Notebook - Wrapped and Waiting

Notebook
In a pleasant holiday note, my publisher said I deserve a break and that I should take it easy for awhile. I thanked him and said I’d try to take his advice. So far, so good. It’s Christmas morning, and all I’ve done is write up a short recipe for the lentil soup I made yesterday evening, and had a brief chat online with a friend on the East Coast who is also a publisher and editor and, like me, loves to work. To top it off, she also made lentils yesterday, although she said she used a touch of cumin, which I use only when making my rambunctious chili. Generally I’m not a big fan of cumin. But it certainly belongs in some dishes; for instance, a lot of Mexican food would seem strange without it. My wife also uses it in her tasty ten-bean soup. But of course we’re not having lentils or ten-bean soup for our Christmas dinner, as satisfying and sensible as that would be. We’re having the twenty-pound turkey our son received from one of his employers, along with candied yams, a mountain of pilaf, a salad, and two or three other side dishes. No cumin there, either. And my loving bride is busy making pumpkin pies this very moment. In keeping with my publisher’s suggestion, I’m trying not to add to my main work-in-progess, Songs and Letters. Instead, I think I might type a few more Scottish terms and their definitions into the Robert Burns glossary I’ve been working on. But I did look at some of my most recent additions to Songs and Letters — just to see if they were still there, I guess. And I suppose I have been thinking about the book a bit. Or maybe it’s been thinking about me. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. I say I am writing the book, but it often seems the book is writing me, and I honestly believe that isn’t far from the truth. Other than that, I’m not doing a thing. The presents are wrapped and waiting for our adult children to arrive and tear into them just like they did when they were kids. We have a little dry firewood handy, so after awhile I’ll build a nice fire. Someone, I trust, will bring a camera. And, as always, I will take as many mental snapshots as I can, even though I’m still sorting through those I made when I was a kid.	Also by William Michaelian POETRY Winter Poems ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 52 pages. Paper. —————————— Another Song I Know ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 80 pages. Paper. —————————— Cosmopsis Books San Francisco Signed copies available Main Page Author’s Note Background A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Songs and Letters Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Let’s Eat Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation Flippantly Answered Questions E-mail & Parting Thoughts
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