Category Archives: Randomness

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.

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 shape of a day

12 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in Pets, Randomness

≈ 4 Comments

Yesterday, a dog threw up on the bed and I didn’t notice until after I sat in the vomit. (I say “a dog” because I have no idea which dog, but I suspect Zelda, because Bartleby tends to try again when he throws up. He doesn’t care if it’s partially digested and didn’t agree with him the first time around, food is food to B.)

Anyway, as I wrote to a friend, sat-upon dog vomit is the kind of event that is capable of shaping a day if I let it. As is happens, I had recently spilled coffee all over my other sheets, so that was the end of my usable sheets. It meant that I had to do laundry, on a Sunday, at a campground laundry, with coin-operated machines, all of which adds up to another event that can shape a day.

It made me think about the shapes of days. Some are flat, of course. That’s a definite day shape, for the ones where you reach the end of the day and wonder why you even bother to get out of bed. Of course, the days where you don’t bother to get out of bed can be pretty flat, too.

There are also curvy days. I think those happen when something unexpected but not bad unexpected takes place. Truly bad unexpected days are pointy, that’s their shape — like stakes through the heart. Maybe curvy days are also the days with lots of ups and downs? When the day starts out bad but recovers nicely? Those could be curvy days.

I don’t know what a triangle day would look like. Or a square day. But angular days definitely exist. Those are the ones that include trips to the DMV or the dentist’s office, without compensating chocolate or flowers to make them curvy. I like the thought of fractal days, but I have no idea what they’d actually contain. Maybe hallucinogens or high fevers?

And when it comes right down to it, I’m not sure what shape yesterday wound up being. The laundry was exactly as crowded as I expected it to be, but people were friendly and sociable. I felt productive when I had clean sheets on the bed, satisfied with my efforts. I’m using this software called Streaks, to track my efforts in exercise, meditation, and writing, and managed not to break any of my streaks yesterday, and that was satisfying, too. If it was a shape… well, I think it would be a complicated shape. Maybe a spiral?

I’m not sure what shape today’s going to be: I’m packing up Serenity so that I can take Zelda to the vet for her re-check of her ear infection. I’m at about 75% certainty that she still has an ear infection, which is not going to be fun, of course. And the vet is an hour away, via major highways, so I’m not charmed by the thought of driving and dealing with traffic. I’m also a little worried about this vet’s parking lot. I was there once before, in a regular car, and I was grateful that I didn’t have to try to park the van in the close quarters of the crowded lot, so today’s parking might not be much fun. On the other hand, on the road always has potential for adventure. And an hour or two with nothing to do but drive safely and think about Max’s motivation might actually result in some forward movement in Grace. 

What shape is your day going to be?

A bed with a view

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Randomness

≈ 2 Comments

I just turned out the lights and opened the blinds, told Alexa to set a sleep timer for thirty minutes, wiggled my way around the dog that was sleeping on my pillow, apologizing to her when she grumbled but pointing out that it is MY pillow, not hers, and settled down to go to sleep.

Outside my window, the night is not totally dark. The camper next to mine has some kind of a glowy light on their picnic table and I can see the little blue & green dots of light from my surge protector. But I can also see stars through shadowed trees. Not a ton of stars, just a sprinkling of them, but enough to give the night a sense of mystery.

It’s also got a sense of chill. It’s going down to the high 30s tonight apparently, and the walls are cold. The heater works great, so I’m not cold, but when I brush against the walls and the window, there’s a definite chill. It feels like winter.

So I was thinking, as I snuggled down into my bed, “Maybe I should blog about that tomorrow. Feeling like winter. Sense of mystery… hey, wait. Isn’t today a Monday?”

I think today is a Monday. I’m pretty sure, in fact, that it’s a Monday. And I have blogged every single Monday of 2016. But today I just forgot. I gave a presentation at my dad’s computer club about self-publishing this afternoon and was still writing it this morning. Well, writing it but also finding pictures, positioning them, doing all that Powerpoint stuff. After I gave the presentation, I walked the dogs, then packed up and headed off to a new campground. Getting settled, cooking dinner, walking the dogs again… and suddenly I was in bed, settling down to a chilly sleep with a beautiful view and no blog post.

