Sarah Wynde's Blog, page 47

Word by word

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When I woke up this morning, it was foggy. The light from the sunrise reflecting off the fog turned the whole sky peach. Not orange, not yellow, but a lovely pastel peach. Or maybe cantaloupe. By the time Zelda and I were out on our walk, the fog was already lifting, but it felt very Jurassic Park somehow. A big bird — probably a bald eagle, because the size would fit and I know there are some in this park — swooped overhead, looking impressively predatory.

I’ve been working on a complicated scene in Grace and yesterday I concluded that it was too complicated, that I needed a better way to structure my approach. I decided to make a Scrivener file for just that scene, so I could break down the scene into pieces, re-use some the pieces that I’ve already written, re-arrange the pieces at will. In the search for the parts that I’ve already written, I discovered that I had the exact same idea for the exact same scene once before. On December 16, 2016.

sigh

That felt a little demoralizing, but I’m telling myself now that it just means that I’ve had a lot of practice with this scene, so this time I’ll get it right.

I told a friend yesterday that my strategy for re-using bits that I’ve already written now is to keep all the fun bits, let go of everything else. I suspect that means this is going to be a very long book. I passed 50,000 words yesterday on this version, so I should be at least 2/3 of the way through. I’m not sure I am. But I suppose if my eventual beta readers tell me it drags, it’ll be easy to make cuts.

For lunch today, I made a mushroom & asparagus risotto. Somewhat impulsively, mostly because I had beef broth that I wanted to use up, I used two cups of arborio rice instead of one. I would say that means I’m going to be eating risotto for days, except that it was really good and because I had so much of it, I shared some with the dogs. Z was not sure she was enthusiastic, but B adored it and whimpered for more. He didn’t get any more — I don’t like to support the whimpering — but if I wind up tired of eating it before I’m through, it will find a happy consumer in him. Meanwhile, I mention it mostly to remind myself for future reference that adding the asparagus at the very end works. The rice is hot enough to just lightly cook the asparagus. (Quick recipe: sauté onion, garlic, and mushrooms in the InstantPot until nicely browned; add two cups of arborio rice, two cups of beef broth, two cups of water, a sprinkle of salt; cook on high pressure for eight minutes; quick release; add chopped asparagus and parmesan cheese, mix, let sit for a couple minutes to let the asparagus cook a little.)

Tomorrow I leave Oscar Scherer and head to R’s driveway. I’m looking forward to spending time with him, of course, but I’m already nostalgic for my cozy campsite here and my morning walks through Jusassic Park. Lovely peaceful day after lovely peaceful day is addictive.

Food52 Genius Recipes Cookbook

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I bought this cookbook last week and I’m loving it. I’ve only read as far as the salad section, but I’ve already marked a few recipes to try and also picked up a few techniques to improve my salad dressings. And I tried the fried eggs with vinegar which sounds, let’s face it, disgusting, but was actually quite delicious.

Anyway, just posting this because the Kindle version is currently on sale for $2.99 (which is the version I bought) and is well worth the price if you are interested in cooking and like reading cookbooks. (The image is an Amazon Associates link, so you can click on it to see the book on Amazon.)

Holiday campground

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A sliver of moon at sunrise

My campground changed flavor overnight. I watched it happen yesterday. It was peaceful, quiet, and sedate in the morning, and then the cars started arriving. And the trucks, and the trailers, and the RVs, and the campers… oh my, the campers.

I was a little mystified by the speed of the change and then I realized, of course, school is out! We’re in Christmas vacation week and the hordes of small people are descending upon Florida with all of their energy and excitement. And their bicycles and scooters and dogs and general chaos.

It’s mostly awesome. I love listening to kids laugh. They’re building campfires (well, probably their parents are building campfires) and so it smells of wood smoke, on top of forest. And the weather is still absolutely beautiful. Today was as close to a perfect day weather-wise as the universe ever provides.

This morning when I was walking Zelda, I was accosted by three small people. “Excuse me,” said the bravest (not the biggest). “Can you tell us where the park is?”

