life with greg
Ups and downs. Highs and lows. I guess I could be thinking about anything but I am thinking about marriage/relationships this morning and how like everything else they work on a pivot. Oscillating back and forth from points of extreme love to flinging plates at the wall in frustration (well I only did that twice). Right now we’re on the upswing and it feels wonderful. It is not even like we have to say anything. It just hovers between us like something solid and lasting and real. We are not the same people. Not even close to being the same. He is so full of ideas and is always trying to bring them to life, which keeps our lives far from dull but has me at times pulling at my hair. I sometimes try to approach his ideas with a voice of logic but it often comes off sounding more like I’m a pessimist/ a giant squashier of dreams. Believe me I don’t like this role and I try hard not to play it. It is just that I’m not always comfortable taking chances and when he pulls out his small black book where he writes his to-do-lists and asks me if I have a moment to go over a few ideas he has, my first reaction comes off as a bit of a cringe. What are we doing now?
The first time he did this to me was twenty years ago. We were in Northern New Brunswick. I was working as a nurse; he was a geologist back then. It was summer and I had the day off and so he had invited me to spend the day with him, out in the woods, as he did some fieldwork. It was one of those clear sweet days where I thought I knew exactly what I held and where I was headed and I happily followed him through the woods as he tapped away at outcrops and did his geology thing. We stopped at a pretty little brook to eat lunch and as I was opening my can of cola he said, “I am not happy.”
I first thought, oh no, here it comes.
But instead he said, “I am not happy as a geologist, I can’t envision doing this for the rest of my life. What I really want to be doing is acting and I am thinking about applying to the School of dramatic arts in New York City.
Now, this is not a bad dream to have, since moving to Toronto I have met many people in this profession but at the time my whole world was New Brunswick and back then in N.B. actors were mystical creatures. He may as well have said he wanted to be a unicorn from the reaction he got from me. It was just that the moment took me completely by surprise. I had no idea up to that point that this was a dream of his. And I’m thinking as I am looking through this curtain of black flies at him, Buddy you got a knapsack full of rocks and you are wearing a Heath Steel mining cap, where is this acting thing coming from?
However I was not about to tread on anyone’s dreams especially his so I gave him my blessing. He enrolled and spent a year in New York, came home the next summer, asked me to marry him and because there just wasn’t a whole lot of work for an actor in New Brunswick, he asked me to move to Toronto with him.
I said yes, so here we are. I am glad I came, except at times I do miss New Brunswick, the ocean, and my family. But I also think it was important for me to grow and I think I was able to accomplish that with a partner like Greg. I would never have been brave enough to tackle all these past adventures on my own.
So, anyway, we are sitting around Saturday night, I am on my second glass of wine, feeling pretty comfy; we are listening to Counting Crows and the Lowest of the Low. And Greg pulls out his black book and ask if he could go over a few things and he starts explaining this wonderful and complex plan he has of getting this computer application that he is developing up and running. Yes, he is still an actor but he also became a complete computer geek over the last fifteen years. And I don’t know if it was the wine or that I am just getting so use to him potentially upsetting the apple cart every time we seem to get on some solid ground - or that his ideas are becoming such a common occurrence that it is just life with Greg? - I said sure, sounds wonderful. I never said the word “but” once.
this morning
Greg was giving me some last minute instructions regarding the computer upstairs this morning when Erin yelled up at us from the doorway, in this singsong voice. "Bye Mom, off to school I go. Just want to let you know though, I have a variety of fears."
Greg and I just looked at each other. Leave it to our daughter to place them in a variety pack.
shopping and bookclubs
Slow day. It is raining. All the brown bags full of leaves that are lining the edges of the neighbour’s front yards are looking pretty sodden. How we put autumn away every year in rows of neat little bags. This street is so tidy. Saturday, Monica and I had started a little Christmas shopping. We wandered in and out of many stores and sat outside a coffee shop while she sipped on a hot chocolate. It was enjoyable spending that time with her. I watched as she picked out gifts for her Dad and her sister with the expertise of a veteran shopper.
