I was not worth a plugged nickel yesterday.   In fact, I'm still wearing the pajamas that I went to bed in Saturday night.  I did manage to make a pot of chicken & dumplings for supper last night (had some for breakfast this morning).

Mostly, I read.  I typically do most of my reading on a Kindle in bed at night, but this Civil War diary is a paper book.  Before I got a Kindle, I had a couple of clamp-on book lights and could read a "real" book in bed at night, but the book lights have disappeared or quit working, so I am reading this diary in the recliner.

This is not the first Civil War diary I've read.  Thirty-something years ago, I forgot to send back the Book-of-the-Month Club card and subsequently received in the mail a copy of Mary Chestnut's Civil War Diary.  At the time, I was working for a law firm in Memphis and had two small children, so it took weeks to finish the book.  During that time, I went on a job interview with a law firm closer to home.  The lawyer who interviewed me was at that time working on a book about Civil War gun boats.  One of the first questions he asked me was, "Do you like to read?"  When I told him what I was then reading, he hired me on the spot.  However, when I turned in my notice to the old firm, they sweetened the deal, and I ended up not taking the job that was closer to home, something I've regretted over the years.  After all this time, I scarcely remember anything about Mary Chestnut.   

The woman in this current book is her early 20s and has about 4 different men wanting to marry her.  (Three of them are Confederate soldiers; I haven't yet discovered how many of them made it back alive.)  She spends her time sewing and cooking and such, but the family owns slaves (for now), so she is not working in the fields or doing other physically laborious jobs.  Her life is nothing like the life my poor sharecropper ancestors lived.  

The other two diaries I recently bought are written by women who, according to the introductions, were socially prominent.  Their lives won't mirror my ancestors' lives, either.  I've found another book (it's on its way!) written by a high-society woman who at least lived in the same vicinity as my ancestors.  Since I'm looking for speech patterns, maybe this one will be more helpful in finding "voice."