The wisdom of a feather

29 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Randomness, Serenity, Zelda

I started counting the number of birds I could see from my window — like, right outside the window, fifteen feet away — and then something startled them and they swooped away and I realized that all the things I thought were dark leaves on the ground were actually small birds. I’m going to say — 200? 300? Not a countable number, that’s for sure. Sadly, they’ve now all moved on, but that’s probably a good thing for my productivity, since I find watching a flock of birds to be surprisingly compelling.

The last time I was in Arkansas, I got the very last space at an absolutely packed campground, Lake Catherine State Park. It was lovely, but it was spring break and it was crowded. Since this is Easter weekend, I decided that this time I’d be a little more proactive and I made a reservation at Lake Chicot State Park for five nights, taking me safely through Easter.

Ha.

I’m going to say that last year, lots of Arkansians looked at the weather, decided it was a glorious time to go camping, and headed for the park. It was a glorious time to go camping. This year, those same Arkansians looked at the weather and decided it was a fine time to hunker down in their houses. It so is.

The campground is pretty close to deserted and also pretty close to drowned. The puddles are like lakes. The lake is not overflowing its banks, fortunately, but there are a lot of semi-underwater trees. Even Zelda, who doesn’t usually mind getting wet, stood at the open door of the van this morning and then decided against her walk.

Fortunately, my deserted rainy underwater campground is also very green and pretty. Loads of trees, all in early-spring mode instead of tail-end of winter mode. Light green leaves and life bursting out all over the place. So I’m not finding it spooky, I’m finding it charming. I’m helped just a little in this by the fact that I checked out the bathrooms this morning and they are terrific. I might have to take a shower every day just because the bathrooms are so clean and nice and new.

I’m slightly less enthusiastic about the fact that even though I paid for a full hook-up site — not a thing I do very often, so in the nature of a pleasant luxury for a holiday weekend — the separate pieces (water, electric, sewer) are positioned poorly for Serenity. Technically I have all three, but I have to choose which one I want to be connected to at any given moment. My hose isn’t long enough to reach from the water outlet to the van intake while the power is plugged into both the van and the power outlet, and ditto the sewer. So it goes, I guess. At least I have access to all three if I need them.

And I’m feeling pretty fortunate on at least one of those three. When I got here yesterday, I couldn’t get the electricity to work. I called the campground host, who sent someone down to take a look, but it was raining and he couldn’t figure it out. They moved me to a different site, and then a third site, so it started to look like the problem was Serenity, not the campground. I was not so happy. I can live without power for a while if I have propane, but because I expected to have power, I hadn’t refilled the propane tank. Frustration!

And then, for no reason I could see, the electricity started working. Based on the symptoms, the smart people in the Travato Owners FB group suspect that I might have a problem with my Automatic Transfer Switch — maybe a loose connection? — but it’s working now, so I’m just counting my blessings and hoping for the best.

blue jay and cardinal feathers

Speaking of blessings, did you know that it is illegal to own most bird feathers? It still feels magical to find them, though, especially when they are truly beautiful. It would never have occurred to me that picking up a feather could be a crime, but after I’d picked up the above, I was remembering the park ethos — take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints — and so I left them behind. Well, first I googled to find out whether something in nature would use leftover bird feathers — was I leaving them behind to simply decay and rot? — and that’s how I found out that feather possession is a crime. They probably will simply decay and rot, but I’m glad I got to appreciate them first.

Along the way, I stumbled across all the many spiritual meanings of blue jay feathers. I suspect the spiritual meaning of feathers is sort of a choose-your-own adventure spirituality, because wow, people sure have found a lot of deep significance in some poor bird having a misadventure. But I was pretty amused by one site that told me the meaning was to “Choose a couple of the many projects on your plate and complete them.” How perfect is that?

Time to listen to the wisdom of the feather!