Last night I went to the book club. There were at least ten women there. The hostess had a beautiful home. A fire was burning in the prettiest fireplace I had ever seen. Colourful Ceramic tiles around it. Everyone seemed very friendly, articulate, funny, and successful. One woman was showing us the cover of her new cookbook that will be in bookstores and on Amazon come January, I think she said? I would plug her book but I forgot her name and the name of the book about a second after I was introduced. I was so nervous. I can’t keep anything in my head when I am nervous.
I was thinking; please don’t ask me what I do for a living. I always trip over that question. But, I got a way with sitting quietly, listening to their views about the book and the author, which were entertaining and interesting. They have a well-established book club. I don’t want to go back though. How do I tell my friend this? I think my husband is disappointed that I'm not going back. For a second there, I think he may have thought there may still be a chance on having a socially adept wife.
and now it is snowing and the big brown and yellow truck is on our street picking up all those wet bags of leaves. Carting off autumn.
Whiskey River has a nice quote today and i think i did spend the last few hour visiting all three realms.
another old journal entry
I found this last night also. I must have been having a really off day? but i kind of like it so i thought i would post it.
Monkey on a Chain (1997)
I sit next to my new found friend
a nanny,
as my children and the children in her care play in this city park. The summer sun is hot on their well-protected shoulders.
She talks of the Philippines during rainy season.
When she was a child the ditches in back of her home would fill with rain
water in less than a day and she and her sisters and friends would run naked from their homes, through the downpour, and into these overflowing swimming pools.
She also tells me of the monkey they kept chained outside their home and how cross it became as the years went on. How monkeys have menstrual cycles just like we do but this one had the habit of wiping her monthly blood across her fur.
(Perhaps freedom would have solved that problem.)
As I sit in this park surrounded tightly by city, watching my children play while listening to my friend as she begins to drift into a monologue about her Pentecostal God and the evils of Yoga, I dream.
Dream of freedom that I never owned except perhaps when I was nine and lost in a created world of artic cold and huskies
I dream that I am standing on the shore of the Atlantic with the salt air spreading over me while the waves talk to me in their ancient voice. I stand there like a fruitful tree with roots deep in belonging. I stand until the stars and moon come out to curl around me and the darkness finally grants me ownership.
Then my oldest cries and my company ends her sermon and a siren from a fire truck sounds it urgency as it speeds down Gerrard St. and my head pounds and I think of supper and laundry and the monkey and how freedom is such an elusive thing.
an old journal entry
I spent a good bit of last evening looking through old photo albums trying to find a few pictures of Annie. That led to looking at old journals trying to find entries that included her. I found an old poem I wrote in September of 1990. Annie must have been ten months old.
I sit on this ancient rock
watching
blue sky meeting blue water
a sailboat on the horizon
moving silently
a gull floats overhead
sprinkles of sunlight
keeps placing a million tiny diamonds
on the water’s surface
to roll in with the waves
as I watch
a soft breeze lifts my short hair
the sun is warm on bare arms
My dog,
who races along the edge
where the water turns to foam,
Plays tag with the incoming waves
her tail communicates her
joy.
her wet black coat gathers up
the diamonds
I watch from this rock
while she digs in the sand,
chases sticks,
attacks waves
what a grand September day
warmth on my arms
a breeze so soft
sounds so soothing
but mainly
my dog so happy
Annie 1990 
Annie 1992
Annie Spring 2003
never mind
that last blog entry made no sense. I started to ramble. what i think i was trying to say is - it is a nice change for me, placing this nano novel as a high priority on my list of things to achieve this month. It keeps me writing.
