Puzzle though I might, I cannot figure out how to make my climax work. I discovered a huge plot-hole a few weeks ago, and spent a fair amount of time patching it, but honestly, it’s the kind of plot-hole that will destroy your story’s suspension. A little too much shock absorption! (Ha, I amuse myself.)

Ahem, anyway, I figured out today that I could fix it the same way I fixed an earlier plot-hole, and it would be much better, much stronger. Less like a patch of asphalt and more like repaving. But unfortunately, it means re-writing at least two chapters. *sigh* And I think I need to do those rewrites before doing much more, because the story will make more sense if I’ve got those done. So today I’m debating going back and revising or just plowing forward, knowing that changes to what I’ve already written will be happening later. Decisions, decisions.

On a random other note, I saw Pacific Rim today. R hated it when he saw it, said it was totally stupid, but I actually sort of loved it. I’d call it gloriously hokey, truly an old-fashioned Godzilla movie, complete with mad scientists and ridiculous technology and plots that make absolutely no sense. But a spectacular old-fashioned Godzilla movie, merged with awe-inspiring special effects. I laughed quite a lot and couldn’t take it seriously. It definitely had problems, first of which is that it was many movies merged in one; the story of the brave Australian, marching off to certain doom with a tear in his eye for the family he left behind just did not blend well with the two scientists teaming up to read an alien embryo brain. Ha. Even just writing that out made me laugh again. But it amused me greatly.

My car died yesterday.

Turned the key. Nothing. Lights showed up, but the engine acted as if I wasn’t even there.

I love my car. She’s a ten year old Honda Civic hybrid, silver blue. Her name is Sylvia and she is absolutely reliable. We had murmurings this summer of doing a car exchange: my dad has a five year old Toyota Prius that he might like to get rid of and it would make sense for me to take the newer car. R was horrified. With great reluctance, he agreed that I could do whatever I wanted when he was gone but he patted Sylvia during his ride to the airport and told her she was a good car and he’d miss her. Unsurprisingly, I still have her.

Yes, I’m the kind of person who can love a car. And I raised one of the same.

But I’m not impractical.

So this morning, I faced the day grimly. Called the car service shop. They’d see her whenever I managed to get her there. Before I called a tow place, C suggested I try roadside assistance for my car insurance. I was skeptical. The car was not by the side of the road, after all. Turns out, yes, roadside assistance would tow my car for free. Yay!

While I waited for phone calls back and a tow truck driver to arrive, trying to write seemed pointless–too many anticipated interruptions. So I vacuumed. Cleaned the bathroom. Took out the trash. Unloaded the dishwasher. Stripped the sheets off my bed. Started some laundry. Dusted. Organized my desk. Opened my mail and actually tossed the useless stuff, filed the rest. And finally, the tow truck driver arrived.

I felt so damn productive. Usually I clean in little bits and pieces around other stuff, and I never get done. There’s always more to do, work left unfinished, jobs I’ll get to later. Today, I just kept looking for something new to do–because after all, the driver would be here in half an hour, fifteen minutes, ten minutes, five minutes, any minute, a while ago, sometime really soon. He probably only took an hour. If I’d spent that hour sitting by the side of the road, I would have been an unhappy camper, but I didn’t and I wasn’t.

Once the car was gone, I started writing. And it was fun.

I’d love to know why. In the fourteen months that I’ve been working on this ridiculous book, it’s been many things but rarely fun. Today, though–well, Natalya and a smart-mouthed teenage boy are getting into it, and… oh, right, writing a smart-mouthed teenage boy entertains me. Huh. That seemed really obvious once I thought about it. I think after I finish this series of romances, I may need to go YA for a while. Not that my romances haven’t been heavy on the teenage presence–I’d say Thought never did manage to decide whether it was romance or YA–but perhaps I should acknowledge that I drift in the YA direction even when I don’t intend to.

But none of that is the point. I had fun writing, I got a lot done around the house, my bedroom is clean, and Sylvia just had a bad battery. $150 and a new battery later, and she’s back home in the garage, good for…well, a while longer we hope.

And a day that started out badly wound up feeling really good. Somewhere in there is a metaphor or a moral or an aphorism waiting to be found, but I don’t know what it is.

