Posted in Blog housecleaning, NaNoWriMo on December 1, 2011| 13 Comments »
Final total wordcount: 60,681.
Month-of-November wordcount: 50,701.
(Edit: those are the NaNoWriMo official wordcounts. My Open Office software says that my total wordcount is 63,789.)
I hope to catch up with emails and packages and posts (and Christmas stuff, eep!) in the next week. Thanks for bearing with me this crazy-busy month!
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Scent Diary, tagged Scent Diary on November 21, 2011| 8 Comments »
Image from Wallpapers etc.
A pretty good NaNo day: Daily word count is 3119, with a cumulative total of 26,114.
Tuesday, Nov. 15: Rain. And half the denizens of this household have a cold. (The observant among you will note that “half the denizens” works out to two-and-a-half people, or if we’re counting pets as well, that makes three-and-a-half living beings. However, if we take the two pets and make them equal to one person, which PETA would certainly chastise me for doing, then that makes three denizens of the household with a cold, and that happens to be the case: Taz, Bookworm and I are sniffling, sneezing, and snotty-nosed. ‘Tain’t no fun. I’m tellin’ ya.)
SOTD: Nothing. Nada. I got busy and I forgot, and by the time I remembered, I didn’t want to waste time on sampling something, but samples were all that were handy to the desk on which I write, and although I would probably have benefited from a brief jog over to the dresser where I keep most of my in-season bottles and decants, all of five feet away, I couldn’t be bothered. Because then, my dears, I would have had to have chosen something, and I was getting my main characters Day and Meredith out of a potential scrape with the obviously-drunk and possibly-dangerous meth-head redneck Jackson brothers, and it was taking all of my attention. I had no attention to spare for perfuming myself with licquored-up Jacksons on the loose, because their mama’s people is Cecils and Odells from Little Creek, and don’t nobody mess with them ‘thout a shotgun.
Clearly I am overusing my dash key today. No matter: Daily NaNo wordcount 2888, for a cumulative total of 29,002. I did choose a bedtime fragrance: Lolita Lempicka Si Lolita. I like a good peppery floriental; too bad this one has such lousy staying power.
Wednesday, Nov. 16: Taz woke me up last night with the thrilling news that he had vomited, and a little bit got on his pillow but he made it to the bathroom for the rest. Oh, joy. I was so tired that I told him to just pull his comforter onto the floor and sleep there, and I’d clean up later. By morning, he was feeling better and said he was hungry, and the bed wasn’t that icky, so I wasn’t worried about him. But then Bookworm called me from school, telling me that she’d thrown up too and would I please come get her? So they were both home today, and I held off on scent so that should any of us be stricken by more nausea, at least I wouldn’t ruin a fragrance with bad associations. Later in the afternoon, I chose Prada Infusion d’Iris, which is so light and pleasant that I figured it would survive any such attack. But there was none.
Daily NaNo wordcount 1207, for a cumulative total of 30,209.
Thursday, Nov. 17: Cold. Rainy. Everybody feeling better and back at school. Meant to wear L’Arte di Gucci today, but got distracted. SOTD: Parfumerie Generale Aomassai, which is gorgeous and rich and roasted-smelling for ten minutes, after which it smells like a very nice masculine oriental. Overall, I’m disappointed that it isn’t earthshaking, but it is pleasant. Trying not to get sick today; took a two-hour nap in the afternoon.
Finally it cleared up, and I picked up Bookworm at school and took her to the courthouse to get her official driver’s license. In Virginia, you’re still required to go before a judge (usually in a group hearing), and hear about your responsibilities as a driver, how driving is a privilege and not a right, and that if you are still a minor, your parents still control whether you can possess that license or not. You also hear about the risks of driving, the biggest reasons for accidents in drivers under 21 (inexperience, distraction, speeding, impairment due to drugs/alcohol), and that recently-increased legal penalties for delinquent behavior such as alcohol possession or truancy can affect your driver’s license. It’s a sobering discourse, followed by the ceremonial presentation of the license to the new driver’s parent. In any case, I held Bookworm’s freedom there in my hot little hand for all of four minutes before recognizing out loud that she’s mature and trustworthy, and handing it over to her with a reminder that I didn’t go through 28 hours of labor with her and sixteen years of parenting, just to have all that good work ruined by her death in a vehicle, so be careful with it.
Had a good community chorus rehearsal. Wore Alahine to bed. Yum.
Grr. Having NaNo difficulties… every time I sit down to write something, it comes out STUPID. Lousy 146 word count today, cumulative count 30,355. Not behind yet, but I am puzzled by the reason for the setback. What did I do wrong? Why aren’t my characters telling me what’s going on? They should be. I have all sort of plot and character-development ideas… though I know for a fact that I am avoiding writing an action climax. Maybe that’s it; they know I’m being a total chicken about the car crash night and they resent me.
Friday, Nov. 18: The CEO comes home tonight, yay! Bookworm has a date. Got to do a little cleaning-straightening and think up something nice for dinner. It’s very cold and clear outside, and nearly all of our beautiful fall leaves are on the ground, but it smells nice: a bit of woodsmoke in the air, some damp decaying leaves, and the odor of frost over large areas of grass. Drinking Pumpkin Spice Chai tea, yum. Burning Pumpkin Spice candles, too – it’s become a NaNoWriMo ritual almost.
SOTD: Tauer Une Rose Chypree. Totally not what my character would wear, but no matter. I’m digging it. I don’t think fragrance cognitive disconnect is behind my recent word blockage… I don’t think so. I wasn’t writing any better with the Infusion d’Iris on instead. SOBedtime: Alahine again. I love Alahine. (And you know? It plays nicely with URC.)
Daily NaNo wordcount 4689, for a cumulative total of 35,224. Woo-hoo!
Saturday, Nov. 19: Cleaned house, took recyclables to the county collection place, bought another two gallons of milk, yada yada… SOTD: Guerlain Idylle edt. It’s lighter and less patchouli-heavy than the edp, with some lily of the valley on top of the rose and jasmineand I like it a lot more. It does have patchouli, that “clean” version that perfumistas love to hate on, but that kind seems to bother me less than the other. It is somewhat… hm… higher-pitched than a lot of patchoulis, but the entire edt version of Idylle is fairly high-pitched, and I rather like it.
Daily NaNo wordcount 1480, for a cumulative total of 36,704. SOTE: Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur. (How come the pretty, floral edt version of Black Orchid got discontinued and the shrieking, dirt-and-cucumbers original edp version didn’t? I don’t know either.)
Sunday, Nov. 20: Cloudy but warmer, with temps in the mid-50s. Early church (good music, sermon on the Widow’s Mite). SOTMorning: nothing except the remains of Voile de Fleur on my red sweater. Managed to cut down the remaining salvia and the dead foliage, made a huuuuge dish of faux Beef Stroganoff for lunch. Football on TV for the males in the house. That’s not to say that the females of the house don’t partake: I prefer my football live, though I’ll watch a game or two if I have nothing better to do. Bookworm likes football, too, but PETBoy ate lunch with us, and then they spent some time talking (talking, ha!) standing outside near his truck before she had to come in and do the rest of her homework.