half way
My head hurts. I'm up to 26,900 words. That's like writing five short stories. It usually takes me two years to write five short stories. I think this has so far been a very positive experience for me because it gives me permission to write. A lot of times I fight with myself over the amount of time I allot myself for writing because I have a difficult time finding the tangibility in it. Well, maybe that is not quite true - I have a difficult time thinking that other people might see it as a waste of time. I want to feel productive so I let other things in my life take precedence over it like the house, children, small jobs, yard and my writing gets downsized to hobby. Like picking up a book to read, I do it when everything else is finished.
and writing is hard work and deserves more than the title hobby. A clean, well- organized house is noticed as soon as you step into it but a story which you spent just as much time trying to polish and clean, well unless you shove it into someone's hands and beg them to read it, it goes unnoticed.
I am just saying this because I have a pile of laundry the size of a small snow hill in my basement, my sock feet keep sticking to what I believe are falling pieces from rice crispy squares, my daughter's two degus are beginning to clean out their own cage, and I am beginning to wonder if the neighbours think I am depressed because I have been in the same sweat pants now for three days. Many of my neighbours wouldn't understand nanowrimo. Even a very patient hubby is starting to cool off a little. But that all being said, if it was totally up to me, I would write four hours a day, every day for the rest of my life and do so happily.
Magic Books
When I was little, on days when winter had a sharp edge to it and we were forced indoors, my sisters and I would pull out the Eaton’s fall/winter Catalogue. Not the slim, sale item ones and especially not the Christmas catalogue (that one was sacred) but the big, thick, displayer-of-every-piece–of-merchandise–that-Eatons-had-to-offer one. We would place it before us on the cool linoleum of our front room and with scissors in hand we would take turns cutting out the woman we would be, her clothes, her living room, her appliances, the sheets for her bed, her curtains for her windows, her husband, her kids, and everything else that we, at the time, thought she needed to have the life she deserved. In these catalogues the fridges were always opened to display shelves crammed with food, they even housed pop and so we would take our time pondering over those perfect fridges and which one was the right one for our women. When we had cut out everything we thought they needed to survive in life, we would then lay all our cuts outs on the linoleum and play for hours. We called this game magic books.
Today as I was trying to get a little further in my story for NaNoWriMo I found myself playing a game similar to that of magic books but I was using the Google search engine instead. Sometimes my characters need things that I have a difficult time describing, for example their bikes. What bikes do these kids ride? So off I went to the magic search engine and immediately was able to pick out a diamond back BMX, silver in colour for my character Joe and a white mongoose BMX for Sam. It’s still fun to play.
Annie
I take loss oddly. Well, I believe I do anyway. I know how to store it away and only pull it out when I am melancholy, when I actually have a desire to reflect on sad things. File under melancholy, to assess at a later date and time. So, I didn’t want to write about our dog, Annie, passing away on November ninth. I am not even sure I can file it under the category of sadness even though I know Greg and I will miss her a great deal and my daughters will miss her even more. She is like a chapter of our lives that just finished. A very tail wagging, loving, loyal and happy chapter. And I believe she had a happy life and it was relatively long so I really can’t seem to find the sadness in that.
I didn’t even shed a tear until yesterday and that was only because I was tidying up Erin’s room and had a look at her calendar where she makes one-line entries in the date boxes. For November beginning with the 2nd she had, written in with red ink, U.S elections – Bush, on the 8th – first snowfall, not much. On the 9th – Annie died today, on the 11th, Remembrance Day – wear black. I don’t know? It sort of said it all and it made me think about Erin and Monica and how they never knew a life without Annie and so this must be a great loss to them. It gave me the right to feel sad for them and so I sat on her bed with my dust rag and was sad for a little bit.
Some day soon I’ll write an entry about life with Annie and post pictures of her.
Annie, December 1989 – November 2004
an excerpt
here is a little of the story. remember it is very rough.