“Is that a trick question?” I asked skeptically. Because, of course, we were in the park. Everything around us was park. Then I followed up with, “Are you looking for the playground or the hiking trails or…”

I would have added the nature center or the pond or the bike trail, all of which I can give directions to, but the brave one interrupted me with, “The playground.”

“Sure,” I said. “It’s right down this road, just keep going straight.” And I pointed the way.

“Thank you,” all three said in chorus. And as they walked away, the brave one — still not the biggest — started giving lessons to the others about looking behind them for landmarks so that they would be able to find their way home again. It was ridiculously cute. I had to learn that lesson the hard way at a much, much later age.

I went to the grocery store yesterday, for which I unplugged the van, and on my way home, I put the window down to talk to the ranger. Last night, or maybe early this morning, Zelda was super-super snuggly. She wanted under the covers, too. When I finally woke up, I realized it was really cold in the van. Duh, I’d forgotten to turn the heat back on when I plugged in again and I’d also forgotten to roll up the window. (Is it still called rolling when it’s just pushing a button?) It was into the 50s last night, so it was probably in the 50s in the van, too. Nice for snuggling with the dogs, but I was extremely unenthusiastic about getting dressed.

I’m back at a point in Grace that I have written numerous times, from every character’s POV, I think. I would really like to be able to re-use at least some of what I’ve previously written, but I suspect I’d be better off just ignoring all of that and writing it as if I’d never seen it before. It is very, very hard to make that decision, though.

And my power just went out. I wonder if all these people in the park are more than the electric system can handle? I hope it’s not just me. But I guess I’ll post this before I run out of charge on my computer and then maybe go investigate!

Cozy in Sarasota

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An Oscar Scherer sunrise

I’m back at Oscar Scherer State Park, the closest state park to R in Sarasota for the holidays. I love this place. I think serious campers might take issues with some aspects of it — it’s almost always possible to hear traffic noise from the nearby highway, my site is small and sloped — but it is so beautiful at sunrise. Equally so after dark, when it is truly dark and the stars are bright in the night sky. Dark nights, plus CostCo ten minutes drive away — my version of paradise.

I set up after dark on Sunday and didn’t do the best job of it, but I told myself that it didn’t matter because I’d go to the grocery store on Monday and do better when I came back. Better, in this case, equates to not sitting on the worst part of the slope, making the driver’s side higher than the passenger’s side. It’s not a big slope, it’s not the kind anyone would care about if they were just parking, but it’s noticeable when you’re living on it. Round items placed on the kitchen counter roll right off. (In other words, don’t spill the blueberries!)

But on Monday, I decided I didn’t really need groceries yet. Tuesday, I decided the same thing. Pretty sure that I’m going to make the same decision again today. I’m feeling so utterly cozy and content. Knitting and walking and listening to music and writing and reading and thinking and admiring the beautiful place I get to be in. It’s cold by Florida standards, in the 40s when I walk Z in the morning, but then warming up to the high 60s in the afternoon, so I get to eat my lunch and dinner sitting outside in the sunshine, the dogs on their tie-outs, and then snuggle up under my blankets when I go to sleep at night.

Writing yesterday did not go well. I got bogged down on something stupid, but meaningful to me — the description of Grace’s office — and didn’t make any progress at all. But the story is becoming the thing I think about falling asleep, the thing I think about when I wake up in the middle of the night, the thing I think about when I wake up. That was how Ghosts was. I was in the middle of so much back then — grad school and grief — but half the time my head was in Tassamara. It was a lovely place to escape to. Right now, I’m not feeling like I need to escape — I’m loving where I am — but the worlds are blending together. After the holidays, if I’m not finished yet, maybe I’ll go up to Ocala and let the worlds truly blend.

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

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… Florida. Land of Spanish moss. Not quite as beautiful as sparkling little lights glowing in the snow, but definitely appealing in its own way.

