Category Archives: Personal

One step away from the wild…

22 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Florida, Randomness, RV, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Yesterday I was walking Z in the very early morning. Pre-dawn, but not so pre-dawn that it was still dark. I’d taken her up a white sandy road that led past the dumpsters out of the campground. The road had a “No Vehicles” sign posted but no other signs, so I wasn’t sure where it led, but since we were just walking for the sake of walking, it didn’t matter to me.

It felt incredibly lovely. The still of the early morning, nothing manmade in sight except for the road itself, just me and Z, alone in the world. And then I saw a flash of dog, tall dog, just a glimpse of leg and tail, crossing the path a long way in front of us.

Dang it.

You never know with off-leash dogs—are they off-leash because their owners have trained them well or are they off-leash because their owners are terrible owners? Zelda is a Jack Russell terrier, which means she is genetically incapable of backing down from a fight. If she decides a dog is a threat, she’ll get aggressive and size won’t deter her. Although she’s never gotten into a fight with a dog smaller than her, only dogs bigger than her, so I guess size does deter her, just not in a fearful way. But I’m wary about bringing her near strange off-leash dogs that she might decide need to be taught a lesson.

I paused and the dog disappeared. It looked like it disappeared into the brush, but that seemed unlikely, so I decided the road must have a path I couldn’t see leading off it. And since the dog and its owner were moving on, they were not a problem.

I kept walking. It was grey and chilly, at least by Florida standards, but I was enjoying the cool air and the brush of moisture in the fog… and then I saw dogs again.

Three of them. Tall, skinny, and a matched set, all a sort of grey brown with flags of white on their tails. Someone had a pack of dogs.

A pack of dogs that they were letting run off leash.

In a state park.

In fact, in a wilderness area.

Yeah, I don’t think so.

I stopped walking.

Two of the dogs disappeared into the brush, but the third stood where it was and stared at me. I stared back.

It wasn’t really close, not so close that I felt immediately threatened. And I did, in fact, have a little mental debate of whether I wanted to keep going on the path that I had been so enjoying and trust that I would scare it/them off. Coyotes are not known for attacking people.

But — my mental thought process went — coyotes are known for taking small animals and I am walking with a small animal that I love very much and that would never back down from a fight, even if it was with a pack of coyotes. And I am not the biggest of human beings myself. I’m not short, but I don’t think anyone would ever suggest that I could be threatening. Even to dogs. And these weren’t small dogs, they were definitely long-legged and tall. And like I said, skinny, so maybe they were hungry. Also out in daylight, even if maybe they were headed home after a night of hunting, but still… daylight plus night-time predators has at least the potential of meaning hungry predators.

So I took some careful steps backwards, not letting my eyes off the watchful coyote and then turned around and walked back to the campground. Zelda and I took the rest of our walk around the paved loop of the campground, admiring our neighbor’s various vehicles and tents and appreciating the day from a carefully sanitized distance.

The pros of the apocalypse

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in Depression, Florida, Grace, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

I’m camping in Blue Springs State Park this week, famed as a home to manatees in winter time. I’ve visited this park before as a day visitor, more than once, so it’s not new to me. But this morning while I was walking Zelda, I was imagining myself in a post-apocalyptic world. The kind where plague has taken all the people, not zombies. I wasn’t scared, it just felt incredibly empty. Every other time I’ve been here, there have been lots of people, but of course, that was never before dawn. Then I spotted some manatees in the water and got much more cheerful, because probably if the human beings all died out, the manatees would have a much better chance of surviving. The pros of the apocalypse.

Last night, it rained. My weather app — which honestly, seems fairly useless, except for the immediate weather — had been claiming rain for days, including an entire afternoon of lightning and thunder yesterday, but it didn’t happen until 4:43 AM this morning. I can be so precise about the time because I woke up and it had barely started, a little tap-tap-tap on the roof of Serenity, but as I lay there wondering what that noise was, it really started. It went very quickly from tapping to torrential, which sounds a lot like being inside a drum. Or maybe a heart beat. I haven’t had nearly enough rain in Serenity, because I do enjoy it so much. Last night, I could hear the difference in the sounds of the rain hitting the roof and the rain hitting the plastic vents over the fans. It was music, definitely. Albeit slightly boring music after ten minutes or so. Plenty of rhythm, but a lack of harmony.