“Lets go,” Sam said and started jogging along the fence, to its far corner and around it, towards their hidden entrance. As they ran, Joe peered into the pinewood. He could only see a short distant into it. The long green needles of the branches and the rigged bark of trunks were all he could make out clearly. The rest was cast in shadows and undefined bush. A few sparrows swooped in and out of the branches and a chipmunk, which was startled by the humans running by, hopped and scurried around a few trees before disappearing but nothing else moved. He wondered how the natural wildlife around these parts were dealing with the scent of all those new wild things just beyond the big fence. Do the native animals wonder what new types of predators are in their woods with them now? Do they hear the big cats roar at night and do they move deeper into these once peaceful woods to get away from that sound? How would the deer and rabbit know that these strange new animals were all behind bars?
It didn’t take them as long today to find the hole beneath the fence like it had the first time in the rain and it was nice to see that the puddle had dried up to just a small smudging of slick mud at the bottom which they were able to wiggle over without getting down into it. In minutes all three were standing on the inside of the fence and looking everywhere at once to see if they could spot any workers. But it was as just as quiet as the last time. No, it was much quieter without the rain.
Sarah started forward but Joe pulled her back to him
“We first need somewhat of a plan, Sarah?” Joe whispered.
“I want to check out the aviary. We didn’t get a great look at it the last time. Did you notice any Ravens in any of the cages?” Sarah asked.
“Our Raven isn’t in a cage.” Sam commented as he scanned the skies wondering if it would just show up with Sarah’s ring in its mouth.
“But it might have came from one. Do you know what that Raven and this zoo have in common?” Sarah started.
Oh no, Joe thought she is about to let us in on one of her Sarah theories again.
“What?” Sam said with interest. He, on the other hand, happened to love Sarah’s theories on things even if many of them were never very sound.
“Every one of these animals is not completely normal.” She started. “ The tapir has three toes in front, the jaguar is much too big. The one at the city zoo was only half that size and the alligator is as big as a boat and I can’t quite put my finger on it but the animals all seemed a little bit too grand or too perfect here. Even the spider monkeys were all sitting around on our last visit, looking like they were waiting for the evening news to come on.”
Sam chuckled, ‘Yeah I guess they were a pretty subdued bunch of monkeys.”
“So, doesn’t it just seem to fit that a raven with blue eyes belongs to this place? Maybe it escaped.”
Sam’s eyes widened, “Maybe it was trained to take people’s expensive jewelry. I think I read a story like that once. Maybe that is how Dr. Hedley is so rich?”
Joe looked at both of them and rolled his eyes. “Lets not go there, Sam! Lets go to the aviary.”
They walked across the short cut grass and onto one of the cobblestone paths. They found the sign with an arrow that simply read BIRDS and followed it up a short path, around newly planted hedges and into an open area surrounded by a wall of high narrow cages each housing a different species of bird. In the first cage sat a noble looking bald eagle. He was perched near the top of the cage on a thick branch and he stared down at the three children with his piercing yellow eyes. His white head was smooth and clean and his dark brown body was straight and elegant with its wings folded in close to its body. In the cage beside him was another bird of prey, a great horned owl, and it sat blinking repeatedly at them, ruffling not as much as a tiny feather. Sarah and the boys followed the line of cages as it circled around the open space, looking in all of them, hoping to spot the bird they were looking for but not a single bird had blue eyes in these cages. Until they came to the great Amazon macaw's cage. It started a racked as soon as they approached it, making a deep throated sound, almost like a continuous purring or rolling r sound, and flapped its blue and yellow wings, hopping from foot to foot on its wide perch.
“Well, here is a bird with blue eyes, Sarah!” Joe declared, stopping.
‘Yeah but it is suppose to have blue eyes.” Sarah answered
Sam laughed and said, “It looks like it is dancing.”
“Wow, it has every colour of the rainbow in its feathers on its back and chest.” Sarah said, “but look at its belly, it has spots of black and white feathers. They kind of look like Dalmatian spots. That is a little odd, don’t you think?