SOTAfternoon: Honore des Pres Vamp a NY. I’m now getting that bubble gum note that some people talk about with it. It’s borderline Way Too Trashy, but on me that’s gone in about half an hour, and since I never hated it the way I do certain topnotes (cough cough Tubereuse Criminelle cough), I do love the Vamp again once it’s into the tuberose-and-vanilla heart that I think of as its main character.
Daily NaNo wordcount 1480 1946 , for a cumulative total of 36, 704 38,650. (oops, didn’t update properly).
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Scent Diary, tagged nanowrimo, Scent Diary on November 14, 2011| 7 Comments »
Frost on Leaves, image from faculty.virginia.edu
Monday, Nov. 7: Sunny and chilly today; it feels like November. SOTMorning: started out by testing Prada No. 6 Tubereuse, from their discontinued soliflore parfum line. Didn’t like it. There’s a buncha orange blossom in there, and it’s very soapy on me, not to mention short-lived. I was still craving tuberose when it wore off after an hour (yes, only an hour), but the “amber spice” candle I had been burning while writing for NaNoWriMo had its effect on me, too, so guess what I went for? Vamp a NY. Yummy.
I’m having some cognitive dissonance, because my main character would never ever wear something like Vamp.
Daily NaNo total: 1772, for a cumulative total of 13,592. (ahead of schedule).
Tuesday, Nov. 8: Election Day. Since The CEO is running for School Board in our district, he and his mother and I split up the three precincts and each covered one, handing out postcard-size information sheets on his qualifications, in case he’d missed getting handbills to some voters. SOTD: Mary Greenwell Plum. As it turned out, he did win, with about 69% of the votes in each precinct. It was a loooooong day.
Nothing written for NaNoWriMo today, as expected. Total still at 13,592, not behind.
Wednesday, Nov. 9: Romped on the NaNo writing today! So busy that I barely even remembered to wear perfume at all, and then I tried the new tester version of “Classic” from Sonoma Scent Studio. The last time I wore it, it seemed more complex than it does now, but it also had an unpleasant celery-like material in it (which seems to be an item usually classified as “jasmine”). I like it much better now. It has a little hit of aldehydes, some rose and jasmine and mimosa, and a lovely sandalwood-vanilla base with a hint of myrrh. It is interestingly similar to Tableau de Parfums Miriam, but with noticeable differences.
Daily NaNo total: 3834, for a cumulative total of 17,426. Now a couple of thousand words ahead of schedule, yay!
Thursday, Nov. 10: Another heavy writing day. Stayed home all day, pretty much did nothing but write and fold a few loads of laundry. Then I had a little nap (yay, nap!). I didn’t even notice the weather. SOTD: Prada Infusion d’Iris.
Daily NaNo total: 2957, for a cumulative total of 20,383.
Friday, Nov. 11, Veterans Day: Went to a Veterans Day program at Gaze’s school, and it was very moving. The school’s former “resource officer” – a law enforcement officer that spends time at the school, building relationships with the kids and preventing problems as much as possible – has moved on to full time sheriff duty, but becaus he served in the US Navy in peacetime, spoke to the 8th graders about his experiences in the military. The industrial arts teacher, who’s been there a long time and even taught The CEO when he attended, spoke to the kids about his service in the infantry in Vietnam. He was fairly circumspect, but that was a horrific time, and I think the students ended up with a greater appreciation for the sacrifices of military veterans. The band played two pieces, very well, and the choir sang the national anthem and one other song, passably.
I expected to attend a NaNoWriMo write-in this morning, but either I mistook the date (possible) or it’s been moved to Monday. Then The CEO took me out to lunch as thanks for helping at the polls, and that was lovely. SOTD: Cuir de Lancome.
Had been planning to go to what is probably going to be the final football game of the season. I still can’t believe the high school team made the playoffs with a 1 win – 9 loss record (I can’t ‘splain it, it has something to do with a point scheme). But it’s cold and windy out, and I feel sure we’ll lose tonight, and the band is going to play in the stands but not wear uniforms and not present their halftime show, so I sent Bookworm off with hats and gloves and Hot Hands and sweatshirts, with extras to share, and a firm instruction to Stay As Warm As Possible, I Mean It, Don’t Get Sick, Your Mama Loves You.
Daily NaNo total: 483, for a cumulative total of 20,866. Still a little ahead, even though my characters shut up at the end of a scene and wouldn’t talk to me anymore.
Saturday, Nov. 12: Cleaned house. I think Bookworm is sick – she’s been coughing all day. After yesterday’s cold and windy weather, today is beautiful! In the low 60s, blue skies, a little bit of a breeze. Went to my late grandmother’s townhouse to look at some furniture my aunts wondered if I’d like to have, since the house has been sold and everything has to be removed very soon. As it turns out, I don’t have room for that enormous table, but I did take a space heater and a Pyrex dish in a size I use. The big roadblock with dispersing Nell’s things is the stacks and stacks of quilting materials. While I was there, Aunt Doris and Aunt Cindy suddenly discovered more boxes of the stuff that they hadn’t realized was there, and there was unison wailing from the spare bedroom. SOTD: Tableau de Parfums Miriam. I smelled wonderful.
Struggling with NaNoWriMo today: I don’t think my main characters liked the last scene I wrote, which took their relationship to a more involved level, perhaps too quickly. I’m not sure what to do – I don’t want to remove the whole scene, but I might have to stick another one in before it, just to bridge the emotional distance between this one and the previous romantic (sort of) scene. Meanwhile, I just let them have the day off while I ponder. I’m tired. Daily NaNo total: 0, for a cumulative total of 20,866. Still on track, if I write some Sunday.
Sunday, Nov. 13: Chilly and cloudy, in the high 50s. PETBoy went with us to church, and then afterward came back and watched The Princess Bride with us, since he’d never seen it. I’m not sure he enjoyed it as much as we do (Prince Humperdinck: “That may be the first time anyone has ever dared insult me.” Westley: “It won’t be the last, you warthog-faced buffoon.”), but we had a nice afternoon. SOTD: Caron Parfum Sacre, lovely stuff.
Heard Taz playing by himself upstairs, banging on the pot-lid Viking shield from his Halloween costume, and humming “Hail to the Chief.” I don’t know what one has to do with the other, but it was funny.
Daily NaNo total: 2129, for a cumulative total of 22,995. Still on pace. My characters are talking to me again. This is crucial.