Despite the rain and the bleak apocalyptic thoughts, I’m really happy to be here. Right now, I can see a cardinal sitting on a branch outside my open door. There have been squirrels darting through the trees—or maybe one very busy squirrel. I’m surrounded by trees and greenery. It’s definitely not the most peaceful park I’ve spent time in—the train tracks must be incredibly close because wow, the trains are loud when they rumble through—and there must be some kind of construction going on nearby because there was a lot of heavy equipment moving around, including those annoying backup beeps, earlier this morning. But it’s not a parking lot, it’s a park.

I spent the last two weeks sitting in a campground that was a parking lot: trailers on either side of me, nothing separating me from my neighbors, and my view consisting entirely of people stuff. My goal was to finish Grace or give up. I did neither. I didn’t get very far, but I did come up with a new ending and a new plan, so I’ll be persisting. But I did learn that I should really, really not sit still for so long in a place that doesn’t inspire me.

While I don’t seem to get a lot of writing done on the days that I’m moving from place to place and planning moves takes energy that I could be putting into writing, my level of depression rose steadily over the past couple weeks. Or my mood sank steadily? And the trap that is depression was sucking me in: I knew I was starting to feel bleak but I lacked the energy and motivation to make a change. It’s really only today — gloomy apocalyptic thoughts and all — that I’ve been able to wake up and realize how much I had lost my joy. That’s because having a cardinal sitting on a branch avoiding the rain brings it back. I don’t want to live in places where I have to search to find the beauty, even if they are cheap.

Of course, that does mean that I should earn some money and that means that I should be writing Grace right now. So off to do it! It’d be nice if I could get out of the scene I’m in and back to a scene with Grace and Noah together. Not that I know what happens in that next scene, but I’m a lot more likely to find out if I keep writing than if I wait for inspiration to hit.

 

Owls are cool

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Florida, Grace, Randomness, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

I saw an owl this morning. Two of them, really, although the second one was a black blur on the wind. I wouldn’t have recognized it as an owl if it were not flying in collusion with the first one. And the first one… well.

It flew across the sky in the pre-dawn light, clearly a bird. Clearly a big bird. My brain had to process. What is that bird? In Florida, the default on a big bird is vulture. That’s what we’ve got the most of. But this bird didn’t say vulture to me. The wings were wrong. The flight was so smooth, such a glide, so quiet. Eagle? No. Hawk? No. Falcon?

The bird settled on a tree branch and finally my brain — in my defense, it was early, before coffee — put together the flight, the time of day, the size of the bird, its silhouette on the tree branch, and the calls of Whoa-whoa-whoa-whooooo that I was hearing and said, “Owl.”

Actually, it was more like my brain said, “Owl. Owl, owl, owl, owl, OWL!” I’ve seen them in captivity and I’ve seen them in photographs and once or twice, I’ve seen one in the wild from a far distance when someone else has pointed it out to me, but this was my first real close-up of a wild owl. And then another one flew by, and the first one joined it and they tried a different tree. I tried to follow them, but they moved again, out of the campground and deeper into the fenced-off forest that surrounds the campground, and I resumed walking my dog. But my morning no longer felt prosaic and dusty, but a little bit magical.

Owls are cool.

In other news, I’ve been having the most amazing time writing. Not, alas, writing Grace. But approximately 16 days ago, I got impatient and frustrated with myself and I decided that every day — every single, solitary day — I would write 1000 words of fiction. Not careful polished words, not words where plot and characterization mattered, not words that built to something, that were part of some larger whole, just… words. Quick sketches. Snippets of scenes. Bits and pieces of story. But a thousand of them every day.

I missed one day, because it was a moving day. That was the day I left Trimble Park and spent the night in my dad’s driveway, so it included cleaning and organizing, drying and stowing the kayak, loading up the camper, and then much sociability. Apparently I just didn’t even think about writing that day. But every other day for the past two weeks, I have written 1000 words and wow, I have been having so much fun with them! There is something about the freedom to write terrible words, the joy of pointless words, that has let me get madly creative. Most of the words have been starts to stories, world-building that goes nowhere, but I’ve had magic and vampires and dramatic confrontations, children of the gods and immortal courts and SO. MUCH. FUN.

