It's 92 degrees in the evening today, a day spent in sweltering reminder of how housework can get away from you.  I wanted to go to Maxi Kim's talk at LACE, I really did.  I do regret missing it.

I awoke at ten, spent the morning dying my hair black and in ninja action at the laundromat.  Eluding attendants at launderland, yes, that's how I get my thrills these days, apparently, as I snuck in and stuck a twenty in the quarter machine. Slammed handfuls in my purse like Vegas and tip-toed out again.  At home, the laundry piled above the dresser by two feet, a teetering tower of panties and stank dresses.

It had to be done.  It just did.  And dear Katie, in an Ambien haze, was sleeping through the heat of the day.  I don't blame her, I wish I had as well.  But thanks to Wellbutrin and a slight hypomanic edge, I was running loads of laundry for the next six hours.

Yet now it's five-thirty, and there's still a load of towels and tablecloths on the floor, waiting to be taken down.

I skipped office hours today, and that is the other thing I feel guilty about.  Perhaps I can place them in the evening.

But our plan, the big plan for productivity, at the four day mark has had its successes and failures. Trying to throw down structure in floating stream of carefree summer willfulness, it's tough.   I've been pretty faithful to the office hours concept, and found that forcing myself to focus for two hours a day really increased my writing output.  I finished the essay for the Headcase Anthology (queer writers on mental illness), and have dived back into the novel, which may have two parts, may have four, I'm not even sure anymore.

But the heat, the dead heat, it kills everything.  I would love to go play tennis this evening, but it is still 92 degrees, and I have already broken a sweat just typing this.

So much goes through one's mind while washing the dishes, the steady rush of warm water, the grease sliding into clean.  I am remembering a poem by one of Katie's colleagues, I think it was Tiffany Promise, read at a Sprawl two years ago, about washing dishes.  Descending into the sink with them until the water runs clear. So good!

I had been toying with the idea of writing poems about housework.  The question of - has it been done, does that devalue the project - or the singular idea of a dishwashing poem?  Or are there never any new ideas, just reformulations and new combinations of the old?  I took Harryette Mullen's Recyclopedia off the shelf to look for housework poems.  Here's one:

"Hide the face.  Chase dirt with an ugly stick.  That sinking sensation, a sponge dive.  Brush off scum on some well scrubbed mission.  It's slick to admit, motherwit and grit ain't groceries." (Mullens, p. 95)

She read at the Les Figues BBQ and I felt so stupidly shy for not telling her how much I enjoyed her work.  I got weirdly starstruck, as I sometimes do.

I suppose all of this writing around the dishes is not doing the dishes, and the dishes won't do themselves.

 But I am also interested in this idea of ownership of ideas.  An old friend contacted me this morning about my use of the five-part structure, apparently he is also writing a five-part book, and feels thus that I should not.

However, there are only so many numbers under seven - at which point you've got an epic tome on your hands, might as well just call them chapters and call it a day.  I feel that whatever we do around the structure, the ivy wrapping around the frame, will be vastly different.