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Scent Diary on November 7, 2011| 6 Comments »
Monday, Oct.31, Halloween: Hectic, hectic day! Did errands, went grocery shopping, helped move a group of cows into the barn lot (they never want to go into the barn lot, much the same way as the cat hates to go to the vet). Aargh. SOTD: Tableau de Parfums Miriam. I do love it. Every time I wear it, I remember to pray for PETBoy, which is a good thing.
Took Viking Taz trick-or-treating, wearing Tabac Aurea to go with the woodsmoke in the air. He came home with a huuuuge bucket of candy, which meant that I snagged a few pieces to share with his sister and brother. Nobody needs that much candy. Sorry to say, I didn’t get a good picture of him…
Tuesday, Nov. 1: NaNoWriMo started today. I had meant to stay up late and do some writing after midnight, but I didn’t. Too sleepy. Wordcount for the day: 1841. SOTD: PdN Vanille Tonka. Took Gaze to an open-house meeting at the local Boy Scouts’ hangout – after a couple of disastrous, leaderless years in Cub Scouts (following a couple of really good, fun years), he’s ready to Scout again.
Wednesday, Nov. 2: Good NaNoWriMo day – wordcount up to 3204, for a cumulative total of 5045. I am actually being a “rebel” because I’m working on a piece I started over the summer, but that does not mean I can’t get at least 50,000 words written this month. Did some laundry. SOTD: Jacomo Silences. Gorgeous stuff.
The CEO left this evening to go to Richmond for the Virginia Farm Bureau resolutions meeting. He’ll be back tomorrow night.
Thursday, Nov. 3: Another decent NaNoWriMo wordcount day: daily total 2250, cumulative total 7295. SOTD: L’Arte di Gucci, because The CEO is not nearly as enthusiastic about it as I am. It had largely worn off when he got home (aided by my taking a late shower after community choir practice).
Friday, Nov. 4: Got called to help chaperone the marching band at what’s supposed to be the last football game of the season, at the traditional rival school’s field. Went to a NaNo Write-In at Radford University, met some cool people, wrote 1785 words today for a cumulative total of 9080. Went by my late grandmother’s place to pick out a few dishes, as the town house is being cleaned out for its new owners. Threw some pork chops in the oven for the boys before I left, then sat with my buddy TJ on the band bus. SOTD: Mariella Burani. Three spritzes may have been too much, because I kept hearing people say, “Do you smell baby powder?”
We lost the game, which I expected, but it turns out that because of the number of points our team scored, we’re in the district playoffs and will be playing again next week. Seems wrong to have a 1-win, 9-loss team in the playoffs to me. Don’t you think? The other school’s band show was interrupted by a streaker in tighty-whities, but that was the only exciting part of the evening. Ah, well – Bookworm’s bestie Grace, who was drum major last year and graduated, made it to the game, so it was nice to see her. And PETBoy seemed to be enjoying the game, but right before it was over, another band alumnus stopped by and mentioned a death in his family, and I think that prompted some emotion. Bookworm said the ride home was fraught; she wasn’t sitting with him, because there’s a band rule that when it gets dark, there’s no boy-girl seating. She and another friend were able to offer some comfort, but that’s hard to do on a bus.
Photo from last week's marching band competition, by Nicole Ward. I think Kalep was trying to be funny... pretty sure he was... almost sure.
SOTD: L’Artisan Havana Vanille. Yum. Sometimes it seems too sweet to me, and sometimes not. Today it’s great. My attention span for NaNoWriMo was terrible, though, and I only scored 992 words, for a cumulative total of 10,072 – still ahead of schedule, but just barely.
Sunday, Nov. 6: Early church again. SOTD: Mary Greenwell Plum – so nice. The kids’ report cards came home this week, with very good grades in general. (Taz’s handwriting grade is pretty bad, but I expected that.) NaNoWriMo daily total was 1748, for a cumulative total of 11,820.
SOTBedtime: Shalimar Light.
Posted in Novel excerpt on August 16, 2011|
No perfume again today. I’ve been really busy with the normal Back to School mom stuff, and also ferrying Bookworm around to various things (Governor’s School, doctor’s office to see about her pinky finger she slammed in the car door Sunday, hospital to get X-ray for said finger, band practice, cross-country practice, et cetera, et cetera). Also, I am burning up in the middle with a new story, so any spare minutes I get have been spent writing. I find that if I don’t drop things and write right now what’s going on in my head, it goes away. So, here’s what I’ve got right now as the opening page of this story (which is not the novel I excerpted earlier – that one I’ve been working on for about three years now).
Monday, August 1, 2011
Jason Povlich, sixteen-year veteran director of the Fairlee County (Virginia) High School band, was toasting a bagel and tasting the first sips of his morning coffee when he heard. The radio was on, with the news report, and he was rearranging his To-Do List for the following week’s band camp when the morning news guy said something completely unexpected.
“In local news, two people are dead following a single-car accident last night near Star Lake in Franklin. Apparently, the driver of the vehicle fell asleep and hit an embankment, killing both passengers in the vehicle. Names are being withheld pending the informing of family. Also in Franklin yesterday, twenty-one-year-old Thomas Day Donovan was arrested on charges of rape and assault. Donovan is alleged to have called 911 himself, requesting medical help for the victim, who is not being named according to the nature of the crime.”
Mr. Povlich spat out his mouthful of coffee, said something out loud he wouldn’t have liked to have had his mother overhear, and went to find his wife.
She was drying her hair in the bathroom, and he waited until she saw him in the mirror and turned off the hair dryer. Without preamble, he told her, “Day Donovan’s just been arrested.”
She put down the dryer. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“Day Donovan?” Katie Povlich repeated, in incredulous tones. “Arrested? Why, for God’s sake?”
“For rape,” Jason said.
“Rape?” she exclaimed, with even more disbelief. “We are talking about the same kid you had in band three years ago, right? Sweet kid, wouldn’t step on a bug?”
“Has to be. I don’t know any other Thomas Day Donovans in Franklin, age 21.”
“There’s some mistake,” Katie said, with finality. “There’s just no way.”
“I agree,” Jason said. “I can’t believe it. If Day’s a rapist, I will personally eat a tuba.”
Similar mouthfuls of breakfast coffee had been spat out of mouths all over Franklin and the surrounding towns. Boy Scout leaders, teachers in the Fairlee County school system, employees of DiTech Systems, and members of the Angels Rest Holiness Church were just as incredulous as the Povliches. Day Donovan a rapist? The earth shook on its foundations.
Both radio and TV were off in the home of David and Lisa Harper. Their younger daughter Tess, age 17, was up early for once, eating cereal at the breakfast table and watching her parents have a silent eyeball conversation. “Where’s Meredith?” Tess asked.
“She’s asleep upstairs,” Lisa said. “Don’t wake her up.”
“Okay.” Tess meditatively crunched cereal. “What’s going on? Did she come in late or drunk or something?”
David and Lisa looked at each other with some alarm. We’re going to have to tell Tess something, David said without words.
