11 a.m.

Today, the NYT ran a project - photograph "your world" at 11 a.m., and post it to their website. If I hadn't become aware of this at around 10.45 a.m., I might have been more inventive, or thoughtful - as it is, I was running round the house (from which all sunlight had suddenly and emphatically departed) looking for something suitable. Alice was out at Lowe's, buying doorknobs, and a rake to remove sawdust and chips from where the treefellers had left them covering the ivy. Two cats had decided to go under the bed, to glower. Two others were in a very shapeless heap of grey and tabby on the sofa. So what does constitute one's world? My desk might usually be a fit subject, were it not for the fact that I've been trying to tidy my study, and it was heaped with all kinds of things. Probably I should have gone for something like the inside of the fridge, or the plastic ponies that have, indeed, taken up permanent residence in the car - but with only 15 minutes to spare, I found that I was hunting around for something representative yet Artistic.

Though not very Artistic - and of course, to have taken another shot of something else would have meant 11.01. This is the nearly-finished attic (minus the closet doorknobs), with the constructors' power tools. Of course, they do, in and of themselves, seem to represent the Ordinary and Everyday, since they've been there since January, and I'm beginning to think we'll miss their company. The very existence of the loft, moreover, represents a whole other level of problem - it's quite an investment; we may find ourselves selling the house and moving (and that opens up a whole further area of current unbloggability - good and exciting unbloggability, but still...) - yet we can't wait to inhabit it and enjoy it, and have the kitties racing from one end to the other of the new shiny wood floor chasing external squirrels. And of course, none of this context goes into a caption to explain the choice of a shiny piece of woodworking equipment, and I'll now go down in cyber-posterity as a one-time cabinet maker.