And now I am going to settle down to a chilly sleep with a beautiful view and a very brief blog post. In five weeks, I’ll decide whether I’m going to continue blogging every Monday, but meanwhile, I am glad I remembered in time not to break my streak!

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.

 

Paying attention to what’s there…

28 Friday Oct 2016

Posted by in Meditation, Personal, Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

I’ve bought a bunch of graphics apps recently — one for my laptop, a couple for my phone — in the hopes of producing better images. But I still forget to take pictures, making the graphics apps a little pointless. Alas.

But this week could have had some good photos. I’ve been doing useful things — doctor’s appointment, service on Serenity, visiting friends — but in between those useful things, I’ve had times when I had no place to go, no place to be. It’s sort of a weird feeling. I can’t decide to go home or back to the campground because I am at home and my home is not situated in a campground. I just have to figure out where home should be, in between movements, if that makes any sense.

The easiest option is always to just find a big parking lot. There are seriously a lot of big parking lots in the world. Walmart, grocery stores, shopping malls… sadly, Trader Joe’s never has big enough parking lots, but I can usually find a parking lot somewhere in which to sit. However, parking lots are mostly boring. (I say mostly because the one I sat in on Saturday for hours and hours had a rescue group looking for homes for puppies. I was too stressed about my dogs to appreciate them, but cute puppies everywhere definitely improves a parking lot.)

This week, however, post-my lovely scenic ocean parking lot, I’ve used my GPS to find the nearest parks. It’s been weird because I’m very close to… well, to what was home. On Monday, I was three minutes away from my old house, because I was visiting my storage unit. I hung out in a park that I spent seven years living not five minutes away from and had never visited. The next day, I went to one that was about five miles away. It was lovely. A beautiful county park, next to a big lake, with boardwalks through old Florida cypress forests. And the whole time I lived here, it was right around the corner and I never knew, never looked…

It’s a good lesson, but I have to admit, I’d still much rather be off exploring parks in new places. I’m doing my best to appreciate where I am — and I do, definitely, appreciate my time with friends and family — but I’m also yearning to be off again. I’ve got things to do in Florida, but I’m pretty sure Texas is calling my name. Soon. First, though, a few more weeks in Florida and a few thousand more words in Tassamara.

 

A Room with a View

24 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Randomness, RV, Serenity, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

On Friday, I left my campground in Vero Beach, with some unexpected regret. I really thought that ten days sitting still, all alone, was going to make me totally stir-crazy, but I was completely peacefully happy there. And the writing went so incredibly well — it was writing like I haven’t experienced since, I think, February 2014, which is an awfully specific date, but it was when Fen was spilling out of me like she was writing A Lonely Magic by herself.

I tried to convince myself to wait until the last minute to leave the campground, but that is just not in my nature. When I know I’m going, I need to go, so I packed up early and hit the road. But since I was on the road, I decided we should have a little adventure. I headed for Captain Forster Hammock Preserve, a dog-friendly park that according to Bring Fido included a pleasant 3/4 mile hike to a beach where dogs were allowed. I got lost on the way there and wound up driving on a dirt road for about forty minutes, through mud puddles galore, but eventually found it and took the dogs for a walk. Not, however, a 3/4 mile hike to the beach.

The post-hurricane mud puddles had turned the trails into slip-and-slides, as well as creating perfect breeding grounds for a mosquito world domination plan. When B sat down and refused to go any farther after about twenty minutes — I think we were getting close to the beach, but I couldn’t say for sure — I decided to take his opinion as law, and we turned and headed back to the van.

I’m one of those people with blood that must taste like mosquito ambrosia and as a result, I’m pretty mosquito tolerant. I’ve claimed before that my secret superpower is the ability to defend other people from mosquitoes, because a mosquito will always go for me if it has the option. I’m usually very good at ignoring them. But not even I could ignore those mosquitoes. They were very, very happy to have discovered me, but so prolific that some were even going after the dogs. Still, the park was beautiful. It felt like walking through a jungle, with palm trees and underbrush, but with nice wide paths.