I’ve been in Florida long enough that warm weather for Christmas doesn’t faze me, and it’s felt very holiday-ish here. I spent today wrapping presents and listening to Christmas carols — IHeartRadio has definitely got the holiday thing figured out a lot better than Amazon Music, whose stations sorta seem to miss the point — and doing a little shopping.

Yesterday I actually wandered around a shopping mall. I even bought a couple presents there. But I was mostly there for the mood, for the experience. Shopping at Christmas time. It was fun, very glittery and with excellent people watching. Also good window shopping.

I like to look at the dresses and try to imagine at what event they should be worn. My own life would have to change quite a lot to wear anything seen in a shop window, but there was a terrific bright pink dress with cut-outs around the neck that would be an excellent thing to wear to a divorce hearing. Hmm, maybe Grace could wear it somewhere. Not that she’s getting divorced, but it is the style I imagine her pulling off with aplomb — bold and attention-getting, but also fun. I should have taken a picture. Another dress looked like an oil slick on a cut-up garbage bag — no one should ever wear it, anywhere. Or maybe the only place it could be worn is on the fashion runway.

Day before yesterday was what will probably be my most holiday event of the year — the lighting of the neighborhood trees, accompanied by a brass band; a horse-drawn carriage down the main street; a live Nativity scene including a baby, two lambs, and a donkey; caroling and hot chocolate in one room; a musical duo with the big Christmas tree in another. It reminded me of years gone by, of Christmases when R was young. We used to come to Florida for Christmas — we didn’t live here then — and wander around the fancy hotels, admiring the trees. Florida goes pretty crazy with the lights, at least compared to the places we lived in California, but it always felt a little weird to me because the weather, of course, felt almost tropical. Where was the snow? Now it feels normal, like Christmas is meant to be warm.

I sent R an early Christmas present, warning him that it was on the way with a text that said, “it feels a little silly, you might roll your eyes at me.” It was a tower of snacks, heavy on the fruit, with pears and apples, chocolate-covered blueberries, mixed nuts, and so on. When he was little, my mom always used to get him pears from Harry and David when we came here for Christmas. I don’t know how it started, and I think it basically stopped when we moved here and weren’t staying in my parents’ house at Christmas-time anymore. But when I saw the tower on sale, with free delivery, I was reminded. I didn’t know if he would get the nostalgia factor but I figured food for a college student during finals is always likely to be appreciated one way or another. I was right, but he got the nostalgia factor, too, even more clearly than I did. I’m glad. Glad that he appreciated the food, but also glad that it reminded him of his grandma.

Anyway, I’m mostly writing this because my dad told me I was being very quiet on my blog. It’s not because I’m not doing fun things — I’ve seen lots of friends, had some lovely meals, did a tour of Sanford homes — I’ve had plenty to write about. But most of my writing energy is going to Grace right now. I’ve gone off in a totally new direction, which is sort of dismaying — I was 90% done at the end of June and I thought I would be reusing most of that, not throwing most of it away — but mostly it’s not dismaying at all. I like what I’m writing, I like how it’s going. And when I could be thinking about blogging, I’m thinking about Grace instead. It’s not a bad thing.

One thousand is a very round number

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So this happened.

I feel like I should say something profound about it, but… yeah, I’ve got nothing. It’s incredibly gratifying, though. If I still drank, I would definitely buy myself a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Instead, I think tomorrow I will go to Starbucks and buy myself an ever-so-appropriate gingerbread latte.

Best of November 2017

I woke up this morning to a kid trying to steal the power cord and surge protector from the van.

I startled him.

Probably not as much as he startled me, though.

Fortunately, neither of us over-reacted. Probably also fortunately, neither of us was (apparently) armed. He rode away on his black bicycle, sans surge protector, and I waited until he was out of sight before I unlocked the van and ran outside to plug myself back in again.

Tuesday night, about half a mile away from where I’m parked, a woman taking out her trash in the middle of the night was shot. She was not so badly hurt that she couldn’t make it inside and call the ambulance herself, but still, I can’t imagine she’s ever going to want to take out the trash again. I’d probably never want to step outside the house again.