And, Not yet, Lisa replied, equally silently. To her daughter she said, “Why don’t you stick around the house today? Hang out with Meredith for a change. She won’t be here very long – she goes back to college in a few weeks.”
Tess perked up. “Cool. She can drive me to the mall. There’s a sale at Anthropologie.”
“No, I mean stay home,” Lisa said, sharper than she’d meant to. “I need you to stay home.”
“And do what exactly?” Tess demanded, putting down her spoon. “Play Barbies? Swing on the swingset? What do you think we are, eight years old?”
David made a choked noise in his throat and got up from the table. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. “Allergies,” he said to Tess. “Mind your mother and stay home, young lady.”
“Fine.” Honestly, parents, Tess thought. They never knew anything. She ate her cereal and went to text Chels and Mikayla that her parents were imprisoning her against her will and not to expect her at the pool. She also knew that something was up, probably with Meredith. Probably one of her panic attacks again, which she was not allowed to mention to anyone outside the family.
She went to Meredith’s room to just crack open the door and see if she was awake yet, but when she poked her head in, Mere was rolling around in her covers the way she did when she was waking up and stretching. “Hey,” Tess said. “What’s going on?”
There was an incoherent mumble from under the sheets.
“Did you have one of your panic things last night? Dad is all weird today, and Mom told me not to turn on the TV and disturb you.”
Meredith sat up groggily, rubbing her face with both hands. One camisole strap was falling off her right shoulder. The other shoulder, Tess noticed, was bruised pretty badly, a big ugly purple blotch on the tender inner arm stretching up to her collarbone. “Ow,” Meredith said, “That hurt.” She also had a scratch and bruise on her left cheek. But she smiled at Tess, a strange smile that was somehow both shy and smug. Like she had a secret, Tess thought. Mere was pretty tight with her secrets.
“What happened to you?” Tess asked. Something must have happened, for Mere to be bruised up and Mom and Dad both weird and staying home from work.
Meredith did not answer her, instead reaching over to the nightstand for her phone. She flipped it open and frowned with concentration, scrolling through the menus for something. She flopped back down on the bed. “Ow,” she said again, and started thumbing a text message.
“Who’re you texting?” Tess said, not really expecting an answer. But Meredith turned the phone around so Tess could see:
“hey how r u? im still groggy fr antipanic meds & sore fr fall u get home ok? u wr rly freaked out last nite txt me back k”
“Who’s that to?” Tess wanted to know, all at sea with “meds” and “fall” and “freaked out.”
“Day, of course,” Meredith said, and smiled that strange smile again.
Posted in Novel excerpt, tagged memories of love, old flame, smell of apples on August 1, 2011| 13 Comments »
I know I shouldn’t be contacting you like this, but fear not. I’m not chasing you – I know you’re married now. Honestly, I have a good life. I had a good husband, and my daughter, now almost grown, is a pure delight. I’m a tenured professor teaching what I love in the state of my birth; I own a house and a car and a cat and some investment funds. I’m in good health. Who has the right to ask for more?
Look, I stayed away. I avoid reading all poetry published after 1988, and especially that written by New Zealand poets, which is not difficult because I teach the Modern American Novel. I politely decline Massey University’s repeated query as to whether I’d like to receive the alumni magazine.
I resisted the siren call of Google search as long as I could. One day not long ago, something came over me. I was thinking about autumn, about fallen leaves and the smell of apples, and the way the sky gets so deep in the fall. A great wave of longing for you swept over me, and I sat there in my ergonomic, university-provided desk chair and had to close my eyes and hold on to the armrests for balance.
When I could breathe again, my fingers found their way to the keyboard and I typed in your name, just your name, and I hit Enter. And then when I opened my eyes to look, there were too many entries to count. I skimmed them. Mostly they were to do with that critically-acclaimed collection of poems from 1993, or the one from 1997, or that anthology from 2005. I knew of the published stuff, but I was looking for something more personal. Congratulations on those, by the way. Well-deserved, I’m sure, though I haven’t read them.
But there was one entry, from an alumni organization, that jumped out. It listed your name and the year of your bachelor’s degree, and a doctorate I knew you must have gotten later as well as the master’s degree we both earned at Massey. It said Nicholas Somerfield, the poet, and his wife Deirdre Manning were the proud parents of their first child, a son named William Edward. It also mentioned that you were teaching at the University of Auckland, and your wife was an associate at one of the downtown law firms.
I did some math. Young William Edward will now be nearly nine, a good ten years younger than my daughter. I’ve no doubt that he’s got at least one sibling by now; I can’t imagine your not being an enthusiastic father. I’d have thought you’d marry someone quite different than a career woman, though: a former student, perhaps, or one of those society girls your father kept throwing at you. A fellow professor, maybe – someone you’d write poetry for. But perhaps your wife has time for literature, too? She kept her maiden name, as I did not. I’d bet she keeps a neat house, and the children go to boarding school, appropriately equipped, and the maid does the difficult work, and all you have to do is prepare for your classes. You read Rilke to her in the evenings, or Neruda.
Certainly you must have more children by now, don’t you? Two boys and a girl, or two girls and that boy, young William Edward… I can see them in my head now, running over hills at your father’s manor house over their summer break, pulling a kite up into the air. The kite is red. The children are tall, like you, and they have your coloring. It’s a boy and two girls, I think: young William Edward, and Isobel and Catherine. They have long tanned legs and their dark hair is mussed by the wind, and your wife Deirdre makes clucking noises when they come in and pulls a proper boar-bristle hairbrush out of the sideboard drawer and tidies them before the dinner gong. Deirdre must be tall too, at least she is in my picture of her, and she has enigmatic gray eyes and a firm mouth. She’s the disciplinarian. You’d be out flying the kite with them, except that when they were going out with it, imploring you to come with them, she’d put her hand on the small of your back and told them, “No, Daddy and I have something to talk about.” And all the afternoon while the children are outside flying the kite and gently squabbling about whose turn it is, and who was pushing, was-not, was-too, you and Deirdre are up in that third-floor room in your parents’ house (you’d call it the second floor), the one with the tōtara tree outside the window, and you’re awake-dreaming in the bed, sunlight and leaf-shadows across your bodies. She is slender and long-bodied, and when you kiss her, you do not have to bend down far at all. You match. She fits you. Your family approves of her.
I would not jar such happiness loose, even assuming that I could. From this distance halfway across the world, from this distance a score of years long? Pure idiocy. I closed the browser window and laughed at myself, and I never went looking for you again. I forgot you too.
Except that I didn’t.
I buried my memories of you, for Tony’s sake. Tony was a good man, and I would never have hurt him by remembering you too vividly, or too openly. My memories of you haunted me only in the early morning, in what I call the Dreaming Hour, that time just before the sleeper wakes with the color and shape of her dream still on her. Sunshine and apples and fallen leaves, and the smell of your leather coat. Wet woolens and library books. Violets. The way my head fit into that hollow on your chest. When I would wake with tears on my face, I always knew I’d been dreaming of you.