As we headed back inland, I was thinking about the rest of my plans for the day: grocery store, maybe storage unit clean-up,  hanging out in a parking lot until I could meet up with a friend for dinner, and wishing I could really just write instead. Noah’s being so very, very opinionated. Quick example:

She’d neatly sidestepped his earlier question, returning to ridiculous stories about her brother and other people in the town. He hadn’t wanted to call her a liar, but telepathy? Precognition? Auras? Sure, there were people who believed in those things but people believed in astrology and lucky numbers and the dangers of black cats, too. People could be stupid.

He didn’t think Grace was stupid, though.

As I was thinking that, I drove past a… well, sort of a park, I guess? It was a parking lot. With one pavilion and one picnic table and plenty of room for cars. But it was right by the water. Impulsively, I pulled into it and parked, parallel to the water. I got out my computer, and for the next three hours, I wrote to the sound of ocean waves, the smell of sea, and the feel of a cool breeze coming in through the open windows. It was basically paradise.

verobeachroomwithaviewOne of the absolute best things about Serenity, both as an experience and as an aspect of the make of RV I chose (a Winnebago Travato 59K) are her windows. A lot of RVs, especially the smaller ones, are pretty closed up. The wall space is used for storage and appliances and it feels like you’re sitting inside a box. But the Travato 59K has long windows running along the twin beds. In fact, the 59K basically has windows in every single place it’s possible to put a window. Even the bathroom has windows on the doors. When I was looking at it, I liked it because of the light it let in. I thought living in a box would likely be easier if it was a well-lit box. But now that I’ve lived in her for a while, I love it because of the views. I love lying in the bed at night, turning my head two inches to the left to see the night sky. And I love working in my office (the same bed, switching to a perpendicular position) and looking up from the computer to see trees and leaves and… well, sometimes ocean views. In the future, more ocean views, I hope, because although that was the first time I wrote from a parking lot with a view, it will not be the last. Campgrounds with ocean views are too expensive, but parking lots are a bargain.

In other news, Z and B are both sick. I spent the day at the vet on Saturday, emerging precisely $600 poorer. Ironically — or perhaps in just a not-very-amusing coincidence — that was how much I told my brother it would cost the previous day when I was debating whether I needed to take them. Yes, I can predict vet costs! Not a useful skill, really.

And not at all ironically, I was not happy about the results of my visit. Z has been refusing to eat. Not just her kibble but anything. No wet food, no treats, no people food. She rejected rice and roast pork on Friday. The vet ran a bunch of tests, came up with nothing, so sent her home with a bunch of medications and some special food. But since she won’t eat, I couldn’t get her to take either the medications or the food. My big plan for yesterday was to get some chicken and rice and see if she’d take that (nope), and do a bunch more reading about raw diets for dogs. I am somewhat grossed out by the thought of the dogs eating raw chicken in the van — raw chicken, ew! — and I don’t know how I can manage creating the veggie mixes with my tiny fridge, but I think it might be time to try. B, meanwhile, has another ear infection. Yep, life with dogs. Totally worth it, but still frustrating.

And much to my relief, on Monday morning, Z still turned up her nose at the special prescription food, but thought it was definitely time for some of her regular food. Yay! I knew as soon as I woke up that she was better, which was one of those puzzles — how did I know? But I realized after I’d been awake for a while that I knew she was feeling better because she woke me up when she demanded I move the blanket out of the way so that she could come snuggle. That’s the way she generally wakes me up and for the last few days I’d woken up on my own. I would really like not to have to wake up on my own again anytime soon. But I hope I won’t have to.

This week: lots of useful stuff, unfortunately getting in the way of the writing. But seeing some friends, getting a check-up, fixing some stuff that’s wrong with Serenity, spending some time with family — all good stuff. And I hope to squeeze in some more words around the corners.