“Little odd,” the bird clearly said as it started nodding it heads up and down. It indeed was a colorful bird, mainly yellow and blue along its back and wing feathers but where Sarah had pointed there was, almost in a perfect circle on its lower belly, beneath its green and orange chest, a white area decorated with small black spots.
“It speaks!” Joe declared, walking closer to its cage.
“Not really,” said a cackling voice behind them, “it merely mimics.”
The three of them didn’t turn around immediately. Sarah closed her eyes and began trying to quickly calculate an answer to give this Zoo employee about why they were here in the Zoo when it was closed to the public. Sam reached up and pulled his red sox cap down over his eyes a little lower hoping maybe he could pretend for a little while longer they weren’t just caught and Joe was waiting for his heart to slow down a fraction. It was beating pretty heavy. The voice startled him worst than the others because he had just scanned the area moments before and all was quiet.
“So, are you not going to turn around, so I can introduce myself too you three?” the voice continued. They turned around slowly to face the open area and the cages on the other side of the circle but there was no one there. The great horn owl hooted low and long. Many other of the caged birds began to squawk, tweet, whistle and screech. Sarah put her hands to her ears. They stood in the center of a very bad choir, everyone on a different page.
“Quiet!” yelled the same crackly voice. The birds all hushed up at once. Sarah raised her eyes to follow the voice and there sitting on top of the hornbill’s cage sat the raven. It had a tint of mischievous in its blue eyes and its black beak was open slightly as it stared at the three kids.
Sarah just raised a shaky hand and pointed to it. “It’s the bird that took my ring.” She whispered.
Joe and Sam were still looking around trying to find the owner of the voice they had heard.
“Boys pay attention and cast your eyes on my beautiful black feathers for a moment will ya.” The raven said as it hopped a little on top of the cage to make its presence a little bigger.
Joe and Sam gasped loudly.
“Now first of all, don’t freak out on me. It wasn’t that easy for me to get you guys back out here. Not only did it take me about an hour and a half to get your window open, Sarah. I also had to whisper into your ear as you slept that if you wanted your ring back, come back to the Zoo. But I think you would have clued in anyway. You are a bright bird. ” The bird stated as it stretched its wings out, ruffled them, and tucked them neatly back along its sides again.
The three of them kept standing speechless, looking up at the raven. Sam licked his dried lips and Joe pinched himself hard on the hand.
W-W-Where is my mother’s ring?” Sarah said. She tried for it to sound stern but it came out raspy and weak sounding.
“I kind of need to hold on to it for a while but I will get it back to you I promise?” the raven said. “and I didn’t mean to scare you the last time, I just wanted to slow you down, hoping you would look around the Zoo abit more. What you see here is not the half of this place.”
“Do you belong to Dr. Hedley.” Asked Sam. “Did he train you too talk?”
“Sam, buddy, give your head a wee shake. First of all I don’t belong to anyone, at least not anymore, and second of all I taught myself to talk. Georgia over there, on the other claw is a trained parrot and yes, she does say a few words now and again but she will never be able to describe things in full and complex sentences. Got that? And it isn’t because she isn’t smart, she has a whole head full of wonderful thoughts but she just doesn’t have the capability to communicate with you guys. Cause she is 99.9% bird O.K.”
“You’re a bird.” Sarah declared after her initial shock began morphing into fascination. This was so truly incredible that she had not blinked for fear of the raven disappearing and now her eyes were beginning to water. She wiped the tears away with the back of her sleeve and continued, “and you are talking in some pretty complex sentence?”
“Precisely, and this is the reason I need you guys to look a little deeper into the going ons around here. You see, I have a few friends in low places that need your help. I had promised them that once I got out, I would come back and break them out but I can’t do it on my own. I’ve been trying with little success. When I noticed you guys sneaking around a few weeks ago, I figured it was time to initiate some human help.” The raven took a few hops, stretched his wings out to their full length and took flight, flapping his wings in a steady, working beat. The three of them leaned their necks back to watch him as he took to the clear sky above and circled the area for a few moments before sailing gracefully back to his spot on the top of the hornbill’s cage.
