Q: You have one fourteen-year-old harpist, pretty, for extra bonus points pretty in the way the pretty ones in your family are, pretty like your cousin who defined beauty for you, and she plays beautifully, you were so moved, everyone in the church was, the way she led two violins and a cello through Morfar Frenhines and The Burning of the Piper’s Hut. When did she get that big, you wonder, her in a borrowed skirt and motorcycle boots up in front of the altar, when did she get so grown up? When you leave, and she climbs into the car, a medium-sized car, a Fiat Dobl

We had the friskiest dawn this morning. Out moving the cars before work, shifting wife’s car out to the street, backing mine out of the driveway, reparking hers, it was impossible to ignore the frisky pink light, the bubble of unearned springtime in the warm air. November here is grey and cold, wet and foggy, black, brown and the muted green of stuffy felt and decay. Yet here were pastels arcing from horizon to horizon and flocks of winter crows swooping like swallows while it lasts. Tomorrow, cold again. The way it should be.

Happy ‘Id al-Fitr to those of you celebrating that.
Likewise, happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow. For the first time in recent years, we are skipping it this year. A stray dog broke into the turkey pen at the farm where we buy turkeys, and as a result they were 40 or so turkeys short this year.

To be honest, it’s a big relief to just eat ramen or schnitzel or something.

Watch the speed bumps.

Pick up kid at train station in 45 minutes. Rush her to music school. Move concert harp down stairs, into Dobl

Seriously, one was looking me over this morning.
Giving me the eye.
About 35 or so, pretty.
Wearing baggy sweatpants, though. Yuck.

I was the only man in the store, the only one under retirement age. It’s a different world when you have the day off from work and see things at hours you normally don’t. Supermarkets full of retirees and housewives instead of harried, hurrying commuters. Roads empty but for tractors. Kids all lined up in rows, packed into their schools.

Thousand jobs waiting for you at home.

Blogging secretly while wife runs to store for shiny christmas baubles…

Looks as though I might punk out on the Metamorphosism Challenge. Only 70K words so far and another busy week coming up at work, not sure if I’ll manage 30,000 words in 7 days. Or is it 6? How many days does November have anyway? What day is today? In fact, I still haven’t “won” nanimomo fair and square, since I haven’t surpassed 50K on a single “novel”. Right now stuck around 40K on one and 30k or so on the other. So I suppose I’ll try to finish the longer one first and then get going on the other one…

Took the weekend off completely and went here, didn’t get anything written on the novels but, as I had hoped, the R&R provided a couple important new ideas and inspirations and trying to explain the stories to my wife exposed a couple weaknesses to be corrected.

Mostly, though, it was great fun.

I mean. Standing naked in a field at night, next to a big boulder on a hill, looking up at the stars, one’s body steaming because you’ve just exited a very hot sauna; standing there in the freezing cold next to a naked lady also steaming. With a couple other naked steaming people dotting the landscape here and there.

And all that other spa stuff.

And eating at the breakfast buffet. A gigantic fry up, plate stacked high with eggs, sausages and ham tastes twice as good when you’ve just come off a movie star diet, triply good when everyone else in the restaurant seems to be eating muesli, fruit and or yogurt. Mmm.

And they had a decent single malt selection at the bar. And a live Latino band, guys from Uruguay, Chile and Peru maybe, playing guitar, bass and the gigantic bongos and hitting on blondes in their breaks.

Swell.