Tues. June 9, 2026: Sliding into Summer
image courtesy of Екатерина Гусева from Pixabay Tuesday, June 9, 2026
Waning Moon
Pluto Retrograde
Sunny and warm
I hope you had a lovely weekend.
You can read the Community Tarot Reading for the Week here.
Once I posted on Friday, I continued cleaning things up from my trip. Decontaminating anything that had been in the hotel room, making sure the car was decontaminated. Everything was probably fine, and I doubt anything traveled with me, but I wanted to make sure.
I didn’t really nap, although I dozed a bit in between tasks. It was warm, but not too humid, which was nice.
Cooked a nice salmon dinner. I could barely keep my eyes open after I did the dishes, so I went to bed ridiculously early. The cats were confused.
Slept reasonably well, in that I woke up a few times, but managed to get back to sleep without much trouble. It was a little uncomfortable when I went to bed, but cooled down overnight.
I was up early on Saturday, due to the cats’ demands. Fed them, did my morning routine. The latest meditation timer dropped out because I haven’t upgraded to the paid version, so I hunted down another one to try free online (not an app). Meh. There are analog meditation/singing bowl timers, but they’re expensive and not worth that kind of expense to me, and a regular kitchen timer is distracting. I’ll figure it out.
After breakfast, I cooked some chicken (before it got too hot) and made a curried chicken salad, which kept us lunchy-fed for a few days. I misplaced the recipe I’ve been using since 2012 somehow (it’s been in the same binder since I started using it until I needed it today), but I remembered enough and improvised the rest, and it’s good. I used CSA ingredients for the greens, etc.
I took out the garbage and did a quick trot on foot to the liquor store. It’s rosé season. It was much more humid today, and I was worn out even by the few blocks of the trip. I do not do well in heat and humidity.
On the way back from the store, I helped a woman get an elderly man into the bus. They had to take the bus to the ER at the top of the hill, because they were afraid of the ambulance bill. I completely relate. We shouldn’t have to live like that in this country.
Once home, I worked on the radio series pitch. I decided I’m counting radio script work as part of End of Play pages, even though I’m moving between projects. I have deadlines to meet.
Took a break late morning for some research reading, and made some notes on a character inspired by what I read. The character is fictional, inspired by the research. At first, I thought I would set the piece in the UK, but now I think I will set it in New York, Massachusetts, and Maine. I mean, the piece needs to wait its turn in the queue, but I can work on the background notes and outline between now and then. Historical literary fiction, imagine that. I’m sure a murder will sneak in at some point. One usually does.
After lunch, I read some more, turned on the ceiling fan, and took the laptop into the living room. My office was too hot for decent work. Perched on the sofa with the ceiling fan going, I was comfortable. So was Bea, who hung out with me.
I did solid work on the radio series pitch. It feels right.
It was warm and humid, although it didn’t get too hot inside the apartment. I heated up leftovers for dinner, and chopped up some strawberries to go on top of the chocolate gelato for dessert. We had a thunderstorm pass through with a little rain that was nowhere near as severe as we were told to expect.
Golden Tempo won the Belmont Stakes, which was no surprise. He looked great in his workouts at Belmont. He’s happy and secure (kudos to his trainer and groom and exercise riders and jockey). He’s mentally mature for a three-year-old horse. He knows the deal. He trusts his jockey to tell him when to move up, they worked together as a team, and he did what he does, which is hang back (12 lengths from the lead this time), then pick off the horses in front of him one by one, and pass them as they wear out near the finish line. He actually pulled away pretty well at the end. The race was ¼ mile shorter than when it’s down at Belmont Park (where it will be again next year), so that was easier on all the horses. Still, it was impressive.
Cherie DeVaux, the trainer, is the first woman trainer to win two of the three Triple Crown races in the same year. I got conflicting search results about who the first woman was to train a Belmont Stakes winner, and I no longer have as much thoroughbred history in my brain as I used to. If I get a chance, I will dig deeper into reliable sources in the next few weeks. (I heard it was Jen Antonucci in 2023 with Arcangelo, from a source that seems reliable. She is the first woman trainer to win any Triple Crown race. Can I say how much I hate how Google has destroyed search capacity? At least Duck Duck Go still has some).
Slept reasonably well, up early on Sunday. Morning routine was fine. I found a meditation app that actually downloaded into my phone and sounds good, so we’ll see how long I have access to it.
Did the Community Tarot Reading for the Week, which you can read here.
I made Pain Perdu for breakfast, the New Orleans version of French toast. We had some ciabatta that was aging, and I didn’t want to waste it. I use a recipe from a spiral-bound community cookbook I bought on one of my trips there, and have tweaked it over the years. Pere Antoine’s, my favorite restaurant in NOLA (alas, closed now) used to make a terrific Pain Perdu, and I’ve never been able to replicate it exactly. I was much closer this time. The recipe calls for 3 eggs mixed with ¾ cup of sugar. I add a teaspoon of vanilla. The bread is soaked in the mixture, flipped a few times to fully coat it, then fried in a buttered pan. Again, flipping the pieces, so that there’s a bit of brown on the egg mixture coating the bread, but it’s not charred. The recipe calls for a sprinkling of nutmeg, but I found mixing nutmeg and cinnamon brings me closer to the recipe I’m trying to replicate.
I suspect that the restaurant added a dash of dark rum to the mixture, but I’m not sure I can face dark rum at 7:30 in the morning when I’m not in New Orleans.