Now Tony is gone, and it seems that when they dug his grave, they accidentally disinterred you. You rise like a ghost from a shelf of books, arguing Housman to my Frost, or Virginia Woolf to my John Irving. I make a cup of tea and think of the lovely Caravaggio shape of your mouth, and then I look at the clock and see I’m almost late for my 2:10 class. When rain snakes down the glass of my office window and the air is wet and clean, I sense you are behind me, shaking off your mac and drying your hair with the kitchen towel.
I smell pipe smoke, and I look around for you. An autumn night begins to fall, and I look at the blue-ink sky and think, who has eyes that color? No one save Colin. So maybe I dreamed you. Maybe there was never an Us.
Did you ever love me at all? I just want to know. That’s why I’m writing to you now. I don’t want to see you. I want to know why you let me go.
I remember how we used to talk – right from the beginning we were finishing each other’s sentences and nodding madly at each other, sentences spilling like water over Niagara Falls, while our friends looked at each other with raised knowing eyebrows. How we talked and talked! Our friend Gregory told me once that he couldn’t fathom it, he’d known you all through your undergraduate years and he’d never heard that many words come out of your mouth, because usually they were spilling onto some notebook instead, to be secreted inside your rucksack and never seen, until published in the university’s literary magazine.
But you talked to me. And you touched me. You were so shy that the first time you kissed me, you closed your eyes and nearly missed my mouth. But I taught you how to kiss – we taught each other how to kiss – and in a short time, “shy,” was the very last word I’d have used to describe your touch. We were shameless in consuming each other. We’d break off some discussion of Nikki Giovanni to take off our clothes and be together. We couldn’t touch each other enough, or too often. It was like our talking, it flowed over itself and grew and caught us in the floodwaters. We’d touch and talk, talk and touch, before and over and through and during and after and in. We never stopped, we couldn’t stop. There was always something more to say, some caress to bestow or receive, some closeness to achieve.
And you held my heart cupped in your hands, all fragile and precious. You held me and you spoke to me in your beautiful voice, extravagant love promises that I never doubted for a second because I returned them without reservation.
But now, I look back and hear the things about which you never spoke, echoing empty spaces in the House of Us : your childhood loneliness. Your mother’s medications, her plastic surgeries, her remoteness. Your frustration with your work: in the charcoal grill, you once burned a four-inch stack of typewritten poems, eight months’ worth of meticulous labor, with a darkness in your eyes. “It was rubbish, all of it,” was all you said when I realized what you’d done. You never mentioned your father’s sneering and unjustified disdain for all four of his sons. Once, your older brother – David the handsome, David the promising young barrister most any father would be proud of – said something of it to you in my hearing, his tone bitter and hurt. You turned away. You said nothing.
You were silent on the subject of my leaving. I’d finished the course of Master of Arts studies and my thesis; I’d overstayed the length of my scholarship and was running out of stipend money. My student visa was set to expire. I had to go back home. I told you all this, more than once.
You said nothing. You let me go.
Six of those poems you burned? You had written them for me, you’d said, “Sara, you’ve been my muse.” You’d said that love had inspired you. Those were my poems, I protested then, in grief and disbelief. You said nothing. They were gone, bitter ash on the wind. One of them I knew by heart, the others I only remember in snatches. I won’t quote them to you now, though they will burn, words of flame, in my heart until I die. On windy evenings, I yet hear you whisper them in my ear.
In the airplane lavatory, going home, my eyes swollen from hours of crying, I poured what remained of my little upside-down-heart bottle of Chamade into the toilet, and I flushed it. It fell into the Pacific Ocean somewhere, that scent of Me With You, and my tears fell with it.
My grief: You let me go. I just want to know why. You let me go without word or touch, without farewell or blessing or even curse, you let me go still loving you, my heart cut out of my chest and still beating. How did you do such a thing? How could you?
Of course I won’t send this.
But please tell me, if you know: How do I stop loving you?
(All rights reserved. Image is Keyboard Blur by striatic at Flickr, some rights reserved.)
Posted in Literature, tagged mystery novels on April 21, 2011| 10 Comments »
I’m re-reading Martin Cruz Smith’s wonderful novel, Rose, set in a coal-mining town in Victorian England. The protagonist, an American mining engineer named Blair, has just been hauled out of the Gold Coast, disgraced and suffering an acute malarial attack, back to England to face the indignant Board of the National Geologic Society. He’d come through miles of jungle, with five native porters he was supposed to have paid, to the Society’s headquarters, only to find that his funds had been spent on a hunting safari for a visiting British noble – so he took the Bible fund to pay his porters, foregoing his own salary.
This, of course, is not at all the Done Thing. The Board members are in high dudgeon; no person of consequence would be unable to cover the matter with personal funds. Blair’s desperate to get back to Africa, not only because he loves it there, but because he’s left his young daughter of mixed race behind. Bishop Hannay, one of the Board members and owner of a profitable coal mine as well as a weathy estate, promises to get Blair onto the roster of another Africa expedition, and to pay him his expected salary, if Blair will just do him one tiny little favor.
Hannay’s daughter’s fiance, the local curate, has gone missing. Blair is commissioned to look for the Reverend Maypole, and to console Charlotte Hannay… and he has to do it in Wigan, the coal town containing the Hannay mine. Wigan is where Blair was born, a fact he’d mentioned to the Bishop some months prior in Africa, over late-night drinks. Blair doesn’t want to return; he was four when he took ship with his mother for America. She died on the voyage, and an elderly bachelor mining engineer on the ship unofficially adopted him. Blair took the engineer’s name; he can’t remember the name he was born with, or even his mother’s name.
Nothing, in Wigan, is as it seems. While investigating Maypole’s life, he meets a “pit girl” named Rose, one of the last people Maypole was seen speaking with, and she fascinates him. He suspects that Maypole’s interest in Rose was becoming an obsession, and he’s just about to pursue this line of inquiry when he finds out that there was a massive explosion at the mine, with more than 60 people dead, the very morning of Maypole’s disappearance.
Smith is a genius at settings. I’ve never been to Russia or the Bering Sea or East Berlin – but because I’ve read Smith’s Arkady Renko novels, I’ve chased spies through Moscow, gutted fish on a factory ship, dodged bullets on a subway and wolves in the forests near Chernobyl. In Rose, Smith is masterful with putting his reader right in the soup along with his protagonist. Here’s a passage from Chapter 2, when Blair’s train is pulling in to the Wigan station:
The dark sky turned darker, not with clouds but with a more pungent ingredient. From the window, Blair saw what could have been the towering effluent plume of a volcano, except that there was no erupting volcanic cone, no mountain of any size, in fact, between the Pennines to the east and the sea to the west, nothing but swale and hill above the long tilt of underground carboniferous deposits. The smoke rose not from a single point but as a dark veil across the northern horizon, as if all the land thereafter was on fire. Only closer could a traveler tell that the horizon was an unbroken line of chimneys.
