By Sarah
Hellooo ladies! Anyone out there?? One of us must have failed to mention in our previous posts, how great the Caouette-DeLallo women are at beginning things, but how easily we allow them to take a back burner when we take on new interests or responsibilities.
Summer has already passed and I am no longer living on my mother's property in the Airstream camper I renovated into a guest house. It is now my mother's garden studio until the nights get too cold to paint out there, even with the warmth of a space heater. I've since traded that intimate, green shelter space, for 1,200 sq ft of hardwood floors and my own office.
I share the apartment with Molly, who moved up here with me in September from Providence. We both knew this would be the perfect place for the two of us, though we chose it for different reasons. Molly said, "I have a thing for bathrooms." And I said, "There is so much light." And while she inhabits the front end of the flat, and I the back, somewhere in-between our bobby pins and hair ties, our snacks and shoes, intermingle in only a way sisters can live.
Portland has been good to us thus far, particularly the food scene (we've become Little Lad's popcorn and craft beer addicts). Though I am already trading jobs to maintain a better writing schedule. Writing needs to be my primary focus right now. As I'm reminded regularly, my twenties are slipping away, and I can see my window of opportunity getting smaller and smaller as time passes. My hope is to finish the novel I began three years ago, here in this city. It would be befitting, since when I first started working on the manuscript, I had loosely based the setting on Portland (even though I had never lived here. Kate had, and I
enjoyed coming to visit her and hanging out around town so much, I felt it the best place for my story to begin.)I have moved four times this year. Some people don't even move four times in a lifetime. I want to believe I will be here, where I've landed, for a little longer than usual. But the reality is, the future is uncertain for me when it comes to such things. Molly is talking about going to Ecuador during her summer break. (Not sure if I want to get a temporary roommate or not.) And at some point I am going to try to get over to England to visit Kate and Michael this spring, but of course that is all dependent on money, and work, and school etc, etc.
Today I have put in almost a full day of writing. I am exhausted, and even though it feels like I didn't even make a dent in all the things I want/need to be working on, I know that I did accomplish something. Tomorrow I will begin again fresh, pen to page.
