necklaces and beaded garments), mixed in with many other things. I have found a lot of her poetry, and a lot of rants against people she believed had wronged her. I will be burning the latter. Let the negative emotions go the way of the body that gave her so much pain, and keep the sweetness and the wonderful creativity.

She hadn’t gotten rid of anything for some years, so it’s quite a task. Not that I can throw stones– actually, I DO throw things away, but there’s always more. People who don’t want to junk something that might be useful drop it off at Greyhaven, and I have somehow found myself the archivist for several dead poets. The downside of having a big house is that everyone assumes you have room, just as the downside of working at home means that people think you are at leisure during the day. Flexible, yes, free, no– if I want income, the work has to be done sometime.

However I got the revisions for RAVENS done and in, so there should be some money one of these days. I’ll get the copyedited MS just before Pantheacon….. grr. Still, that’s mostly a matter of erasing changes to my punctuation or arguing about the spelling of “grey”.