Chimneys congregated around cotton mills, glassworks, iron foundries, chemical works, dye works, brick works. But the most monumental chimneys were at the coal pits, as if the earth itself had been turned into one great factory. When Blake wrote of “dark Satanic mills,” he meant chimneys.
The hour was almost dusk, but this darkness was premature. When enough chimneys had passed one by one, the sky turned the ashen gray of an eclipse. On either side private tracks connected pits to the canal ahead. Between the pall and the lines of steel lay Wigan, at first sight looking more like smoldering ruins rather than a town.
Coal was worked into the town itself, creating coal tips that were black hills of slag. On some, coal gas escaped as little flames that darted from peak to peak like blue imps. The train slowed along a pit as a cageload of miners reached the surface. Coated in coal dust, the men were almost invisible except for the safety lamps in their hands. The train slid past a tower topped by a headgear that, even in the subdued light, Blair saw was painted red. On the other side, figures crossed single file across the slag, taking a shortcut home. Blair caught them in profile. They wore pants and coal dust too, but they were women.
The track bridged the canal, over barges heaped with coal, then traveled by a gasworks and a rank of cotton mills, their high windows bright and the chimneys that drove their spinning machines spewing as much smoke as castles sacked and set ablaze. The locomotive slowed with its own blasts of steam. Tracks split off to goods sheds and yards. In the middle, like an island, was a platform with iron columns and hanging lamps. The train approached at a creep, gave a last convulsive shake and stopped.
See? Genius. Not only does the reader see Wigan in vivid detail, the reader understands that Wigan is black, smoking, despairing, the anteroom to Hell.
I won’t go into plot details (go check it out of the library, or better yet, buy a copy!), but here as in all the Renko books, there is a mystery, there is a love interest, there are characters with secrets of their own, and there is great physical danger to the hero from unforeseen directions. People lie. Situations are not as they seem on the surface. Conversations and observations are reported in a matter-of-fact manner, such that if the reader is not paying minute attention, important information will be missed.
It occurred to me today that I approach each revelation of a Smith novel with such delight because I tend to take his characters at face value. One person’s speech is at odds with her social status? She’s extraordinary. One person tells the protagonist he knows nothing about the disappearance? He’s telling the truth. In my life, I’m suspicious: you want me to invest in your business plan? Forget it. You say you had no ulterior motives in asking me that question? Yeah, riiiiiiight.
But reading Rose? I’m watching the scenery, listening to Blair’s deadpan sarcasm, witnessing his increasing fascination with the pit girl Rose, keeping a furtive eye out for Rose’s violent boyfriend. I miss stuff. And I’m surprised by occurrences and admissions of truth. They blindside me, even the fourth time through, even though I already know they’re coming.
Now, that is how you write mystery. I love mystery novels… cut my teeth on Agatha Christie. Never got into the hardboiled style, though I’ve read my share of Ngaio Marsh and Dashiell Hammett and Ellery Queen. Tony Hillerman is a good read, but I don’t love his stuff either. So who do I love? P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, Elizabeth George. James is so economical – she can tell you worlds about a character in about four sentences, even a minor character. Ruth Rendell’s books scare the crap out of me; they tend to concentrate on ordinary-seeming characters who are mentally unstable, and who create convoluted tangles of situations around innocent people. The ground seems soft under my feet when I read Rendell.
Elizabeth George has a set of recurring characters who have relationships; each of her books (I think there are fourteen at this point) concerns itself not only with the murder at hand, as it were, but also with her major characters (a Scotland Yard investigator and his sergeant) and events in their lives. George’s murderers range from a student at a prestigious boarding school to a disturbed obese daughter to a respected doctor to a charitably-inclined owner of a printing company, but the themes of her books touch on family relationships – What does it mean to be a parent? A child? A sister, a wife, a grown son? What are each person’s rights and expectations and responsibilities? Where do the joys lie, and where the dangers?
At one time, I enjoyed Patricia Cornwell’s early Scarpetta novels, but no longer. I began to be disillusioned with them after a major character was killed in a gruesome way, and when it became apparent to me that her major characters, each of whom has significant emotional difficulties, were not making any headway toward personal growth at all, and seemed to actually be regressing into self-destruction. The novels became too depressing for me to read, beginning with Hornet’s Nest, and I found that I did not even like to reread the early novels, because I knew what was to come years later. I’ve also noticed a change, from her carefully-crafted climaxes of action to too-short, choppy scenes, dizzying and uninformative, without the self-reflection of the major characters I saw in the earlier books. I haven’t even read her most recent novel, and I doubt I will.
I saw on Amazon recently that Martin Cruz Smith has a new Arkady Renko novel out: following Gorky Park, Polar Star, Red Square, Havana Bay, Wolves Eat Dogs, and Stalin’s Ghost, there is now Three Stations. I’m going to nab me that baby right quick and prepare for a good read. Hope the library has it.
Note: I actually wrote this about three weeks ago, and I have yet to get to the library. What with my laptop screen being broken (still using it with an external monitor), Gaze being sick (he’s better now) and my father-in-law in the hospital (not out of the woods yet), I haven’t been blogging much. If you feel so inclined to pray for Bill and the family, that would be much appreciated.
Image of Rose in hardcover from Amazon.
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Scent Diary, tagged holiday, nanowrimo, Scent Diary on December 5, 2010| 14 Comments »
Originally uploaded by bill littell
Monday, Nov. 29: Happy Birthday, Dad! Lots of love to you.
Just heard from my mother last night that my grandmother, Mawmaw Nell (my dad’s mother), is in the hospital and not doing well. Her doctor says that she could very well recover from a kidney infection. Or, she might not. No news yet.
The CEO and I are at The Homestead for the annual Virginia Farm Bureau convention. The CEO gets to go to all the meetings, and I get to eat wonderful food and see some old friends, and in between work on the novel. It’s going surprisingly well, and I may actually finish today.
SOTD: Chanel 31 Rue Cambon. Gorgeous thing… I’m not alone in wishing for a parfum version of this, the classy floral modern chypre that comes in that Les Exclusifs vat. You need the vat, by the way, if you’re going to wear it frequently. It needs a little bit of oomph, and perhaps a bit more sillage, to be perfect, but it’s so close.
The CEO’s news: he ran for election to the FB state board of directors, and lost to the incumbent. The current director is a lovely lady, and no one had any complaints whatsoever about the job she’s doing, but she had said in her last election that she’d serve two terms and step down, and it was only after The CEO declared his intention to run that she decided she’d like to serve another term. I think that although he did lose, at least he’s got his hat in the ring for the next election in three years. I don’t think Evelyn will attempt reelection again, as she will be in her late 70s at that point.
Retesting Smell Bent Reindeer Games on the back of one hand.