Quick post

20 Thursday Oct 2016

Posted by in Randomness, Tassamara, Travel, WIP

≈ 6 Comments

For the past three months, I’ve written some… but I’ve also worried that my plan to live in a camper and write a lot was maybe not really going to work out. Because living in a camper is great, I adore it, but the temptations are endless, far more so than living in a house (where I was also not getting enough writing done!)

There’s always some new place to see, some new adventure on the horizon. And I’m not talking about big adventures — whitewater rafting or mountain-climbing — but little adventures. Taking the dogs to a new dog park, spending an hour exploring a new grocery store, finding a way to get my laundry done. And also, of course, visiting people and spending time with them instead of staring at my computer.

However, my plan to sit still for ten days and bore myself into writing has been working incredibly well. I am really happy with what I’ve accomplished with Grace. Lesson learned: I’ve now scheduled the next several weeks and they’re not going to be adventurous. Until Grace is finished, I’m going to sit in Serenity. But I’ll be living in Tassamara, at least in my imagination, and really, it’s a pretty darn fun place to be.

I’m not sure I’ll ever be back at this campground: it’s basically a parking lot and there are a lot of parking lots in the world to explore. No need to stay at the same one twice. But apart from the wonderful dog park, which we have visited every single day, I’ve really loved walking in the dark here. It’s the time of year — it takes forever to get light in the morning, so I’ve been walking Z before sunrise and it’s getting dark early, so I’ve also been walking her in evening darkness. But it’s been incredibly beautiful. The moon was fantastic the past few days, so bright, and the sky was clear enough to see stars, not by the hundreds, alas, but at least by the dozens. In the early morning walks, I cast multiple shadows on the ground, moonlight shadows and streetlight shadows and shadows from lights showing up in trailer windows.

When I write my Massachusetts stories with magic (someday, someday!), there will be at least one character who can send her shadows off to do odd jobs for her. And in a desperate moment, she will search for lights to create many shadows, and in another desperate moment, she’ll be trapped in darkness, unable to find a shadow anywhere.

Someday on this trip — maybe even before I make it to the Grand Canyon — I’m going to visit a place where I can see thousands of stars in the night sky. I want to have that moment of amazement and wonder, that hold-your-breath awe at the beauty that lurks above us all the time that we hardly ever get to see.

But today, I’m going to write some more Grace.

Weather report

17 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Grace, Randomness, Recipes, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

I parked in this parking-lot campground seven days ago and I haven’t left it since. I ought to be going totally stir-crazy — I haven’t even spoken to another person in the past week, apart from the occasional hello to a passing stranger — but I’m really not. Every day the weather report says that it’s going to be cloudy and rainy and every day it’s actually mostly sunny instead. That’s sort of representative of my mood, too. I feel like I should be bored, but I’m quite content.

I keep thinking that I’m going to need to go to the grocery store, because I’m going to run out of food, but then I keep making up something new from what I have. Yesterday, I had leftover pancake batter that was too liquid. It was the last remnants of the box of gluten-free pancake mix and not quite enough mix to balance out the single egg that needed to be added. Since it was going to be crepe-like, I made it savory — I added green onion and cilantro, then topped it with hot sauce and rolled it up. I tried to convince myself that it didn’t violate my “no complicated meals” rule and it really didn’t — it was leftovers! — but making something interesting and delicious out of remnants is so satisfying. Today, I still have two apples, some cheese, some salad greens, a cucumber, eggs… I even still have some of my precious gluten-free chocolate chip cookies left. Yeah, so today will still not be the day I go to the grocery store. Maybe tomorrow.

I’ve mostly stuck to my only knitting and writing principle. I did give myself a book on Saturday night, but I’d done great work during the day, so it felt justified. Yesterday was not so great — only 700 words — but I have high hopes for today. And since I have nothing interesting to blog about — really, I wrote about the weather? — I’m going to get back to the words that I’m really working on. Favorite lines from yesterday… dang, all the good ones are too spoiler-y. But good words were written!

Favorite non-spoiler-y lines from the weekend (brought back from a previous version, I think):

Grace crossed her fingers again. “I’ll do that.”

She shouldn’t lie to her brother. But it served him right. He shouldn’t be such a pain in the ass.