I’m trying not to stress about the future. A writer who only starts things and never finishes them is really never going to earn a living, even if she’s trying to subsist on ramen noodles and other people’s driveways. And I’m still working on Grace every day, even though what mostly seems to happen is that I have a great time writing for a few hours and then grimly open the Grace file about mid-afternoon and stare at it until I can escape into feeding and walking the dogs. But yesterday I actually had some Grace insight and my 1000 words of fiction included several hundred on Grace, so maybe today…

The loneliness of joy

08 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Boring, Personal, Serenity

≈ 7 Comments

I know solitary confinement is torture, but part of me thinks I’d do just fine with it. Obviously, I’d prefer it if it included my dogs and a fully-loaded ebook reader and something to write with and on, preferably keyboard-oriented, but even without all that, I think I’d be okay, at least for a longer while than most people. I’ve never been one of those people who can’t stand their own company and after almost twenty years of primarily working from home, I’m really pretty good at solitude.

Obviously, that doesn’t stop me from getting lonely–everyone is lonely sometimes–but I didn’t worry about loneliness being a problem in my traveling life. I considered it, but I thought I’d be fine. And I am. Mostly.

The interesting discovery I’ve made/am making is that loneliness is deeper, at least for me, when it comes with joy. When I’m having a bad day or something’s gone wrong, I might want someone to vent to or share with or even get help from — I spilled coffee everywhere this morning and it would be really nice if someone could have grabbed the computer while I was getting the dogs out of the way — but generally speaking, the thought doesn’t even occur to me. I grumble to myself or to the dogs and I try to take my time with problems and if I really need help, well, that’s what the phone is for. I don’t usually feel lonely because something’s gone wrong.

But when something’s gone right…when I see an incredible sunrise or a mysterious animal or have a funny story I want to share (like the text I got from my son the other day, where he said, “It is a mark of how Floridian I am that when I first started seeing icicles I thought they were decorations,” which just makes me smile every time I think of it)… that’s when I notice how alone I am. I’m still okay with it — it’s not like I’m in solitary confinement, my solitude is not breaking my spirit or driving me insane — but those are the moments when I feel lonely.

I suspect I will also notice how alone I am the first time Serenity has a major breakdown. Life happens. If I spend all my life on the road, then at some point, I will be stranded or I will have a flat tire and I’m definitely going to be wishing for company at that moment.

Anyway, I feel like I should be going somewhere profound with this thought but I’m not. It’s just an insight. I truly love my life right now. I feel incredibly lucky to be living the way I’m living, even when what I’m basically doing is sitting in a parking lot (as I am right now). My mobile tiny house life is far from perfect — I’ve got a pile of coffee-stained stuff in the middle of my floor waiting for me to solve the laundry problem and something that I haven’t been able to track down yet has made the van smell musty for a couple of days — but it is really damn good. So good, in fact, that I am lonelier than I imagined being. I’d call that ironic, but really maybe it’s just incongruous?

I’m currently in Wildwood, Florida, in a Thousand Trails campground. Yesterday, I was trying to pull a burr off Zelda and it just would not come — I finally realized it was a tick, incredibly bloated. I suspect half of it is still in her, but the internet assures me that it’ll probably come out on its own. So gross. The campground… well, I’m here because it’s a cheap place to stay while I work on Grace. I’m making a conscious effort, a quest, to find something beautiful every day. It’s harder than it should be. Fortunately, looking up almost always works.

 

sunset-at-wildwood

 

Five-year plans

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in Personal, Self-publishing

≈ 6 Comments

Almost five years ago, I was trying to decide if I should post A Gift of Ghosts to Amazon. I never really considered doing anything else with it: it was post to Amazon or let go, not start hunting for agents or rewriting or anything like that. I was well aware of the many things wrong with it, from an opening where she looks in a mirror to its lack of a real plot. But I liked it. I thought of it as not so much a novel as a puzzle box, something you keep opening (reading) to find out what’s farther in. My dad called it an “entertaining onion,” which I love as a description. And I’d let a few other people read it and they’d mostly liked it, too.

When I finally did decide to post it, I’d come up with a five-year plan: I’d write a million words, aiming for ten novels, and if I was earning $1000 per month at the end of the five years, I’d consider whether I wanted to take writing seriously. I also planned to finish graduate school, get my master’s degree in counseling, and find a job for my internship hours. Right about now, I ought to be about ready to open up my private practice, being duly licensed and all that.

