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Saturday Radio Contest

One day isn't very different from another in my life these days. I feel like an old fashioned housewife, except that I don't have a husband. I'm married to the house, like all people are. I spend my time caring for my home, and taking pride that it's nice and clean. Then, I start cleaning again.

I have a routine of sweeping the four rooms with hardwood and tile floors, then running the vacuum cleaner over the remaining carpets. I seem to get this done almost every afternoon before 6:00 pm, when the sun stops shining into the house so brightly. I prefer to vacuum in daylight. I'm not that messy a house-person, except for accumulating papers of all sorts, but the doggies track in dirt and shed hair like it's some high paying job they take much too seriously. To keep a clean looking floor I have to stay on top of it--every day, or every other day at least. I don't mind because it doesn't take that long, about 15-20 minutes, and I like the comments about my clean floor when people come to visit. Getting complements on a clean floor is a new thing for me!

I wrote an article about how to keep hardwood floors clean. It was about 975 words, and I submitted it to "Associated Content" for them to consider it for exclusive publication, and monetary consideration for me for my efforts. I'm just getting started at that web site, but I've had three articles published at Searchwarp.com. They accept kindly, but don't pay. I'm definitely going through an article expansion period. Repetition is allowing me to perfect the magazine article form these places want. It's kind of a cross between journalism and good balanced paragraphs full of information.

Tomorrow is the contest in Georgia that my poem "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" the I entered into the "Women's" competition. It's the short story-poem-prose-narrative that I recorded on CD at the recording studio in Duncanville. There are ten people in the competition, and sometime between 1:00 - 2:00 Eastern time, I'll get a call on the telephone for a small interview about my piece and its relationship to the genre of spoken word poetry. I think I'm supposed to read the poem live too. I think I'm going to play it from my computer, and just select one section so that my part isn't over ten minutes. I need to get my thoughts together tonight, because when I get the call tomorrow I may be at my old house, helping do the weekly yard work. Usually I do the inside of the house--like vacuuming and cleaning windows, and my immigrant friend Carlos and his three kids cut the grass and blow the yard and take care of other matters outside. He's supposed to mow the yard at the old house and my new house both tomorrow, and the weather's predicted to be close to 100 degrees again. I have sympathy sweat for him and the kids. Heat like that beats me to the ground.

I'm going to ask Carlos and the kids to help me set up my kiddie pool in the back yard while they're here. The plastic pool is only 18" deep, but it's 8 feet across and good for lying on a float and sunning from. Sunning-time is my favorite part of summertime. . . radio on, and some kind of meat smoking on the grill, and something to drink near by. Coca-Cola tastes as good as a beer in that situation, or else I'd be putting on a beer belly. So far the ice cream belly is still under control.

I'm still gardening a bit every day, getting out in the sunshine and getting plenty of dirt under my barely there nails. My nails get so dirty when they're real short like they are now. Plants are still going into pots as permanent homes, seeds are still being planted in the one long flower bed, and I'm making sure I water all the plants and bushes in the front and back yard enough to keep them growing and happy. I've played with my automatic sprinkler system this week, trying to figure out how it works. I don't have it set for pre-dawn watering yet, but we don't have restrictions about watering during the day until after June 1st. I'll figure out the intracasies of the system before then.

I think I only have "a wing and a prayer's chance" of winning the poetry competition, but with the odds of general participation, I've got a one in ten chance. My entry is probably too long, and the fact that it's unique may play against me. The narrative includes four Cher songs in the full 25 minute version. This is the first time I've been in a competition on the radio, with listeners voting for a winner. Maybe I'll make a good impression with just my voice. If you want to listen, go to www.powertalkfm.com, and click on the "listen now" link between 1:00 pm and 2:00 pm Eastern time on Saturday, May 20th, 2006. Whether or not I win, it'll be a new and interesting experience--a break from my usual hanging around the house routine. I'll work on my enthusiasm and introductory explanation before noon tomorrow so that hopefully I won't stumble over my tongue. I shouldn't worry. It'll be fun!

Here's a link to the poetry-prose narrative. I was unable to upload the MP3 because it's too large.

"Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress"