I cannot think of a title

I just tugged gently on the cheap white shade behind my sheer living room curtains. Flishhhh! It popped all the way up to the top of its bar. Dull light spills in. Oh, that’s a dreadful sentence, but I don’t care.

My daughter, who is back with me now after a week at her dad’s, is still sleeping.

I missed her.

It was a hard, quiet, bleak week.

That’s a dreadful sentence, too.

I think I’ll try this again when I’ve shaken off my self-conscious jitters. Maybe I will post some crappy, “rejected” scenes from the “novel-that-will-not-be-finished [GASP] but-will-not-die”

(though, you know, I rejected them for a reason)

Ah. She’s up and cheerful, has her iTunes music on shuffle (fine by me. We have similar taste despite the 36 years between us).

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal)

end-of-June shift

I’m picking my daughter up from her father’s in about an hour. I feel a happy shift in my gut even though she will wear me out and drive me crazy with adolescent plans to lurk in the basement with a girl friend and two boy friends. I feel complete when my daughter is here to wear me out. I’m going to be such an emotional wreck when it’s time for her to go off to college.

I have such a lengthy “to do” list that I’ve practically given up on myself. The sheets are, at least, in the dryer. I’ve got bills in purse ready to mail (along with the RSVP to my niece’s wedding).

The novel has taken an odd turn. Not the plot, but inside my head. I have been searching for a lost scene, one I remember writing but probably have just been keeping in my head for three years, all tucked inside the squishy loops and turns of my weird little brain. I discovered some old notes and scenes that I wrote not long after I started the novel, before my marriage cratered for the final time. The notes and old scenes showed me the origins of the story. It’s not like I don’t remember why I started writing it, but getting reacquainted with its roots seems like an interesting exercise.

It’s much less therapy now than it was then.

I think I will gather the pieces parts of this thing and keep my promise to ship off what I have to my brave but crazy friends who have offered to read it for me to see where it falls apart, where it holds up, whether I should shelve it and start something new (well, “start” is relative. I have at least five other novels in progress that would be much fun).

I think I have a plan. But if I think about the plan too much, I’ll feel intimidated, the way I feel intimidated when my highly educated yard guy talks to me about mulch and topsoil and protective netting for my weedy flowerbeds.

Still, it is good to think I have a plan that might help me extricate myself from this tangled mess of … whatever.

(reminder: this is not a blog; it’s a journal)