Cozy days

26 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Chicken, Food, Soup, Sous Vide, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

I woke up yesterday to a gray, rainy, chilly day and thought, “I have got to get out of here.”

I woke up today to a gray, rainy, mildly chilly day and thought, “Oh, what a good day to snuggle down into my cozy nest and write a lot.”

I’m really not sure what the difference is. I had a nice lake view yesterday and you’d think that would have satisfied me. I’m speculating, though, that green is the color that matters. Yesterday’s campground was gravel and dirt, gray tree trunks, dead brown leaves, slate water, overcast sky. Today’s campground is some of the above (although not the water), but also spring green grass and forest green pine trees. Plenty of brown in view, too, but it doesn’t feel Gothic.

Another difference might be technological. I had no Internet connection and no cell service at yesterday’s campground. I’ve actually quite enjoyed being without internet at points in my travels — it pushes me to be present, to appreciate where I am, instead of mindlessly browsing FB or reading news stories that I instantly forget. But only, I suppose, in places where I feel safe. In general, I like knowing that if I need help, it’s a phone call away.

So, yes, today’s cozy nest includes internet browsing and probably some texting with friends. It also includes some cooking. I picked up chicken breast on sale at the grocery store yesterday, and I’ve already got my sous vide churning away. Two experiments: one with lime juice, yogurt, and mint, and the other with parsley, cilantro, garlic and olive oil. The danger with sous vide chicken is having the flavors be too strong, so I’m a little worried about the garlic version, but if I hate it, Zelda will be very happy to have my leftovers.

As soon as I finish cooking the chicken, I’ve got some corn-on-the-cob ready to go in. I’m quite excited to try it. I thought the sous vide corn I cooked last summer was close to the best corn I’d ever eaten, and it was late summer corn. This is, I hope, very early summer corn, nice and fresh, so it ought to be even better. I’ll see, I guess!

I’m also debating a scallop soup. I’ve got bay scallops in the freezer that need to be used up, but so far I can’t decide between a spicy ginger-lime scallop soup — maybe with rice noodles? — or a chowder-style soup with coconut milk and maybe some curry. But I bought a mix of gluten-free cheese biscuits at Aldi a few weeks back and I think the soup winner might be whatever would go best with the biscuits. The nicest part of mildly chilly days is that using the oven doesn’t cook us, too.

So, yep, cozy day in Mississippi ahead of me. And with some good words on Grace to go, too!

Anthropomorphizing birds. Or just projecting.

25 Sunday Mar 2018

Posted by wyndes in Birds, Campground, Randomness, Travel

≈ 2 Comments

Canadian geese

I woke up to the sound of Canadian geese complaining. Then I spent the next several minutes sleepily castigating myself for negatively anthropomorphizing birds. Surely they were honking or calling or murmuring. Then I woke up a little more and realized that it was still the middle of the night and those birds were definitely complaining. Not sure what they were complaining about — were they drifting in the water? Was some raccoon disturbing their slumber? But they stopped their complaining and I went back to sleep and eventually, when I woke up again, their noises were much more like daybreak murmurings.

I’m in Tennessee, currently at a Thousand Trails campground on the Natchez Trace. I was driving yesterday and remembering the last time I was in Tennessee. I thought then that the state would probably be really pretty in about two more weeks, in spring, but that at that moment, it was bleak and grey, trees all ugly spires of bare trunk with dead, hanging leaves that should have dropped months ago. When I reached my destination, I looked up the date I was last here — coincidentally, but not surprisingly, it was March 24th of last year. The exact same day.

And yeah, I think this state will probably be really pretty in two more weeks, but today, it is the epitome of March showers. Overcast, mildly foggy, everything looking gray. Not pretty, but lovely in a very Goth sort of way. The kind of lonely beauty that makes cups of tea seem highly desirable.

I was planning on spending more time here, but I think instead, I’m going to drift my way south. Or maybe west. But first things first: Z wants her walk.

And later.

