Well, there's this:

 Was not having a good day - the drumbeat of bad news about Delta variant, the realization/five stages of grief over the fact that I WILL be having to mask (or so I think) for classes this fall (And maybe FOREVER, who even KNOWS), worry over having to do the interment Friday (I still have no words; I keep asking for the words to come, for what to say, and they don't), a long evening tonight (meetings at church), hot, humid, lonesome and wishing I could think of some 'fun' that wouldn't involve being out in the heat/spending a lot of money/spending multiple hours in an enclosed space with people likely to be unvaccinated and who won't mask....

but I returned to campus to this:

"Your manuscript has been examined by two reviewers and their comments are provided below. Overall the reviews indicate that the manuscript is suitable for publication ...provided that the detailed comments of reviewer 1 are addressed. I hence invite you to submit a modified manuscript."

 

Yes, it's a short turnaround - they want it by August 15 but I begged for a bit more time because traveling (though maybe? I save it to a flashdrive and take it with, my mother still has my dad's old computer set up and I could do some of the work, at least what I don't need resources for, there?)

But this is the fastest I've gotten word back on a manuscript, and honestly? I was afraid this one was going to be a desk reject because I don't have all that much data. (Then again: it's a field not many people research - soil invertebrates - and it's for a smaller, more regional journal. And very likely? The isolation/work from home business of 2020 led to far fewer manuscripts being produced, despite my seeing reports of things like "Dr. Jo Blow found six species of segmented worm TOTALLY NEW TO SCIENCE just in her backyard" and that other kind of nonsense that made those of us just barely keeping it together feel worse. So maybe it's like after a mass extinction event, like, all the animal body plans evolved after that 'cos evolution was throwing everything at a wall and seeing what stuck, and because there were fewer species to compete, some funky stuff succeeded that might not have in a more competitive field?)

At any rate, I'll take it. I have other things to do this afternoon but maybe tomorrow and Friday (before the interment, provided the words come to me before then) I can start with the rewrite. 

 But man. At least that salvages my "productivity report" for last year - wrote, submitted, AND had accepted a manuscript. 

***

I started reading "Piranesi" last night; totally forgot I had bought a copy with an Amazon gift certificate I got for participating in a research study (about writing in undergrad courses). I'm only about 30 pages in....I don't know, it might "break bad" (become sad) but it does give me an odd, numinous feeling - guy with really no memories of his past, trapped in an enormous "mansion" (which is probably all allegorical but I tend to prefer "the story with the animals" and also take "the story with the animals" at face value, being literal-minded) where his goal in life is to...explore and record. And his only human contact is meeting once a week with "The Other," an old man (hmm, perhaps also allegorical) to discuss his findings. The lower levels of the mansion are ocean; the upper levels are cloud. Piranesi drinks rainwater that cascades down from the clouds and eats seaweed and shellfish from the oceans and....never seems dissatisfied with it. I suppose it's all he's known? But the loneliness of his existence (well, he seems not to feel it as such, despite a passing reference to a girl-child's skeleton that he speculates* was intended to be a mate for him but she died many years back and never grew up)

*perhaps we will learn more of his past; I admit I am apprehensive about the "guy with no memory of his past" trope, because there can be a lot of sad things buried there. 

And the mansion is filled with statues. And apparently there's no "outside," or at least, one cannot GO outside (though there is a sun and a moon and stars and apparently courtyards) and....I dunno, it may be a little too on the nose after a year of pandemic isolation but I'll keep on pushing ahead, with the option to nope out if it makes me too sad. (I've started having to do that with books of late; I think "Gulliver's Travels" - yes, really - was the first one I had to do that with, and The Three Musketeers was too violent with too much just random death where generally the killer felt no remorse and while I know those types of stories don't really consider that, still, I didn't find it something I could do in that moment.