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Not a day of rest

This past year I have been trying to take Sundays off from work, but that won’t be the case today. My goals for the day are ambitious: review yesterday’s work on Chapter 27, one more edit of Chapter 28 (which I think is in fairly good shape already ::crosses fingers::), and major reconstruction from the ground up on Chapter 29, which is a shambles right now.

I also need to answer the stack of mail on my desk and empty the email box. And get some exercise.

I took some time off yesterday, so don’t feel bad for me. Wrote all morning and played all afternoon. We went to a tattoo convention and to the booksigning of my friend, Ellen Yeomans, whose new book Rubber Houses just came out.

The differences between the tattoo convention and book signing were rather….. striking.

Writing prompt: Take a person from each world (World A: tattoo/biker convention, World B: booksigning in suburban chain store on a cold snowy day) and drop them into the other world.

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Back and flying

Ever have an experience that was so amazing on several levels that you don’t want to talk about for fear of somehow disturbing or diluting the memory?

That’s what the poetry weekend retreat was like for me. That’s also why you won’t be getting many details, except that it was a much-needed creative and spiritual boost. I will say that I had one of the best runs of my life, thanks to the freakish January weather. And I wrote a lot of poems – none are fit for public consumption.

Today is Christmas #3. The last of our brood is up visiting with a buddy and if they ever wake up, the presents are waiting under the tree. Tomorrow the decorations will come down and the new year will truly begin.

I finally figured out my Resolution. (Back story – I have been working on this for weeks. Instead of writing a resolution, I kept making to-do lists, which is a very different thing.) My resolution this year is to live with kavannah, a Hebrew word that refers to mindfulness, especially in prayer, directing the energies of the heart, and an awareness that I rarely have, and would very much like to cultivate. When I get busy, I tend to let life blur around me, and then I complain about it. I don’t want to do that anymore. So I will work on being a little slower and a little more aware this year. Yay! (Thanks, Deb H., for the word I was looking for.)

Last night we celebrated my mom’s 76th birthday. The best part was watching her argue with dad because they couldn’t agree how old she was. Heh.

Back to deadlining….

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Wolf whistle

Does anybody know what that means? A wolf whistle is the obnoxious tweet-tweeeee whistle that some men make to show appreciation of/interest in a passing woman. Note to guys: girls do NOT like this. Ever. In fact, it pretty much guarantees that in her head she is condemning you to the lowest level of hell. Running after her screaming “shake it, mami, shake it hard” is also a Bad Thing. If you want to let a girl know you think she’s hot, then a polite, restrained nod of the head is the way to go.

Anyway, in my daughter’s China journal today, she points out that construction guys in China do it, too. Kind of makes you want to sing “It’s a Small World,” doesn’t it?

(The reason it is funny that she would be mistaken for a Latina, is that she has blazing white skin and red hair. Mostly, she gets mistaken for a tourist from Dublin.)

Congrats to Sarah Dessen writergrl (and my in-laws Darice, Gregg, Eric, and Anna) on the win of the Caroline Hurricanes, and to Alex Flinn on the Miami Heat.

Back to the doc today for more tests about the stupid infection. Bah.

And more fact-checking and obsessing about words in the picture book.

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oh canada!

Yesterday was our anniversary, so BH and I played hooky from life and drove to Canada. (It’s not that far from where we live.) We recently got our passports and wanted to test-drive them. They worked! The border patrol let us out of the country, and then they let us back in.

So Canada was fun. Not much in the way of ethnic food, but beautiful and filled with nice people. Well, not exactly filled. One of the things we like about it is the low population density. It is scattered with nice people.

We had lunch in Gananoque and spent the afternoon walking around Kingston. I had burned a couple CDs to listen to and we talked and held hands for hours. At dinnertime, we found a place that had a special on chicken wings: 35 cents/piece. As far as anniversaries go, it was low-key and peaceful. Perfect.

On way back into America, we felt really bad for the truckers who had to wait in a long, long line to have their cargo inspected. Maybe it was because of the bad guys they found near Toronto last week. I am really sick of bad guys who think that blowing things up is an option. And I’m glad I’m not a trucker. Most of all, I am thrilled to be married to BH.

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Friday afternoon odds n ends

Bravo!

Thank you lost-child2 for taking the time yesterday to explain how the Literature Map works. You can read both of his explanations if you scroll down through yesterday’s comments.

My food quirk of the moment? Straight wasabi paste on baby carrots.

Do you know about Library Thing? (Thank you mikigarrison for pointing it out. Do any of you post to it? What do you think (here’s the SPEAK entry)?

Other deep thoughts: it possible to eat too much wasabi? Does anyone have a wasabi muffin recipe? What about wasabi/lemon/poppy seed?

Oh, man. I just realized I am also craving lox. It’s a good thing we live out in the middle of nowhere.

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