Ha.

Life is weird.

That five-year plan was my very first five-year plan. I’m not someone who started college with an idea of what I wanted to be doing and my career–which worked out really well for me, actually–never came with associated goals. I didn’t flounder, but I always knew what I was doing made sense for the day I was in. Even when I hated my job, and there were times when I did, I was very clear with myself about why I was doing it. But it was never with an idea of where I wanted to be in five years or what my goals were. My goals were to do good work, be a good mom, and end the month within budget so I could take my kid out for Chinese food or maybe sushi now and then.

So here I am, having completely failed to accomplish my five-year plan. No million words, nowhere close. No ten novels. No degree. No license.

On the other hand, wow. The past five years have brought me so much. Some amazing friends — it’s hard to believe I hadn’t even met some of the people who make my life so much richer now. Some intensive self-discovery and growth. Some radical changes in diet and health — I couldn’t have imagined, ever, how much better I would be feeling physically. That it was even possible to feel so much better physically! If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t tell myself to write more and faster, but to get rid of gluten sooner. And, of course, adventures and travel and a stray dog and… joy. Lots of joy.

I sort of want to create a new five-year plan, not so much because I think I’ll accomplish it, but because this moment of looking back, of reflecting on what I aspired to and what I accomplished, is maybe what five-year plans should really be all about. I didn’t achieve what I hoped to achieve. In that sense, my five-year plan is obviously a big fail. But I am so filled with gratitude for what I found instead. My past five years were hard and painful and frustrating and challenging and so, so, so rewarding. For my next five… well, I’d really like to skip some of the pain. Maybe a lot of the pain, in fact. But for the rest… I guess I’ll be thinking about that.

But first, it’s back to Grace!

The epitome of the everyday

28 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Personal, Serenity, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

I posted a picture of this morning’s sunrise, completely unedited, to Instagram using my phone. (You can see it on the side of the blog, in that Instagram widget, if you don’t use Instagram. I’d post it here but I’m out of data for the month on my internet plan.) It was so pure — the sun sliding up the horizon, completely unencumbered by clouds. The sunset last night was amazing in a totally different way—lots of clouds, lots of layers, many shades of purple and red, going on for what felt like forever. And the sunrise yesterday morning was pretty nice, too. The night before, sunset, also spectacular. Sunrise that day, also lovely.

Sunset and sunrise are so ordinary. We all get them, every single day. They are the epitome of the everyday, in fact. Ha. And yet, in my current life, I spend so much time appreciating them. It’s something about being in new places all the time. Well, okay, also sunsets (and rises) over water are twice as spectacular as the ones without water. It’s the reflection that does it, of course. And when you’re sitting on a bench next to a fire pit watching the sky while a giant, gawky bird with legs longer than its body goes flapping by, awing you with the miracle of flight, appreciation comes easier than when you’re sitting in rush hour traffic, worried if you’re going to make it to the daycare before they start charging $10/minute.

Of course, the corollary to spending more time appreciating sunset and sunrise, water and birds, spider webs and flowers is that I also spend a lot more time wondering how I’m going to get my laundry done. Or whether the grocery store is going to have coconut milk. Or how to find a vet when the dog has yet another ear infection. It’s like my life is simultaneously sort of ethereal and sublime and also really mired in the daily necessities of existence, much more so than when I lived in a house and the question was just, “Do I need to do laundry?”, not “How am I going to get my laundry done?”

On Saturday, I was walking the dogs with my friend, E. I was crossing the road when I glanced behind me and saw that she and B had paused. I was the one carrying the clean-up bags, so I paused, too, to see if I needed to go back. Z kept going, though, tugging me along, so I took a few slow steps forward. Then I looked around and realized that I was standing on the double yellow lines, in the middle of the road, walking forward along them. It felt… thrilling. There was absolutely no traffic coming, so it didn’t feel dangerous. But the yellow lines beckoned the way ahead of me, like the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz.

I said to E, “I don’t think I’ve ever walked on the yellow lines before. I’m not really a middle of the road kind of person. I’m a safely on the side of the road person. Or better yet, a sidewalk person. It’s sort of weird.”

She laughed at me and then her expression changed. I could see her go thoughtful  before she said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever walked along the yellow lines either.” So then she joined me in the middle of the road, and we walked down the yellow lines until we reached the corner and another sidewalk. It was ridiculously fun, in the way adventures that aren’t really adventurous can be.