I walked Zelda, got back to the van, and instead of making myself some coffee and starting the day, I packed up the van and got on the road. The campground was probably a perfectly nice place. But it’s the kind where people have annual memberships and leave their trailers at their sites year round. Stuff accumulates outside the trailers. Not necessarily bad stuff — potted plants and lights and chairs, golf carts and grills, holiday decorations and signs. But time and weather and entropy combine so quickly to turn pleasant vacation gear into shabby, run-down debris. It didn’t just feel like a trailer park, it felt like an abandoned trailer park. Half depressing and half spooky.

(The bathrooms, however, were excellent — clean and shiny new — and the view was terrific. I had a waterfront site with a lovely lake view. If the weather had been nicer, it might have been a perfectly nice place.)

lake view

So I got on the road and headed south, along the Natchez Trace. It’s a scenic highway along what was once a trail used by bison, Native Americans, and early settlers. At 8AM on a Sunday morning, I was pretty much alone on it and it was lovely. Absolutely peaceful and beautiful. I took a couple breaks along the way, went to a grocery store in Tupelo, Mississippi, and then found myself a campsite at Trace State Park.

I picked the park based on the fact that I like state parks, that I didn’t want to keep driving, and that the sun was showing through the clouds when I walked out of the grocery store. All excellent reasons, but it turns out that somewhere within this park is the birthplace of Davy Crockett. I’m sure there are reasons to disapprove of Davy Crockett these days, but the Disney song is running through my head. And I just read the wikipedia entry on him and he was the only representative from Tennessee to vote against the Indian Removal Act (aka Trail of Tears) and was thanked for it by a Cherokee chief, so yay. I will continue humming cheerfully.

And even though the sky has clouded up again, I feel much happier here. The lake is currently gone — undergoing renovations apparently — so my waterfront spot is really just a “looking out onto a grassy pit” spot, but it is peaceful and quiet. I remember — again from last year — sitting in a campground somewhere in the south and realizing that there are places where those noisy birdsong relaxation medleys that always sound so fake are actually real. This is one of those places. If it weren’t for the hum of the computer, the only sound I’d be able to hear would be the birds chirping and squeaking and whirring and making all those different mysterious sounds they make. Not complaining, though. They sound quite happy! (I could be projecting, though. 🙂 )

No tornadoes

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Grace, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

Looking down, down, down…

So, anyone read about the tornadoes in northwest Georgia? Probably not, because the whole country seems to have been having exciting weather. Turns out there was a reason the ranger was instructing me on safe locations. Fortunately, although I am just about as far north and west as one can get in Georgia, the actual tornadoes hit to the south and east of me. I was never even really worried.

But the weather has mostly not been nice and also not what it was predicted to be. When I decided to come this far north, it was because my weather app was promising 70 degrees and sunshine. That would have been nice. Instead, it was 28 outside this morning! The app actually said 28 degrees, at the same time as it promised that the coldest temp of the day would be 34. Grr…

The good news is that long days holed up inside the van because it’s too cold or too wet to be outside are very good for writing. I’m at one of those points in Grace where I text my friends little snippets of dialogue because I am so very, very amused at my characters. Unfortunately — or fortunately? — they’re now headed in a totally different direction than anything I’ve ever expected them to go in, or that they’ve ever gone before, so I’m once again looking at those 30K words that are already written, that I really thought I was going to be able to re-use, and sighing. Not re-usable.

On the other hand, the characters are having fun and fun is good. If I ever finish this book, it will be a very weird book. But I am going to let go of it and let it be a weird book. Re-reading my Eureka fanfiction reminded me of how much I enjoy weird and how surprised I have been to discover how many other people have enjoyed my brand of weird. Variety of weird? Type of weird? “Brand” feels like marketing-speak, the kind that makes me cringe.

There was something else I was going to write about, but I don’t remember what it was, ha. So I’m going to go back to writing Grace, because my characters have been hanging out in a kayak for weeks now and today is the day where they might finally paddle to shore. That’s totally not a metaphor, at all.

