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What did I do today?

 

I worked on “OVERCOMING FEAR OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS THROUGH SELF-HYPNOSIS,” that story in my collection that I want to finish. Editing a draft. It’s at the stage where I’ve printed it out and am going over it with a multicoloured pen. The first satisfying stage of the progress—I always feel like I’m beginning to understand what I’m working with when I get here. One never understands an unfinished story by simply staring at it on a computer screen: it always feels insurmountable there. It’s when you’ve printed it out, when you can hold it in your hands and manipulate it, mark it up.

 

Went up Dunbar to get groceries. Stong’s was closed for Boxing Day. Went to Shoppers instead, got some basic provisions. Went by Germain’s to see if grandpa was there having lunch, but the door was closed and no one was there. So I went home and finished the day’s work on that draft.

 

I helped mom set up the iPad she got for Christmas.

 

Then I went down to Grounds for Coffee, which was still open. On Boxing Day, half the world is open and half is still closed. I worked on the December 5 entry there, because I can now that Matvey has told me he’d be honoured. It doesn’t feel quite right working on it three weeks later, recreating it from memory—it feels so dishonest, counter to the whole idea of this thing, to be recalling it after the day has receded so far behind me. Inorganic. It’s a sort of fiction, and it doesn’t flow as naturally as this. But I want to finish writing out that entire week—it’s important to me—so I’ll do it. Even if there’s a wrongness in it. It would be even worse to leave it as a blank.

 

Or would it? I’m honestly not sure. I think that’s part of why there’s so much stop and start with it.

 

I was there at Grounds for Coffee in the last hour before closing. It was quiet, and I watched the workers begin to close up shop. Outside, it was dark. And I typed as good a forgery as I could. I got up to the point when I was riding the metro back from Verdun, just before I found Matvey on Prince-Arthur.

 

I saw they had a run of specialty buns (they have these on the regular) for the last couple of days of the year. I thought if the guys do come over here for movie night on the 31st, I might pick some up.

 

Right no, I’m frying chicken breasts. Two. One is for work tomorrow, one is to have tonight with the last of that Bordeaux. … It’s not going well. I didn’t take them out to thaw early enough and, even though I did defrost them a bit in the microwave, the middle is still very raw I’m listening to R.E.M. as I watch the bottom of the skillet turn black.