Growing Versions

I did it.  I wrote a  novel. I did a lot of other things too, like I found clean pants for my kids 4 out of 5 mornings each week, I usually had a shower and I occasionally had a full night's sleep. I did it and now I know. It can be done.I did it and I did not do it alone.  It was a collaborative effort. A friend spurred me on and she wrote one too.  I did not realize how much that would help to have a writing partner, but it really really did. My family helped me too. My daughter even started writing her own novel in solidarity. I heard, on the cusp of completing 50,000 words, that the average word count for a novel is 100000, so perhaps I just wrote a novella. However, I used very underused muscles this month and it felt good. Perhaps I'll find a need for those muscles sometime, you never know.

Forever is composed of nows. -Emily Dickenson

As I walked to the school, I left behind piles of unopened mail and dirty dishes.  I stepped outside into the late November sunshine, relishing a reprieve from cold northerly winds, and walked along the edge of the sidewalks.  The growth and life that was abundant a short few weeks ago is now almost asleep. Without ground cover, the garbage is more visible.  Broken bags catch on naked branches, coffee cups do rings around the street, but one tiny shiny bird nests on the stony ground. Life among the refuse.

I am writing a  novel in a month. I've read lots of books and the narratives of all of them are being called to action each day to satisfy the 1666/per day word count goal. Just like reading a book, I'm not sure how this one will end. I have used up all my words in this novel (I use the term very loosely) and now I am having to use a lot of them over again. Just 25, 100 words to go. I better not use them up here, there are no spare words at the moment.

The mama has an unsettling dream. An enormous whale swims up along side her. She is awed and overwhelmed to be sharing a swimming pool with such a big animal. The little child beside her wakes up. The child shouts, "I had a terrible dream!" "Mama, tell me how to dream a sweet dream."

We changed the microwave clock, but the rest changed themselves. I only trust the microwave.

My earliest memories are supposedly from when I was about 2 1/2.  However, I do not entirely trust that they are solely my memories and are instead a scramble of photographic evidence of the period and my parents reminiscences. I guess that's how memories begin though.  They start in someone else's head and then take root in your own like a tangled garden grows around long forgotten toys. I have a picture in my mind of my mom pointing out water leaking down through the dining room ceiling from an over flowing bathtub, I remember peering up some attic steps and thinking that the back of an old TV set in an empty room was a chicken coop.  However, these snapshots are an amalgam  of snippets of the shared memories of others and a malleable baby imagination. It was a time when I heard many words each day, but had not yet been spoken any of them. The words chicken coop and stairs and overflowing  were incubating in my mind, awaiting the day of their birt...

Have you embarked on playing a game that your kid has made up?  It is an odyssey like no other. They have poured a lot of time into the project. They've put a lot of time into making up the rules and the point  of the game.  However, it is not always easy to learn those rules.  I'm not great at remembering or learning rules for games from a package in the first place, but understanding how to win the games they want me to play has challenged me in new ways. Play school with me. Like this. Exactly in this way. Which way? This way. Oh, okay... No. Not that way, this way. It is hard not  to cast doubt or raise obvious questions in a parental killjoy manner.  To extinguish the tiny furtive sparks of excitement is not my idea of fun, but playing games I don't understand makes me feel like I'm being dragged around a mall in too hot clothes at the height of Christmas shopping season-overstimulated and bored at the same time. Some made up games ins...

It's the ideal solution for any kid who is worried about his or her parents' intentions towards their Hallowe'en candy. After all, kids can't stay awake all night  to protect it. The solution is a Hallowe'en vending machine.  Sure, you go ahead Mom or Dad and have a piece of candy or a bag of chips, but you must also insert your coin here. You go right ahead. The selection is wide and an inventory has been done and is updated on a regular basis.