But every time I get grumpy about the weather, I’m going to remind myself that it’s not tornadoes. Or blizzards. Or mudslides. Perspective is everything!

PS I remembered! I was going to write about that waterfall up there. Alas, our explorations have not been as fun as I hoped, because a) weather and b) a lot of the trails have these steep staircases, made of metal stairs with holes in them. Z’s paws are the perfect size to fit right in those holes, so she doesn’t like them. One time — in Texas maybe? — she actually slipped partway through and I was really worried that she’d break her leg trying to escape before I could help her. So we don’t walk on that kind of stairs. If we did, though, we’d be visiting waterfalls! But the weather was clear enough today to see them from above. Not quite as fun as seeing it up-close, but given how cold it is, I probably wouldn’t want to get all that close anyway.

Cloudland Canyon State Park

20 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Travel

≈ 10 Comments

I picked my current campground based on its pretty name: when I read it, I envisioned a land of fluffy white clouds, pristine blue sky, some sort of magical hopping from cloud to cloud over deep ravines, probably birds in pretty colors. You know, a sort of fantasy “Cloudland Canyon.” The anime version.

Duh.

A cloudy scenic overlook

I should have been picturing fog. Dense, heavy, impressive fog. Yep, that’s a scenic overlook and probably there’s sometimes something nice to look at out there. But today it was just clouds. A Land of Clouds.

Worst fog I’ve ever driven through, too. I spent a solid ten minutes in almost total white-out* debating whether it would be worse to be rear-ended because I was driving too slowly or rear-end someone because I was driving too fast. I was going at least twenty miles under the speed limit at the time, so I guess that sort of indicates which I chose. But I did think I might still be driving too fast.

I think white-out refers to blizzards, actually. Grey-out? What’s the word for when visibility is almost nil in fog?

I’m also not terribly enthusiastic about the ranger making sure to tell me where the safe places to take refuge from the weather are. I mean I guess it’s better to know that than not? Well, yeah, of course it is. I just hope it’s knowledge that I don’t need to have.

All that said, I am definitely looking forward to doing more exploring. Zelda and I took a quick walk after we got here, down to the main scenic overlook, and even though we couldn’t see a darn thing except for clouds, the walk was terrific.

path through the campground

Even though I know those stone steps are probably a sign that this was a Conservation Corps park, they make me think of fairy tales and monsters and shimmering borders between worlds. Magic!

Reed Bingham State Park

16 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Randomness

≈ 5 Comments

“… early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way…” – David Hockney, on wanting to paint spring

Zelda and I went on a three mile hike today, through pine scrub forests and wetlands, along a boardwalk and a bumpy, tree-root-filled dirt path. And some paved road, too. It was glorious. It was not, however, our usual first thing in the morning walk, because a) it was COLD at 7AM, here in Georgia, and b) it was also crazily dark.

Sunrise was at 7:44 AM, which I know because I asked Alexa. That’s actually a solid 32 minutes later than sunrise wherever Alexa thinks I live, which I know because while I was staring out my window at the barely lightening sky, we had this conversation.

Me: Alexa, what time is it?
Alexa: It’s 7:08 AM.
Me: Alexa, what time is sunrise?
Alexa: Sunrise is at 7:12 AM.
Me: So why is it so dark outside?
Alexa: …
Me: Alexa, why is it so dark outside?
Alexa: Sorry, I’m not sure.
Me: Alexa, what time is sunrise in Adel, Georgia?
Alexa: Sunrise is at 7:44 AM.
Me: Wow, that’s weird.
Alexa: …

She is not always the best conversationalist. Still, it’s pretty cool that from the comfort of being buried under my covers — two blankets last night for the first time in months! — I can find out what’s happening with the sky.

