| Saturday, November 21st 11:05AM | |
I like knots. One of my favorite things to do is to take a big knotted mess of thread and finger through it with patience and gentleness until the two ends are freed and the tangle is no more. Obviously this is not a hobby one can "pursue". But it is a thing I love. | |
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| Breathing | Tuesday, November 3rd 2:35PM |
We're a bit under the weather and construction around here. A lot of changes, good, bad, important, and pointless, and debris to collect. | |
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| So far this autumn | Saturday, October 3rd 8:20PM |
1. My son has written his first novel. (Actually he wrote one in first grade, but it was short and it claimed that dinosaurs eat dirt.) I read a lot of it as it was being written, and I now have the whole thing to read and comment upon. He's been a faithful critiquer of mine; time for me to return the favor! He wrote it blazingly fast, the jerk. | |
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| There's cotton in books, right? | Tuesday, September 22nd 8:48PM |
Our second anniversary just happened to coincide with Margaret Atwood's newest book coming out, so... what else could we do? Date night at the bookstore. They even have slushy drinks with straws, which was good for the one of us who can't chew yet. | |
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| Horizontality 2 | Sunday, September 13th 6:54PM |
When last we left our stalwart defender of liberty, she was ignoring the plaque on millions of Californians' teeth and jetting around the world filing writs and things in states that she, well, doesn't have license to practice law in. | |
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| optimism? | Tuesday, September 1st 8:54PM |
Our nerdy Tuesday nights of pizza and Battlestar Galactica (no, I'm not joking) have changed to Fridays for this semester. The local writing group has just changed to Thursdays. | |
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| What we did this summer vacation | Monday, August 31st 8:46PM |
Em and I got this brilliant idea to surprise everyone and show up at Dunn's. Heaven only knows what plans we interfered with by doing so, but so far no one has mentioned anything. We teehee-ed a bit and kept checking in with various family while we drove, pretending to be at home. We had calculated it just right to arrive at sunset, but I didn't quite calculate the gas gauge and so we ended up stranded on the off ramp in New Hampshire. That turned out fine. We got to Dunn's at a little after 9, where we found that Glo had barricaded herself in her cabin with kids and wasn't letting anyone in. When we knocked, she asked who we were VERY suspiciously. Then she did a happy dance when she saw us. And she let us in. Now, you have to understand that our family is crazy. We are cranky and creative and curmudgeonly. Every one of us looks FORWARD to being the one who sits in the lawn chair hurling soda cans at neighborhood kids and hollering "get offa my lawn!" This is partly because we think it will be hilarious to do this. It's mostly because we are crabs. So every year we put ourselves through getting our surly children and understanding spouses all the way to camp. We do happy dinners and take a lot of pictures, for about 3 days. The cabins are rented for 14 days. Then someone melts down (an adult, that is; the children melt down before the minivans arrive). Proclamations are made about how we are doing it DIFFERENTLY next year, and we're not going to REPEAT THAT FIASCO WITH THE DONUTS AGAIN. Etc. (One year it was tomatoes.) When week two begins, everyone is mellower. The first crop of sunburns is healed. People have done the Things You Do At Camp. Usually someone has gone out for school clothes. The farm stand is on its fourth or fifth iteration. People are clumped instead of rioting. That's when I arrived this year. People were already mostly finished with the silliness, just in time for me to arrive and make my OWN proclamations. I was a little limited, because I'd surprised people and had to basically sleep where they ordered me to sleep. This made it tougher for me to slam "home" to my own cabin. All the siblings were there for several of the days, which was the first time in … 7 years? Something like that. We piled all of us for one brief completely insane moment into my mom's cabin. Five siblings. Four spouses. Our friends and their daughter (who is also a friend). Another friend and her daughter. Ten of the grandkids. A cacophony of cousins! | |
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| Not compliments | Monday, August 24th 4:25PM |
The lady cutting my hair today (I don't know her name, because I don't go to the kind of place where you have one particular hair "stylist"; it's more like a lottery and they call your number and you are happy that they don't cut off an ear) said: "you have baby hair." This SOUNDS nice and kind, but it is not. It is usually said in a horrified tone. Think of babies. Think of their hair. That is the kind I have. | |
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| The House With Two Writers, Chapter 119 | Thursday, August 20th 12:10PM |
J: i started dune. the pov stuff is interesting to track. | |
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| What is your responsibility? | Monday, August 17th 12:51PM |
Let's say you and your best friend live next door to each other in houses that used to belong to each of your parents. You go way back. Your kids are best friends. Your parents were best friends. There is a piece of land behind the house that you have shared for decades. At one point, you, over beers, both declared that it was best friend land! The children played kickball on it. You had picnics. You have recently discovered in your grandpa's papers that the land is actually completely yours, as you had long suspected. There is no doubt of this. The property is clearly marked, the deeds are completely unambiguous. You showed these to your best friend, while you were watching Independence Day over some more beers. Suddenly your friend is insisting that the land be dug up to build an organic farm. His organic farm, which he has always wanted, he says, for a business that he has always intended to have. You had been recently musing that selling that bit of land would really help you and your wife with some unexpected medical bills. Your friend says, no, no, I don't plan to buy it. It's best friend land. He, however, when pressed, says that he does not intend to share any vegetable profits with you. The next day, you look out and see your friend in a rented tractor, preparing to pull down trees and mark out fields. It's your land. What is your responsibility here to your friend? To your family? To the ancestors? | |
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