My news: I WON NANOWRIMO!! Went typing away and suddenly found that I was near the end, and that I actually had about 51K. Wow! Last year, I was writing up until about 10pm on November 30. Was going to spritz Iris Poudre in celebration, but didn’t think it could compete with the 31 RC on my sweater.
Tuesday, Nov. 30: Chilly rain. Fires in the fireplaces at The Homestead. They’ve decorated for Christmas already, which I generally hate-I-mean-hate, but which here looks right. It’s a large building, so everything is on the grand scale: huuuuge 15-foot-tall Christmas trees in the Great Hall and in the ballrooms (there are… three here, I think) and in the large conference room. Christmas lights on the lawn in front of the hotel, which we can see very well from our room because of the way the wings are angled. Big wreaths, big red bows, enormous ornaments and 6-inch-wide ribbons on the trees; a train set in the atrium, moving among gingerbread houses… I’m certainly not going to be decorating at home until about halfway through December, but I’m enjoying it here.
SOTD: Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur, lovely creamy white-floral thing. Friendly yet quirky, with black pepper and plum under the tuberose.
Dinner is usually preceded on the second day of the convention by a reception hosted by the Eastern Shore county office, with crab legs, Virginia peanuts, and those delicious crunchy hand-cooked potato chips, and mixed drinks. Dinner is a little more elaborate than the other meals, and people tend to dress up. I wore my black jersey wrap dress, with pearls and my russet paisley scarf… and Iris Poudre. Ooooh.
Wednesday, Dec. 1: Drove home from The Homestead, 2.5 hours. I left right after breakfast, since I needed to be at work to send out account statements, but The CEO rode back with one of the other voting delegates from our county. The dog was glad to see me. The cat was nowhere to be found at first, although she decided to come out and yodel at me, probably expressing her annoyance that I wasn’t there to cater to her every whim.
SOTD: Mary Greenwell Plum, which I’m enjoying so much that I am a) writing a review, b) planning on wearing it again as soon as possible, and c) scheming to get my hands on more. 5 ml is just not gonna cut it – this decant is going to disappear fast. I sprayed it again in the middle of the day, just to get another hit. (Uh-oh, looks like I’m hooked. Iris Poudre did that to me, too.)
Glad to see my sweet babies. I missed them.
Thursday, Dec. 2: Trying to catch up at work. Retesting Smell Bent Dr. Dreidel and Bi-Polar Express. It’s cold out but not miserable.
The CEO called me at work this afternoon to tell me that “They” (I will eventually identify the mysterious “they.” Wouldn’t be prudent at this juncture. Heh.) had asked him to come and interview for a job Friday afternoon, and he’d have to skip his last lab class to do it, but the department TA would step in for him.
Bookworm had a Christmas parade this evening, which I couldn’t go to because I had community chorus practice. Practice went well, which would worry me if it was the last practice before performance – if that happens, watch out, you’ll screw up something very basic. However, we have one more before we present Vivaldi Gloria and some other pieces. The Gloria is a lot of fun to sing; this is my… fourth? Yes, fourth performance of it. Good stuff, very listenable.
Mawmaw Nell will be going home from the hospital tomorrow, unless something unexpected and drastic happens.
Friday, Dec. 3: Taz has some sort of stomach virus, poor baby. Retesting Smell Bent Sexy Turtleneck and Elf-Fulfilling Prophecy. Still trying to catch up at work.
Called The CEO to wish him luck with the job interview. He said, “This may not pan out, and I don’t even know what exactly they are interviewing me for, unless it’s simple gratitude and they don’t have anything to offer me anyway. We’ll see.” He called me back right afterward and told me that he was considering taking this particular job, and wanted to know what I thought about the situation. Wow. That was fast… I’ll share details as soon as I am allowed to do so, probably by the end of the upcoming week.
Put on Organza Indecence at home and made some Chinese food (yum to both).
Saturday, Dec. 4: Cleaned house. Went to the second local Christmas parade to feature Bookworm’s band. Boy, parades are sure not as exciting as they used to be when I was a kid! This was was pret-ty darn boring. One marching band, some old cars, a few horses, a couple of Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, the mayor and town council, only two floats (4H and a local church), some cool tricked-out trucks, and every single fire truck the town owns. That was it.
SOTD: Alahine. I love Alahine. And it’s snowing! It started with little flurries during the parade, and by the time I’d picked up Bookworm at the high school and we’d gone by the grocery store to pick up apple juice and eggs, big fat flakes were spinning down to land on my face. Made me think of Julie Andrews singing “My Favorite Things,” with the “snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes.”
The CEO built a fire, I made hot wassail, and then we got a call from our farm guy about a cow in the barn lot that had done something incredibly stupid. She was in the barn, and instead of walking through some mud to get out the open door, she tried to go under the wall. Got stuck. Spent the night there, apparently. By the time Jeff and The CEO found her, she was cold and exhausted, and we don’t think she’s going to make it.
Sometimes farming really stinks. I mean, this was a cow nearly old enough to vote, and she was probably going to go to the cull cow sale (i.e., she was ambulatory hamburger) at the end of the month, and you have to expect that you’re going to lose one now and then, but it’s bad all the way around when you lose one to stupidity.
By bedtime, we had curled up in front of the fire with cider and watched the Hokies of VT romp all over the Seminoles of FSU to win the ACC football championship (there was much rejoicing), while the snow piled up to three inches’ worth. This is unusual for the time of year – we usually don’t get much snow before Christmas – but nice. Snow is great if you don’t have to go anywhere in it.
Sunday, Dec. 5: The snow has melted somewhat, but it’s still flurrying. The little sugar pumpkin that volunteered itself in the garden, which has been in the house since late September, has outlived its usefulness, so it’s now in the oven baking so I can make pumpkin puree out of it. SOTD: the long-awaited decant of F. Malle Portrait of a Lady. Denyse’s review at Grain de Musc says that while wearing it, she didn’t need any jewelry to be dressed up. When I see someone’s description of a particular scent as “frocky,” or “for dressing up and going out,” I’m usually amused, because the scent will typically strike me as something I feel comfortable and very “myself” in, though I rarely wear anything more formal than the aforementioned jersey wrap dress: Iris Poudre and Mary Greenwell Plum come to mind here. But with PoaL, I may have run across the rare scent too dressy, too evening-gowny, too femme and stately, for my personal everyday wear. It does have a resemblance to Malle’s own Une Rose, which I find frighteningly Gothic, and to Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Lumiere Noire pour femme, which I find drop-dead sexy, but there are differences. I’m not even sure I like it. Will review soon.
Church this morning was out of the question, with the snow… when you live half a mile up a steep, curvy gravel road, getting out is a problem. We might be able to make it this evening, but that’s iffy. School will probably go two hours late on Monday.