Anyway, Z and I wound up taking a quick walk, then coming back to Serenity for breakfast and miscellaneous chores. Well, I did miscellaneous chores. Zelda had a nap. But around lunch time we went for our walk and it was spectacular. Probably about fifty-five degrees, with spring popping up around every corner: those pink flowers, and yellow flowers, but also just the early green leaves starting on bare branches. It made me very happy to be in a spring that felt so spring-like.

And I’m happy to be on the road again, too. I really had a lovely last couple of weeks in Florida: I got to spend time with lots of friends, and finished it off with a couple fun days with family. Movies and interesting food and writing with friends, some great conversations and coffee dates — what more could anyone want? But apparently I also want nature and bird song and for the van to be connected to a safe water supply.

And long walks through interesting terrain, the smell of my neighbors’ campfires, and starry, starry night skies.

Making plans

20 Tuesday Feb 2018

Posted by wyndes in Bartleby, Campground, Randomness

≈ 8 Comments

I was feeling gloriously happy this morning — the medical escalator came to a screeching halt yesterday, and I was ever so ready to get off and get moving! — and then I got an email from my doctor’s office with a new appointment for March 13th. Three weeks away! sigh But I am not going to fuss about it. It is what it is. I did consider calling and canceling — I’m not sure why that appointment needs to be in person, except for the general medical need to follow-up face-to-face when firm cautions are involved — but I’m not going to worry about it.

I’ve realized a couple things about my next couple of months, anyway. The first is that without B, I don’t have such an imperative need to get out of Florida. He was miserable when it was too hot. Even without the congestive heart failure, he was a pudgy little guy with a thick coat of black fur, and the heat was hard on him. Even in 70 degree weather, he’d be panting. Zelda — white dog, thinner coat, skinny and energetic — doesn’t mind the heat nearly as much. And one of the big issues about the heat was that I needed to be able to leave B in the van while I walked Zelda, so I always needed to be able to have the AC running. That’s no longer a problem. I wish it was. I’d much rather be worrying about B and trying to make him comfortable than living without him. But again, it is what it is.

The second thing isn’t a realization as much as it is a hard look at my timeline: I need to be back in Florida in the middle of May for R’s graduation. That gives me two months. And I don’t want to spend them driving. Long driving days are exhausting and time-consuming. There are places I wanted to go — I’d rather be spending spring in the northeast than the south — but I don’t want to be rushing around, spending hours on the road and worrying about getting to my destinations on a schedule that doesn’t give me enough time to enjoy them (and to write a book along the way!)

So my current plan, such as it is, is to relax and enjoy the south. I’ll have a few more weeks in Florida and then I’ll do some exploring in Georgia and maybe South Carolina, maybe even back to Arkansas, and then I’ll swing back into Florida for the first part of May. And then May 20th or so, I will head north, taking my time about it.

And after a stressful couple of weeks, I am relaxing and enjoying my day today. I’m in Lake Griffin State Park, which is a place I’ve stayed before, but I like it more every time I’m here, I think. It’s a small park, close enough to a busy road that you never stop hearing road noise, but I don’t mind that. This morning I took Zelda on a walk down a path that we’ve never gone on before, because of warnings about mud. I could hear the traffic, but being surrounded by nature, breathing fresh air, seeing greenery and giant palmettos and pretty yellow flowers scattered across dead brown leaves on the ground felt magical. Like I’d discovered a primeval swamp in the backyard of a strip mall. And then we reached a place on the trail where the mud was thick and black and goopy and Zelda decided she wanted no part of it. She dragged me back the way we came. Now I’m sitting in the van, windows open, listening to traffic but also birds and breezes in the leaves and a far distant barking dog, and watching a yellow butterfly. It’s a beautiful day for writing many words. Here’s hoping lots of them are on Grace!