They caught the kid who did it, and I use the term “kid” mostly appropriately. Eighteen years old. I looked at the picture online and wondered — did he want to go to jail? Did jail seem easier than finding a job and making a life for himself? Because it’s not like he wouldn’t have known that a path that involved shooting random people in the middle of the night was likely to wind up in an institution. What was he thinking? But maybe he wasn’t thinking at all.

I, meanwhile, was thinking way too much. Super jumpy on our morning walk. A car slowed down while it was getting near me and my adrenaline surged. It was slowing for a speed bump. Duh.

But it’s not fun to feel unsafe. The last time I was here, I was talking to C about my early morning walk and feeling like I’d gotten into an area that was maybe not the safest and instead of reassuring me, she warned me to be careful. I laughed it off. It’s not like the criminals are out at 6:30 in the morning, right? She looked pained. Enough so that I googled afterward and discovered that in fact, someone had been randomly shot while waiting for an early morning bus about a mile away just a few weeks earlier. Ugh. I managed to dismiss that anxiety, though, because how often can that happen?

But it’s like lightning strikes — getting struck by lightning is extremely unlikely for most people, but if you’re standing outside in a thunderstorm in Florida, your chances go sky-high. Statistically speaking, I’m thinking my current driveway is rather higher risk than I appreciate. And that’s a bummer.

Anyway, this is not the Best of November post that I meant to write, so let me think about November: it started in PA and ends in Florida. It included one state park, one really nice Thousand Trails campground, one Walmart overnight, and four driveways.

As has been a pattern over the past months, though, my highlights have nothing to do with the places and everything to do with the people. The things that come to mind: lunch with my dad and stepmom, laughing about the scene happening on the television behind my head. I didn’t see it, but the memory of C’s wide-eyed shock still makes me smile. (Sorry, C! But it was funny, really.) Watching Stranger Things, in the midst of the final episode, and having M pause the show so that H could get a snack. In the final episode! Sitting on the back porch of C’s house with C and A, talking television shows and parenting. Thanksgiving dinner and taking a picture of my niece, C.

It wasn’t an exciting month. But it was a good month, the kind that reminds me that I have a lot to be grateful for. Not the least of which, this morning, is that I still have electricity.

Another NaNoWriMo Ends

Today is the last day of NaNoWriMo. All around the country, people are finishing up 50,000 words of writing and then celebrating with their NaNoWriMo friends. I think maybe one of my friends will make it: she’s still got a few thousand words to go, but she’s taken the day off work to write and she’s motivated. I came nowhere close, of course.

Instead I read. This month’s book list, in reverse order as best I remember:

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Nora Roberts’ books used to be an auto-buy for me, each a reliable three hours of light entertainment. They were rarely memorable — I could re-read one a year later and still enjoy it, because so little of it had stuck with me, but I did enjoy the reading. Somewhere in the last few years the books started feeling bland so I largely stopped, but this one was on sale on Amazon, so I gave it a try. And I enjoyed it — it was light entertainment, pure popcorn, but the ranch in Montana was an interesting place to hang out for a few hours.

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Total impulse buy. I enjoyed one of his previous books (Blue Like Jazz) and this showed up in some book ad in my email. I started reading the Look Inside and was interested enough to keep going. I think it’s really written for a male audience and I’m not sure I got much out of it — Brene Brown on vulnerability covered this ground in a far more interesting and entertaining way, I think — but I didn’t regret the time spent.

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I’ve bought books by Penny Reid when they were on sale or free via BookBub ads. She writes entertaining, humorous romance. I’ve absolutely hated a couple of them. She wrote one with a married couple where I was seriously rooting for the heroine to dump the hero — I think it’s the only romance I can remember where the only happy ending I could envision was the one where the hero died. Badly. Miserably. In flames. Alas, it did not end that way.