I’m not ready to do much in the way of Christmas decorating, but I did take down my fall wreath and the autumn dried arrangement in the old pickle crock, and put out my Nutcracker collection. I think in general we start too early and build Christmas up too much, so that it’s not the special day it ought to be. We’ll go get a tree about the 15th, and it will come down New Year’s Day. And I may go ahead and put up my Nativity scene – Reason for the Season, and all that.
Image is Littell – The Homestead decorated for Christmas, from Flickr.
Posted in NaNoWriMo, tagged nanowrimo on November 29, 2010| 15 Comments »
I love the sound of those words together: NaNoWriMo 2010 Winner… I think I’ll just repeat them quietly to myself for awhile… winner… winner. I like that.
I’m considering posting an excerpt or two here – as soon as I’ve edited them thoroughly, that is.
This year’s novel has been fun. (Uh, mostly.) I’ve lost some sleep, and the laundry has certainly suffered, but I’m getting better at plotting a story arc. Now, to do more “showing” and less “telling.” And to transition from scene to scene more smoothly. All that will, or should, come with editing. Finishing is good, building skills is better.
Thanks for being patient with me while I went off on my little side excursion. Regular posting should pick up from here on out.
I think I’m going to go put on some Iris Poudre…
Posted in NaNoWriMo, Scent Diary, tagged nanowrimo, Scent Diary on November 28, 2010| 6 Comments »
Monday, Nov. 22: Warm, 70F. The CEO is home all this week, since the university is on Thanksgiving break. He’s also got only five working (teaching) days from now until VT goes back into session in mid-January.
Is it wrong of me to hate that? He gets grouchy when he’s farming every day. And is picky about the house.
SOTD: I’m testing the samples from Smell Bent, and I have Elf-Fulfilling Prophecies on one hand, and Dr Dreidel on the other. I think these holiday editions need a separate post, so I won’t talk about them now.
NaNo Total Wordcount: 36,493. Still behind.
Tuesday, Nov. 23: Cooler than yesterday. I was in a hurry this morning, so I was limited to whatever I had in my purse. SOTD: Smell Bent One.
Went to the arts program at the high school: it’s a concert to benefit the local “Christmas Store” program, with the high school choirs and band, and presentations from the drama classes. Taz hadn’t wanted to go; he laughed all the way through the drama skits, particularly “A Shrek-mas Carol,” and then immediately announced he was bored, so bored that he might diiiieeee. (I foresee him getting interested in the drama classes himself.) Wore the first thing I grabbed on the way out the door – it was Coco Mlle, from where I had it next to the laptop when trying to channel my novel’s main character. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really like CM on me. I still don’t. It’s just that tiny bit screechy, and if it didn’t have that patchouli-woody-musk stuff underneath, I’d be scrubbing it off. As it is, it’s only mildly annoying (I may never know why it smells so wonderful on my sister.
NaNo Total Wordcount: 37, 992. Wrote until after midnight, trying to catch up (almost!). By then I was both tired and jumpy, knew I couldn’t sleep, so I took a bath to relax. That worked. I nearly fell asleep in the bathtub! Spritzed a bit of Shalimar Light, and drifted off to sleep on a cloud.
Wednesday, Nov. 24: Chilly. Kids home from school (wreaking havoc, although they did sweep the main floor for me). Put on my apple-green sweater and found it redolent of Lolita Lempicka Si Lolita, so I wore that again today. At this rate, I’ll have used up the mini in a month or two.
Took Bookworm to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 – we read all the books together, and have seen all the films together too. My verdict? It drags a little, which is perhaps to be expected, given the long buildup to the Final Confrontation that’s coming in Part 2. It was nice to see more of a focus on Ron, who’s always been my favorite character anyway, and on Hermione.
The boys are totally uninterested, but I don’t know whether that’s because it’s “Bookworm’s thing,” whether it’s a backlash against the general popularity of the series, or whether they just don’t like fantasy. Might be a combination, although I know that Gaze doesn’t enjoy reading anything that’s unrealistic. He’d rather read history than fiction.
NaNo Total Wordcount: 39, 206. Still not caught up, but closer.
Thursday, Nov. 25: Thanksgiving Day. The kids were out in the yard playing football with The CEO today – it’s warmer than your average late-November day around here (I distinctly remember a Thanksgiving when The CEO took Bookworm and Gaze ice skating on a pond). I spent most of the morning and afternoon in the kitchen, busy with pumpkin pies, green beans, turkey breast and gravy, sweet potato casserole. Hectic.
SOTD: Teo Cabanel Alahine. I thought of SSS Sienna Musk or Champagne de Bois, or even Givenchy Organza Indecence, all spicefests, but Alahine was easier to grab while running behind.
NaNo Total Wordcount: 41, 192. Still not caught up. I really hope I’ll have time over the last few days. I remember last year, when I found that the NaNo official wordcounter is more strict than my wordprocessing program, and I had to write an extra scene… I’ll have to do that again. I’d nearly forgotten.
Friday, Nov. 26: There is No Freakin’ Way you will get me out shopping today. I’d rather chew off my own arm. Also, it’s chilly. And bare, and windy. Essentially, it is finally starting to look like late November outside. SOTD: Chanel Bois des Iles. Which is beautiful if I hoover my arm, but I can’t smell myself otherwise. This makes me too frustrated, I ought to just swap it away.
SOTEvening: Mary Greenwell Plum. Nice. I hope to review it soon.
NaNo Total Wordcount: 43,342. CAUGHT UP!! Yippee!
Saturday, Nov. 27: Busy busy busy. Cleaned the house, fed everybody (three times, of course), cleaned myself. Wrote on the novel. Showed my sister-in-law how easy it is to set up a blog. (The hard part? finding time to maintain it.) Romped on the NaNo writing, because I know I won’t have much time on Sunday since The CEO and I will be traveling to the Virginia Farm Bureau Convention. This year it’ll be at The Homestead, in Hot Springs – a much fancier hotel than they usually get, but I think this is The Homestead’s slow time, before they get busy again over Christmas, and they’re giving us a competitive deal. I’ve been there before, and I think it’s beautiful. My favorite part? Afternoon tea in the great hall.
SOTD: Natori edp.
NaNo Total Wordcount: 47,312. I now think I might actually make it! Will be hectic busy tomorrow, so I hope this’ll be enough. I will have through Tuesday, and looks like I’ll need that time.
Sunday, Nov. 28: First Sunday of Advent; we lit the Hope candle. Home from church, we all threw clothes in bags and got underway – the kids to The CEO’s parents house, The CEO and I to the convention. SOTD: Dior Dolce Vita, a delicious confection of stewed fruit, spices, and woods. The CEO sniffed my wrist in the car while we were stalled on I81 and said, “Mmm, spicy. You smell like dessert.”
NaNo Total Wordcount: 47, 560. Lame effort today, but I expected that.
Image is of a perfume convention from parfumgott at Flickr.
by creating in the dark at flickr
Muse in Wooden Shoes 