Last night’s sliver of moon

Trimble Park

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Photography

≈ 6 Comments

I had a perfectly lovely day yesterday. It feels like there ought to be an ingredient list for lovely days: take 70 degree weather, add sunshine and a light breeze, mix in some good food, a sprinkle of pleasant surroundings, and voila, you’ve got a lovely day. But I don’t think it generally works like that. The right ingredients don’t mean a thing if you’re in the wrong mood. And if you’re in the right mood, the ingredients can be all wrong and the day can still be perfectly lovely.

Plus, some of the ingredients change. Most of the time, I truly appreciate having music be a part of my day, but yesterday, I never bothered to turn any on, because the silence felt so peaceful and pleasant. Well, and not very silent. There are a ton of birds in Trimble Park, the campground I’m staying in, and it’s never silent. Peaceful and pleasant and lovely, though, definitely.

Today, alas, was not nearly so lovely. Mostly because I spent a good chunk of the day dealing with health insurance stuff. I think I will not use my blog to vent about that, because it’s not anything I’m going to want to re-read a decade from now — I suppose someday I might feel nostalgic for my current health insurance, but I sincerely hope that doesn’t come to pass. But it was enough to… well, not ruin my day. But take it down from “perfectly lovely” to more of the “count your blessings” level.

Fortunately, one of my blessings is that I am surrounded by beauty. Florida has its flaws — the mosquitoes seem to be thriving and quite happy right now — but it sure can deliver on the sunsets.

sunset at Trimble Park

Cozy in Sarasota

13 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Grace, Randomness

≈ 2 Comments

An Oscar Scherer sunrise

I’m back at Oscar Scherer State Park, the closest state park to R in Sarasota for the holidays. I love this place. I think serious campers might take issues with some aspects of it — it’s almost always possible to hear traffic noise from the nearby highway, my site is small and sloped — but it is so beautiful at sunrise. Equally so after dark, when it is truly dark and the stars are bright in the night sky. Dark nights, plus CostCo ten minutes drive away — my version of paradise.

I set up after dark on Sunday and didn’t do the best job of it, but I told myself that it didn’t matter because I’d go to the grocery store on Monday and do better when I came back. Better, in this case, equates to not sitting on the worst part of the slope, making the driver’s side higher than the passenger’s side. It’s not a big slope, it’s not the kind anyone would care about if they were just parking, but it’s noticeable when you’re living on it. Round items placed on the kitchen counter roll right off. (In other words, don’t spill the blueberries!)

But on Monday, I decided I didn’t really need groceries yet. Tuesday, I decided the same thing. Pretty sure that I’m going to make the same decision again today. I’m feeling so utterly cozy and content. Knitting and walking and listening to music and writing and reading and thinking and admiring the beautiful place I get to be in. It’s cold by Florida standards, in the 40s when I walk Z in the morning, but then warming up to the high 60s in the afternoon, so I get to eat my lunch and dinner sitting outside in the sunshine, the dogs on their tie-outs, and then snuggle up under my blankets when I go to sleep at night.

Writing yesterday did not go well. I got bogged down on something stupid, but meaningful to me — the description of Grace’s office — and didn’t make any progress at all. But the story is becoming the thing I think about falling asleep, the thing I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night, the thing I think about when I wake up. That was how Ghosts was. I was in the middle of so much back then — grad school and grief — but half the time my head was in Tassamara. It was a lovely place to escape to. Right now, I’m not feeling like I need to escape — I’m loving where I am — but the worlds are blending together. After the holidays, if I’m not finished yet, maybe I’ll go up to Ocala and let the worlds truly blend.

Williamsburg Thousand Trails RV park

06 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by wyndes in Campground, Grace, Personal

≈ 8 Comments

Out of one window, I am watching my neighbor do something mysterious with their sewer hose — ah, they were just packing up, actually. And out of the other window, I can see the dumpsters. So not much choice for a view in this campground. But that said, I think this is the nicest Thousand Trails campground I’ve stayed in.

