So the Darkness Shall be the Light, and the Stillness the Dancing.

The title is a quote from T.S. Eliot, East Coker, The Four Quartets.   The stillness has been my dancing lately.  I’ve stories I’m working on that have been going well.  I’ve a piece of knitting by my computer that I knit a row or two on while I’m rereading or thinking about what comes next.

I’ve accumulated a list of tasks to do when I reach critical mess*: Two loads of washing — my dirty clothes hamper is almost too full again and the bed is due for changing, plus another load or two of blankets and lap robes that need to be washed and put in storage for winter, now that summer is half over.  There is my yarn stash to be sorted through and organized, and the new additional** storage bins to be put in place and WIPs to sort into finish-its  or frog-its.

With a drawer and a basket full of WIPs, of course I’ve started a new shawl out of Malabrigo sock yarn, color “Teal Feather.”  One of those easy, mindless garter stitch shawls growing out of a two-row repeat with fiddly bits at each end, asymmetrical with a crescent curve and a nice little detail for each edge.  Something light for autumn.  It’s currently living by my computer, handy for story work.  From all my years as a transcriptionist, I tend to think with my hands. It’s such a hard-wired circuit, from brain to fingers.  Knitting when I’m not typing, to keep the fingers busy and the thoughts flowing.

This was why there was a plate beside my keyboard, a roast beef and Münster cheese sandwich on a piece of pita bread cut in half, and a package of apple slices.  I had some of those breaded shrimp the other day, the kind you buy frozen and bake in the oven.  Of course, I had Tartar sauce with, and I always save the left over Tartar sauce for roast beef sandwiches later, to spread on the side of the bread the roast beef goes on, with mayo on the cheese side.  The pickle bits in the Tartar sauce always go so well with the beef.  I have these little sauce dishes I got from Pier One, blue and white to match my dishes, although not the same pattern.  They’re made for the various dipping sauces you get with Japanese food, but they work just as well for Tartar sauce for shrimp, or ketchup, or individual dollops of margarine to set on the bread plate at each place when I have dinner parties.  Anyway, I just slip dish and all inside a baggie and put it in the refrigerator.

Next Tuesday I get to go to the dentist for the next step in the jaw-tooth implant.  This will be the  setting of the post, which will also entail bone grafting, and which is why I’ve been wearing this (tea-stained) thing on my lower teeth, at first all the time (except when actually eating), and now just at night.  Still fighting the legacy of large teeth and small jaws — I had to have 4 wisdom teeth plus 4 perfectly healthy bicuspids pulled just to make room for the teeth I had.  But because my front teeth are so long, I couldn’t open my mouth wide enough to get the guide into my mouth that is required in order to place the post for the implant to replace that way-at-the-back molar. So my dentist made this mouth guard for me to wear to lengthen (and relax) my jaw muscles enough so that hopefully I could open my mouth wide enough for him to get all the gear in that he needed to finish the implant.  Anyway, it worked and all that happens Tuesday.   Then there will be more months of waiting while the bone graft heals before we can proceed to the final step, which is placing the crown.

My mom’s new phone came in today so tomorrow I will go over and do the change out.  As I said, hopefully I can save her phone book to the new SIM card so I won’t have to re-enter all those phone numbers for her.  Again.  I’m going to go early enough in the afternoon so that I can stop by the nail place on the way home and get a manicure.  My nails are bad about getting those little slivers at the edge of the nail that peel up into the quick, and a professional manicurist can nip those in the bud.  And anyway, we’re supposed to stimulate the economy, right?

T.S.Elliot can be a bit impenetrable, but now and again, a gleam of something sparkly. It’s 9 p.m. and I want to get on to other things.  I’ll end as I began with another quote from the same poem.

“The dahlias sleep in the empty silence.
Wait for the early owl.”

*"critical mess" is like "critical mass" (the minimum amount of fissile material needed to maintain a nuclear chain reaction. in atom bombs), only it's the minimum amount of clutter, disorder or dishevelment required to trigger the "I can't stand it another minute" response that provokes you to do something about it.

**skeins of yarn, like cats, accumulate.