There was a mosquito in my bedroom last night.

I tried bargaining with it. I promised that if it sat on my skin, I wouldn’t flinch, I wouldn’t move, I would just hold still and let it stuff itself on my blood. I swore it could have a full pint of the good stuff.

I offered to set up a plate of water, shallow and non-filtered. Even rainwater, if that would be better for its little eggs. Anything, everything, whatever it wanted or needed, I would give it its heart’s desire (do mosquitoes have hearts?) if it would just SHUT THE EFF UP.

It didn’t.

My crankiness level would be sky-high, since I’ve been unhappily awake since 4AM, except that it is a gorgeous day, sunny and cool with a light breeze. And I have two adorable dogs who are wandering around the backyard appreciating the weather. B, especially, likes the temperature, I think. He’s a lot more active on cool days than hot, when he tends to lie underneath pieces of furniture with his tongue out.

Oh, people who know more about plants than I do: what is this plant?

I should know its name but I can’t remember it. I bought it to put on the front porch, but it lasted for two days out there, miserable and droopy at the end of every day, so I decided it needed less sun. I moved it to the patio and it’s been so flourishing ever since that I almost wish I wish I could keep it. I’m death on plants, so I’m not going to — it’ll go live with some safer person when the house sells — but I’m pleased that it’s happy at the moment. But I wish I knew what it was.

Writing is going so horribly that I’m being extremely mean to myself. Hmm, that sentence might be backwards. I’m being extremely mean to myself so writing is going horribly? Which is cause and which is effect? Tough to say. But I’m on the fourth version of the scene that I’ve been working on for the past week. I manage about six hundred words, then delete them.

I keep coming up with ideas for why it’s so hard, things I’ve forgotten to consider, plot holes, characterization issues — but I seriously wish I was done with this book. Last night — before the mosquito — I told myself that I just needed to do a writing binge. To treat this like a school assignment with five days before a deadline that would prevent me from graduating, or a magazine deadline where the issue is going to press with blank pages that would lose me my job. Then I met my friendly neighborhood mosquito and instead of writing-binging this morning, I’ve mostly been drinking coffee and playing solitaire and waiting for a plumber to arrive. That counts as work, right? Waiting for a plumber? Yeah, I thought not. But as soon as he’s here (or she, I don’t mean to be sexist in my gender assumptions about plumbers), I will settle into writing. Words will get written. Real ones. Meanwhile, though, I will keep drinking coffee and enjoying the weather.