September 30, 2008

• Tuesday, Tuesday

    It’s a cold, rainy Tuesday. Everything feels damp and clammy. I can hear the water fly off the tires when cars drive by. When I first woke up I could hear the steady drip, drip of water off the leaves and eaves, but that has backed off a bit. We had another discussion about keeping the house warm–and how warm we want to keep it–this winter. We considered closing the windows (for the day, but yes, certainly by winter.) I have no shredded wheat and would have to go to the grocery store to acquire some. It’s just…that kind of day.

  Yesterday I developed a chocolate jones that nearly threw me to the floor and beat up on me. I had homemade apple pie–fresh–here at the house, and all I could think about where the big cup Reese Peanut Butter Cups. I LOVE those things. I’ve been known to eat an entire package of them, one after another, and I wanted one SO BAD…  Couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t write… I finally took myself on another river tour, which is actually fairly unusual for me, these days, but I had to get away from the pie and the potential chocolate, lurking in the exact aisle of The Store Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned…

   Clams. Daryla thought these might be zebra mussels, and she might be right–but they look too me like the little clams that have always been in Michigan lakes and streams. Anyway, the water went down several feet and these poor little babies who live in the shallows were abandoned. These are clinging to a sign that was apparently also thrown into the water. These below are just clinging to the rocks along the shoreline.

  For some reason they were easier to see on my computer before I added them to Xanga. The little crusty spots on the rocks are clams.

  I was attacked by a clam in my impressionable  youth. I was innocently swimming in a spot on the lake where we didn’t often swim and it was weedy (which I also don’t like) and I stepped down and the bottom of the lake grabbed my toe and tried to pull me under. I screamed, leaped up into the air and walked on top of the water back to shore, where I looked down and found a huge clam hanging from my innocent toe. I was nearly hysterical, but my mother, as usual, seemed to feel I was overreacting. My sensitive nature was so rarely supported in my birth family…  (Now that I think about it, my Beloved is not a constant flow of patience, either.) Anyway, the photo on the left could be misleading: the largest clam here is less than half an inch long.     

  This is not the same bug that snuck into my milkweed photograph yesterday, but I’ll assume they’re littermates. This picture I actually took because Daryla said, “Cheryl–get a picture of that bug.” There were several in the area (and more than I noticed.) I have no idea what it was. I told Daryla it was a box elder bug, but it’s not. I lied. Perhaps it’s a milkweed bug.

  I heard from my agent. She says I have made excellent headway and we are “96% there…”

  (Which means, for those of us who recognize a half-empty glass when we see one: another rewrite.) And it appears neither one of my books has been remaindered yet. I am still in print. I leave you with this thought, because I have a book festering in my Word files and I need to get back to it. My concentration skills have been tested, here lately, and I need to make some progress.  

  It’s writing weather again. 

  • 9:25 am
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