Favorite lines of the day (although to be honest, I really like quite a lot of the lines I wrote today):

“What’s he going to do, point a gun at me?” Natalya snapped.
“Ha.” The boy scowled, but didn’t raise his weapon. “Lawyers, more like. Social workers. Judges. They’ll say no proof, need evidence, best place for you, man’s got rights. End of the road, kid.” Bitterness etched his voice and the lines drawing down his mouth.

Possibly my favorite XKCD ever. I wonder how many messages he’s gotten about the missing apostrophes in the final panel? Let’s face it, only we unenlightened ones care.

Last summer, my father married a North Carolina native. For their anniversary this year, he rented a house on the Outer Banks, in the town of Duck, North Carolina, and invited the whole family to come. For the past seven days, I shared a house with my siblings and my nieces and nephews. Ahead of time, the local family was planning events–trips to historic attractions, plays, gardens, and so on. I decided against that form of vacation. Instead, my vacation days looked like this:

Get up early and walk the dog on the beach.

Eat a lovely breakfast.

Here’s my favorite: french toast with lemon ginger marmalade. So yummy.

Play with the kids or talk to family. I let all the kids teach me their favorite iPad games, and am addicted to a new one called Puzzle and Dragons–it’s like a combination of Bejeweled and Pokemon.

Head back to the beach with the dog. Hang out in the sun. Throw the ball as many times as she’ll chase it.

Zelda’s a great beach dog. Well-behaved off-leash and loves the water

Walk back to the house. Have some quiet time. I meant to write, but that didn’t happen. Mostly I curled up with Zelda and played iPad games.

Eat some lunch and start cooking dinner. We had flank steak one night, using my mom’s marinade recipe, with corn on the cob, salad, and fruit salad. Home-made French onion soup, followed by chicken in a lime-sriracha-butter sauce another. Tortilla wraps with grilled chicken or spicy shrimp and homemade guacamole and mango salsa a third. Sausages–chicken apple or spicy manchego–the fourth, plus grilled shrimp, watermelon, cantaloupe, artichoke crab dip, a spicy pepper-onion relish over cream cheese on crackers. I could flood the bandwidth with pictures of food but will spare you. Well, maybe just one.

I thought I bought enough steak for two meals but I wasn’t counting on the teenage boys.

After dinner, another walk back to the beach.

Sunset (I think, anyway!)

Most days included a little something else: a lunchtime visit to a restaurant where R and I split a plate of oysters; an ice cream cone at the Duck boardwalk; grocery shopping at a lovely store where we tried Dandelion & Burdock soda (tastes like medicine); a visit to the candy shop with niece in tow where we debated candy for everyone and wound up with Sugar Babies, candy Legos, sour balls, ginger chews, and creamy mints; trips to visit the step-siblings; a birthday celebration; a couple of dinners out–fish, crab legs, lobster salad–all delicious; splashing in the swimming pool–sometimes as I was cooking dinner on the grill at the same time.

But mostly it was long days filled with lots of sand, sun, saltwater, food, and family. I’m home now, a little exhausted from the long drive–almost fourteen hours and the dog was so worried about being left behind that she didn’t get out of my lap once!–but eager to get back to writing. And nostalgic already.

In 17 days, R heads off to school in Seattle. I don’t know when or if we’ll ever have another family vacation like this one, but I tried to savor every lovely minute of it.

It hurts just as much to be stung by a pretty wasp

This wasp stung me.*

In a perfect metaphor for my psychological make-up, I immediately started excusing it. I disturbed it. It was startled. Blah-blah-blah.

You know what? Making excuses for the wasp didn’t make the sting stop hurting.

Lavendar oil, however, was quite effective. Also, R hit the wasp’s dead body with a hammer. That helped, too.

*Possibly I’m condemning the wasp unfairly. I didn’t actually see what stung me. I’m just going by the fact that I started hurting, dramatically jumped and dropped the palm frond I was carrying, and then the wasp was in the pool when it hadn’t been a few moments earlier. Also, you know, it hurt. A lot. And this little note really adds to my metaphor, doesn’t it?