After I did the dishes, I gave the stove a good scrub. I clean it daily, and do bigger cleans regularly, but the past few days the cooking’s been a bit messier, so I wanted to give it attention.
Then, with Willa’s “help” I watered all the plants. I check the ones on the back balcony every day and switch the water in the hanging birdbath to keep us mosquito-free, but not everything has to be watered every day.
I did another revision pass on the radio series pitch, tweaked a few things, cut a few things, and I feel good about it.
Lunch, then I made some lemon mousse. I realized I missed sending a birthday card to a friend, so I took care of that – a belated e-card with apologies, but at least it went out the door. He was pleased to receive it, and told me the day itself was just another 12-hour workday (he works in theatre/film, too).
In the afternoon, I repotted the rest of the plants. I got everything done except repotting the aloe, and it took all afternoon. But the plants are in their new homes, and happy. The tomato plant I bought at Whitney’s got so big it needed the tomato cage. The other tomato plant has somewhat recovered from its UPS ordeal, and is settling in with its basil and marigold friends. My bad hip was very unhappy by the end of it, but I’m glad I got it done.
In the evening, I cooked a dish from one of Marcella Hazan’s books. I hadn’t used one of her recipes in ages. It was chicken with rosemary, garlic, olive oil, white wine, cherry tomatoes, and olives. It turned out well.
Read in the evening out on the porch with all the happy plants, made some background notes for a project. I didn’t watch the Tony Awards, although I checked updates. I watched clips of it the next day, and wished I had watched the show, or even better, been in the audience. Over the years, I worked one Tony Awards show, and attended two. It was always a terrific experience, and everyone was happy to be there and had so much fun.
Pink did such a magnificent job, as did the director, Liz Clare. I was so happy for Shoshana Bean’s win. I worked with her on WICKED, and really like her as both a person and a performer. Playwright Bess Wohl’s win for LIBERATION will give WAM a boost when we produce her play CAMP SIEGFRIED later this year. I was delighted for everyone’s wins, and thought the numbers chosen were done so well. The speeches by the Tony winners, in my opinion, tend to be better and more heartfelt than in a lot of other shows. It made me proud to be a part of the lineage for the years I worked there and beyond.
It was cool enough to sleep well. Up at the usual time, morning routine. Tried to stretch out the unhappy hip.
After breakfast and morning chores, I sent off questions/suggested topic for the Freelance Friends chat I will host at the end of July. The organizer likes it, and we’ll move forward with it.
This week is kind of busy, but then I’m trying to keep things calm and quiet through the end of July. I had to explain yet again to someone who asked me why I don’t show up at local evening writing groups that I write all day to earn my living. Off the clock, I like to do other things. You don’t ask plumbers to join plumbing groups that do extra repairs in their off-hours. I attend writing groups when I can, as part of my workday, like the Honor Roll sessions. I attend WAM and Athena Project readings, and provide script analysis in those evenings. That’s enough for me. If local groups met during the day, I could go sometimes, provided I wasn’t on tight deadline. I understand that they’re not meeting during the day because people have day jobs, but my day job IS writing, and I shouldn’t be expected to put in extra unpaid hours. On my off hours, I’m happy to go to readings, etc. to support other writers, but I don’t want to be writing. I want to relax and have fun doing other things that refresh the creative well.
I really wanted to go back to bed, but there was work to do. I did another revision pass on the radio series pitch. I wrote about 2-1/2 pages on the radio play that needs to go out hopefully this week. But it’s more likely that play will go out next week. I need to make sure it’s polished enough to submit.
By then, it was time for errands. Post office, grocery store to pick up a few things we’d run out of or I’d forgotten to get on Friday, and the library. Dropped off 13 books, picked up 6. Home, hauled everything up the stairs and put it away, and then took a short break before turning my attention to the 20K ghostwriting revision.
Worked on the ghostwriting the rest of the day. There are some notes that seem contradictory to me, but I will do the best I can. I had hoped to turn it all around yesterday, but it was too much. I got a little under 10K done. Some of the notes make me grumpy, but too bad for me. It’s my job to figure out how to make it work.
In the evening, the Boiler House Poets Collective had a ZOOM call to check in with each other and catch up. Great to spend time with everyone, even virtually, and look forward to our time in-studio in October.
Cooked dinner, read a fun book, went to bed late. Good sleeping weather, which is nice in preparation for what is supposed to be a hot stretch of days. I suspect we will need our cooling units, which I will unpack and set up today.
There’s no yoga tonight because my teacher is on vacation, so I will do a final pass on the radio series pitch and get it out the door, and then work on the other radio script that needs to go out the door this week or next week. Once that script is done, I have one more radio script to get out the door by mid-July, and then I will turn my attention to the contracted piece for Llewellyn.
Once I have today’s script work done, I will spend the bulk of the day on the ghostwriting, and hope it doesn’t grind me down into nothing.
On a happier note, a friend of mine is going to join me on Friday night at the Clark opening, and then I am going on a short adventure with her on Saturday morning.
I have to make breakfast and do the morning chores before I get back to the page, so I better head off. I want to prepare a salmon pasta salad (to keep us lunchy-fed the next stretch of days) before it gets too hot to cook, too. Have a good one!
#art #BelmontStakes #burnout #cooking #food #freelance #gardening #life #radio #scriptwriting #theatre #TonyAwards #weather #writing
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