On Friday night, I grilled steak and asparagus and roasted white sweet potato for a simple yet very tasty dinner. On Saturday morning, I made spicy sweet potato hash with a poached egg for breakfast. The sweet potato was orange that time. On Saturday night, I baked chicken thighs with lemon and capers and a little garlic salt, roasted purple sweet potatoes, and made a salad of mixed greens, apple, radish, cucumber, red onion, and a fig balsamic vinegar. Three different meals, three different sweet potatoes, all of them delicious.

I don’t know why those stories felt connected — something about the ordinary, the everyday, the sameness of sweet potatoes at every meal? But I don’t have time to ponder the relationship of adventure and the mundane in my new life anymore. Or to write about loneliness and joy, which was what I was thinking about while I watched the sunrise this morning and which is definitely worthy of a blog post of its own.

Instead, I’m going to solve the problem of getting the dog to a vet, not worry about the laundry, and write at least a few new words on Grace. May all our Cyber Mondays be productive!

Happy Birthday, Mom

25 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in Mom

≈ 3 Comments

On Monday, I gave a presentation at my dad’s computer club. I was chatting before it started with one of the women in the room and I couldn’t say how it came up, but she said to me, “We knew your mom. She was wonderful.” I had a fleeting moment where I thought I might burst into tears on the spot, but I swallowed them back and agreed, “Yes, she was.”

Today would have been her 73rd birthday. I wore a necklace that we bought together in St. Thomas on some one of our family trips — I think maybe a vacation as the year changed from 2000 to 2001 — and a pair of earrings that belonged to her, and all day long I’ve been thinking of her.

I know it’s okay that she’s gone — she would have been five years farther into her Alzheimer’s diagnosis if the pancreatic cancer hadn’t taken her and she wouldn’t have liked that at all — but I miss her. She loved Christmas and the holidays. She would have been baking up a storm, buying presents, and decorating like mad already and my wishy-washiness about where I was going to be for the next month would be driving her crazy.

But I made Christmas cookies with my niece today — sugar cookies, the roll-out kind — and my mom would have liked that a lot. It wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t think, “hmm, what can I do on my mom’s birthday that would please her if she knew about it?” and then decide to bake cookies with my niece. But if I had tried to do something that would please her, I probably couldn’t have picked anything better. And there’s something truly satisfying about that.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Fighting to be flexible

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by in Personal, RV, Serenity

≈ 2 Comments

On Tuesday, my writing group friends reminded me that our monthly dinner would be happening Wednesday night. Unfortunately, I was at a campground about ninety minutes away. Lynda offered me her driveway — a nice long driveway, with plenty of room — but my instinctive response was “No, I can’t, I’m at this campground for another two days.”

It took me a while to question myself. Why was I staying at that campground when I could be going out to dinner with friends? Why did I feel locked in to a commitment that I had made to absolutely no one? The campground didn’t care if I left early, and it was a Thousand Trails campground so it wasn’t costing me much money. And even if it had been, even if it had been a $50/night campground (which I have stayed at only once), the money was spent, one way or another, and it wouldn’t cost me anything to go spend the night in Lynda’s driveway instead.

So Wednesday morning, I packed up and headed north. What a great decision. I had a lovely day of writing with L, a really fun dinner with a terrific group of people and good conversations about writing, and although I didn’t sleep well, at 4AM, my characters got chatty again. Yay!

Today turned out to be another totally unexpected day: my plan was to find a quiet place to sit and work, but a friend needed some help and so I wound up venturing forth to unexpected places. I didn’t get much writing done — witness the blog post that I am finally getting to at almost 10PM — but if life were a game, I would have racked up some excellent karma points.

Last night at dinner my friend Angela (hi, Angela!) asked me what had surprised me about life in the camper. I don’t think I said this then, although I might have, but one of the things that has surprised me is how uncomfortable I am with uncertainty. I like knowing where I’m going to be spending the night. I like having my calendar mapped out. And while I want adventures and new places, I am much more prone to deciding where I’ll be camping two weeks out and then sticking to that decision than I am just going where the wind takes me.