A little out of breath the raven continued. “It is still quiet but the guards will be up and making their rounds shortly.
“Guards?” Joe asked.
‘The Zoo employees, you met the other day on your school trip.” The Raven answered. “I got to know if you guys are in? If you are, I will tell you the whole story later at a safer location and Sarah, I will return your ring with an apology attached. What do you say?”
“OF COURSE WE”RE IN. Tell us all.” Sarah said excitedly.
Joe pulled Sarah over closer to him and whispered in her ear. “Can we at least have a little time to think this over? Perhaps see a doctor first and explain to him that a huge talking Raven is soliciting the three of us for help. Maybe it’s just me but what is taking place right now is pretty nuts, Sarah, and you girl want to rush right into it!”
“Oh it gets crazier.” The raven interrupted, stretching his neck upward to have a sweep of the perimeter. “And I am telling you guys I could really use some help here.”
Sam nodded his head. His eyes were spellbound on the great bird. “A-A-Are you the only talking animal here?”
The raven paused and coxed his ebony head to one side. The sunlight was shining on his smooth head feathers making them shine. “OH NO here we go! Hate to break up the party but I hear the humming of the underground doors opening, so you three better get out of here fast. I’ll swoop low over them when they come out because there is nothing, right now, they would love to do more than to catch me and silence the talking bird. That will give you plenty of time to get back under the fence and away from here. But I got to know right now!” he was beginning to jump around a bit, loosing his confident composer, “Are you in or not?”
Sarah looked quickly at Joe with a pleading look. Sam was nodding his head to the Raven.
There was a second of silence and then Joe said, “Sure.”
“O.K. guys get out of here, I will send a note at a later date where the next meeting will be.” The Raven said hurriedly, finishing his sentence with a loud caw and taking flight once again.
“A note? It writes too?” Joe looked a bit green now.
In the distance they could hear someone shouting and without further hesitation all three of them broke out into a run towards the fence. The great eagle flapped its wings twice and called out in one loud shriek that sounded very much to Joe like encouragement. They ran for all they were worth, and were down on the ground and crawling quickly under the fence before anyone spotted them. Once outside the fence they ran swiftly along it towards their bikes. As they ran in the shadow of the high wooden structure they heard two loud cracks.
Joe turned back to look at Sam and Sarah as he ran and mouthed the words “Gunshots?”
Sarah and Sam, both wore red on their cheeks and worry in their eyes as they kept running as fast they could behind Joe. Sarah had enough adrenalin pumping through her system to fuel a small spacecraft and she kept up easily with the guys. Her sneakered feet were doing all the work, propelling her forward automatically because her mind was engaged now in complete thought as she started dividing up all the things that were strange about this zoo and the dangers they might be stepping knee deep into.
An encased heart in a tear drop bud
in pressed layers of velvet blood
emerges as a summer’s loss
and gives its petals to the frost
at the dentist
In the waiting room of the dental office this morning I sat down in a chair directly in front of the window. The morning sunlight spilled in over the top of me, drenching me in warmth that was welcoming after a cold, breath-visible walk to the place. As I waited I reached in my knapsack and pulled out “Unless”, the book I ‘m currently reading, and cracked its sleek spine, opening it to the page I had last left. The sunlight divided the page diagonally leaving the upper half of the printed words boastful and vivid. It gave homage to them. I read for a short while trying to distance myself from a man’s deep voice conversation with the receptionist and of course the sound of a drill. At one point I pulled a Kleenex from my pocket because the cold walk had caused my nose to run slightly and when I did the dust particles from the Kleenex or my pocket or a combination of both rose up around me and swirled in this patch of sunlight. I watched these small particles in their moment of movement, half in awe of their gentleness as they lived briefly in the light. I was nervous as I always am when visiting a dentist, even if it was only for a cleaning and check up, but I happened to be very lucky this morning because I sat in sunlight and it handed me calm.