It’s typical of the Thousand Trails places — which, in general, does mean not really for me. There’s an indoor swimming pool, a jacuzzi, a basketball court, a great mini-golf course (I think the nicest campground mini-golf course I’ve seen), a game room with arcade games and pool tables, a camp store, an “adult lounge”, even a pond. And it’s big enough that it was very easy to take Zelda on a one-mile walk this morning.

And full hook-ups! I don’t usually look for full hook-ups or take advantage of them, but my black tank has been reading as 2/3 full for a couple of months now. That probably means something has gotten stuck, dried to the sides of the tank. I don’t consider it a big deal, but I’m glad for the opportunity to run lots of water and soap through the tank to try to clean it out. What I really need is a second hose so that I can use the black tank flush outlet without risking contaminating my drinking water hose, preferably one like the zero-G hose that squashes down flat so that it takes up less room. It’s been on my list of “things to get someday real soon” for about a year, but I seem to always wind up buying the cooking things off that list instead of the outside things. But there are so many things on that list — a grill that folds flat, a compact table, the Sumo Springs that everyone raves about… but realistically, the next time I buy something for the van, it’ll probably be a smaller induction frying pan. Ha.

Back to the campground: it’s so nice that this morning when walking the dog, I thought, “Hmm, maybe when I take M camping next year, I’ll bring her here.” And then I remembered my horrendous drive yesterday and thought, “Nope, not gonna happen.”

I have now driven Serenity in 44 states. Yep, 44 of them. (The missing: Delaware, Rhode Island, Michigan, North Dakota, Alaska, Hawaii.) And if there is a single place that I would really like to never drive through again, it’s Washington, DC.

It’s not that other places don’t have bad traffic: I used to commute through the Caldecott Tunnel before they opened the 4th bore, where multiple lanes of traffic merge and the lanes changed directions on a regular basis. Driving that route was always interesting. And Boston — well, yeah, Boston is just crazy. But Washington has some reasonably significant proportion of really bad drivers, people who don’t care that their recklessness messes everyone else up, and it makes driving there so unpleasant.

Here’s the difference between San Francisco Bay and DC drivers: once upon a time, I was on 24 approaching the Caldecott and cars were stopping, for no obvious reason. So I stopped, too, of course. I’m not sure how many lanes there are, maybe eight at the spot where I was? And all eight lanes of traffic stopped because there was a dog on the road. A couple people got out of their cars and corralled the dog and traffic resumed again and probably several hundred people who didn’t know what had happened sighed in relief that the delay had only lasted a few minutes. If that had happened in DC, some people would have slowed, others wouldn’t, there would have been an accident and the traffic congestion would have lasted an hour, minimum. And the dog would have died.

Anyway, I will stop whining about traffic now, but I’m taking a day off to do useful things like try to get the black tank cleaned out, write a blog post, work on Grace, answer my email, back up some files… hmm, I guess that’s all I really wanted to do. But tomorrow I start driving again. I’ll spend the night on the road and make it to Florida on Wednesday. I had such a nice week in PA that it was really hard to leave, but I’m looking forward to some time in Florida, too.

I’m already anticipating seeing all my writing friends who are doing NaNoWriMo, and spending lots and lots and lots of time writing with them. It is so past time to finish Grace, but this version has gone off in some interesting directions and honestly, I now have no idea where it’s going. sigh But it will get somewhere, I’m sure.

There’s a scene that I wrote last week that I suspect means more to me than it will to anyone else, but I reread it this morning and it literally made me tear up and then laugh. I obviously would consider that profoundly successful if it did the same for any other reader, but even if I’m the only person who gets it that way, I’m pretty sure I can count it as successful. And since I could be working on it now, time to get to it!

But to everyone working on NaNo — write, write, write! You can do it!

Raspberries bear fruit until the first frost so this morning’s breakfast included fresh raspberries, honey from P’s bees, and granola made by my SIL. I felt very, very lucky while I ate it.

Wynded Words

~ Home of author Sarah Wynde

Category Archives: Campground