But I think I want to work on that. I think I need more days of going where the wind takes me. Some of the nights that really stick out in my memory are the ones that were unexpected: the Harvest Hosts stay at a farm in campground, the parking lot in West Virginia. I’m pretty sure today will be a day I remember for a long time, too, even though I’m parked in a familiar driveway this evening. But being flexible, being willing to be spontaneous, being able to live with uncertainty… it’s all part of living in the now, being present for my life as it is and as it can be. I want to be able to embrace the uncertainty, because the surprises that come with uncertainty are worth the effort.

 

Here Be Alligators

14 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Anxiety, Personal, Pets, Randomness, Serenity

≈ 4 Comments

The signs actually say, “Warning: Alligators may be present.” The signs below those, smaller, say, “Watch out for snakes!”

It’s astonishing how threatening I find them. Really, they don’t say, “Alligators, sure thing, your dogs are going to get EATEN! And by the way, the snakes are poisonous and deadly.” But I seem to read them that way. As a result, despite being camped right next to a lovely river, I haven’t done any kayaking and my walks through the nature trails tend to be hasty and paranoid.

Florida does have a lot of snakes, but they really aren’t interested in eating people. The most deadly was going to feature in A Gift of Grace, a coral snake. Mostly because we stopped making coral snake antivenin a few years back, because it was too expensive, and that seemed like such a statement about modern society. Bit by a coral snake? Tough luck. We could have saved you ten years ago, when we cared more about people than money, but those years are gone. Not that doctors won’t try, but the antivenin they have available is both expired and so scarce that they try to save it until they’re sure you’re dying, not just paralyzed and struggling to breathe.

Also, coral snakes are a very pretty snake. I saw one in my backyard a couple of years ago — several inches away from my bare foot — and stood frozen, watching it slither away, while my brain said, “red on yellow, red on yellow, red on yellow, pretty sure that’s bad, bad, bad. But there can’t possibly be a deadly snake in my backyard. Can there?” Once it was gone, I went inside and looked it up and yep, red on yellow = deadly. That’s how I found out about the antivenin. The experience would have made for a fun touch of realism in the book — I’m pretty sure I was holding my breath the entire time I watched that pretty little snake and I know my heart was pounding so loudly I could hear it in my ears, that sort of throbbing you can get in your head when your heart is working too hard.

But I finally gave up on the coral snake. For whatever reason, it never worked quite right. Maybe some future book.

Meanwhile, in this book, everything I’ve written for the past several days has turned out nihilistic and bleak. Grace would turn into a tragedy if I let it. So I’m going to delete everything from last week and try, try again. Someday I really will finish this book. It won’t, however, be this week. Drat.

 

A text exchange for the day after

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Therapy

≈ 5 Comments

Me: I need to be thinking gratitude thoughts, not rage thoughts.

E: I’m right there with you. I’m grateful for my life. For my family. I’m grateful for you. For the sun coming up. For smiling dogs and delicious food.

Me: Yes! I’m grateful for a beautiful sunrise this morning and a warm healthy dog curled up next to me, for good friends and a roof over my head, for food in my fridge… and that my son is Canadian. 🙂

E: I’m also grateful for vegan cheese, fresh water to drink, and falling maple leaves.

Me: Coffee, the possibility of a warm shower and clean clothes! Plus comfortable shoes and a temp in the 70s.

E: OH! Shampoo! I hadn’t washed my hair in a week and it was WHOA. A man who cooks, listens intently and loves his children. Apples. The smell of soil. Butterflies and lizards.

Me: Ah, I love the man who cooks, etc. Rainbows, ripples on water, the taste of fresh ripe peaches, and snuggling into a bed with clean sheets.

E: Bartleby kisses and grass between my toes… clean towels and laughter.

Me: Music. Imagination and novels and good soup.

E: Seared scallops, knitted scarves, and intimate, soulful conversation.

Me: The sound of rain on the roof of Serenity, chocolate, and unexpected adventures. And sushi.

E: Fresh greens, cicadas doing their thing… owls hooting.

Me: Amazon, for delivery and book sales. R.

E: Used books, dandelions, my HP.

Me: …cell phones, fireflies, dew on spiderwebs…

E: Tiny little mushrooms that spring up overnight, pho, chickadees, a smile from a stranger.

…My list will go on today. The sun is shining, I had gluten-free pumpkin pancakes for breakfast, and Zelda didn’t get eaten by an alligator during our morning walk. Life could be worse.