a cold rose
Being Judy Blume
The woes of nanowrimo writing hit me for the first time yesterday as I tried to reach that 10,000-word mark. I knew I was close so I woke before the rest, determined to get it done. Not a lot before the rest, just enough time to get a pot of coffee started and to start up my computer and plant myself there. First problem was the coffee. There was approximately twelve grains in total at the bottom of the can. If I scraped I might have been able to get enough for one decent cup, but that would have been selfish and I knew my husband was going to be up shortly so I watered the little I had completely down in the French press. I then sat down at the computer and started typing. But they started arriving downstairs one after another.
Husband: This is supposed to be coffee?
Me (as I type): yep
Oldest Daughter: mom, what can I eat for breakfast?
Me (as I type): Have some toast
Oldest Daughter: I don’t want toast.
Me (as I type): Have some Halloween candy. You must have some left?
Oldest Daughter: MOM!
Husband: (sticking one of his shirts under my nose) does this not smell musty to you?
Me (as I type): All I can smell is your cologne
Husband: You lost your sense of smell. We need to start keeping the heat on down in the basement because everything down there is beginning to smell musty.
Me (as I type): OK fine
Husband: Well I said that last week and you turned it off
Me (as I type): It was 16 Celsius last week.
Oldest Daughter: Mom are you going to write all morning?
Me (as I type): Just six hundred more words.
Oldest Daughter: I thought we were going to the mall?
Me (as I type): At one
Youngest daughter: You guys are going to the mall today, I want to go too!
Me (as I type): You already told your dad you would go to the market with him?
Youngest daughter: But I didn’t know about the mall. That’s not fair.
Me (as I type): I’m sorry but neither Dad nor I want to take you together anywhere today because you been at each other all week. You need some time apart.
Youngest daughter: MOM!
HELLO, I AM TRYING TO WRITE A NOVEL HERE. Anne Rice doesn’t have to put up with this!
Actually, it turned out being a fine day although those last six hundred words are pretty incoherent. Who am I kidding all 10,000 of those babies are pretty incoherent. But the mall wasn’t half bad and I felt a little better after buying a large coffee and two books. Unless by Carol Shields and a fantasy. The author is George R.R.Martin, I haven’t read him yet. I have read Tad Williams, Robert Jordon and Terry Goodkind. But I have to admit I am growing weary of such long stories. OK. Must get writing. Have a nice Sunday.
And now it's noon
I made it to the 10,000 word mark this morning. 40,000 more to go.
The The
On my jog this morning I was listening to The The’s greatest hits. It made for a bit of a faster pace but it was entertaining jogging to their music. They have a lot of political and religious angst in their lyrics, which fitted in well with this week. I wasn’t feeling all that strong but at one point I looked down at my shadow and it appeared to be jogging o.k.
There were lots of roofers up on roofs, getting things right for winter, lots of pumpkin pieces everywhere, and the wind was blowing quite strong at times. It’s not really cold yet but it is getting there. My rose bush in my back yard still didn’t bloom. It is trying, I see traces of red in its green folds but I think the nights are getting the best of it. Sometimes I think - if it would have bloomed the election results might have been different. But then again I read a lot of Stephen King.
elm
nanowrimo
I decided to give it a try after all. Thanks to RN and her quote from Samuell Beckett, "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." So, then I thought how am I going to do this?? It usually takes me an hour just to get a paragraph down, longer if I don't want it to sound choppy. So I decided just to write the first thing that pops in my head and keep writing. Which I did this morning from 5 - 7 and I am proud to say I have 1800 words down. The funniest part was writing those first two words Chapter One.
The idea I got from my youngest daughter and I hope to keep getting her input over the next month. We are calling it The Zoo beneath the Zoo (a children's book) It's no Shakespeare but I think it is going to be a lot of fun if I can manage to keep getting up at five.