But I still read it all the way through, which made it better than a vast number of the cheap or free books that I quit reading, label DNF, and hope never to look at again. This one was pretty solid: I’d give it a B, and while I did not enjoy all aspects of it, it was good enough that I considered reading others.

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Loved this book! Bought it via a Bookbub ad (I think) and gobbled it down in about six hours of steady reading. It was the kind of book where every interruption was annoying and I was so interested that every spare minute I pulled up my phone to read again. It’s about disasters, how we function in them, what happens to our brains, why some people are better at coping with disaster then others. The stories were fascinating, but so was the science.

Random factoid: On 9/11, women were almost twice as likely to get injured while evacuating. “Was it a question of strength? Confidence? Fear? No, says lead investigator Robyn Gershon. ‘It was the shoes.'”

High heels and disasters do not mix well.

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J.D. Robb = Nora Roberts, and I have the same reaction. Not willing to buy at full price. I’ll wait through the library’s interminable hold list (up to six months, easily) and borrow, or find them at a thrift store or garage sale when they’re older. But this one was on sale for $3.99, which is just about the right price for me. I read it, I enjoyed it, the total implausibility bothered me a little, but mostly it’s about characters who are fun to spend time with.

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Fairly sure this must have been free at some point for it to have been on my Kindle. I include it because I did read it. I won’t be reading the sequels, though.

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I have adored some books by Sarina Bowen. Truly loved them, so much so that I gave them five star reviews on Amazon. Her sex scenes are too graphic for my taste but her characterizations are terrific. She’s the kind of author who can write a drug addict hero, fresh out of jail, and make you actually root for him, which is an amazing accomplishment.

This book, however, is one that I knew I wouldn’t like, and I was right. I was really glad that the library had it and I got to read it, though. I’m sure at some point, when I desperately wanted something to read, I would have bought it and then I would have been really annoyed. As it was, I read it, wincing and grimacing and wishing it was different.

I did finish it, though, and the author remains on my “will seriously consider buying books by” list, which is where most of my favorite authors live. I only have a very few who make it onto the “auto-buy” list.

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And Lois McMaster Bujold is one of my very few auto-buys. I don’t even read the blurbs on her books, I just buy them, because I know that I will want to reread them. The Penric series of novellas aren’t ones that I love, but they’re interesting and I will keep reading them as long as she keeps writing them, I suspect.

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I made a major, major mistake with this book. I had it and the other books in the same series on hold at the library and when this one (#6 in the series) came in, I decided that I could read the series out of order. Bad idea! Don’t do that!

But do read the series if you get a chance, because it is really worth reading. Fun, smart, fantasy-mysteries, sort of a combination of Harry Potter and a police-procedural in a multi-cultural modern London. Terrific books. Read them, but read the series in order.

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I like Pratchett, but this book took a long time to grow on me. By the end, though, it was a warm, fuzzy, Christmas pleasure. Library book, but I can imagine re-reading.

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Another of the Peter Grant/Rivers of London fantasy-mystery series.

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I am not sure whether to include this book because I honestly don’t remember whether I finished it. I got it from the library, and it’s really early Pratchett, published originally in 1983, and… well, it shows. Times change, writers get better, and unless you’re madly in love with Discworld, start with the later books and skip this one.

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Another of the Peter Grant/Rivers of London series. The fact that the series is showing up three times in this list should tell you how much I like it!

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I came very close to spending $12 on this book because I wanted to read it so badly, but I found it at the library, much to my delight. It would have been worth the $12, though, because it is really good. It reads like a classic, some combination of Anne of Green Gables and Ngaio Marsh. Not Marsh because it’s a mystery, but Marsh because it has that WWII English feel, the bombs dropping on London and the stiff upper lip, devastation but at the same time, survival.

I don’t want to spoil it, but I cried serious tears while reading it and yet finished with that happy book feeling, where you’ve gotten to spend the afternoon in a place where you still want to live for a while. I recommend it highly. And if there’s a sequel, I probably won’t hesitate to buy it, even if it does cost $12 or more.

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Library book. YA, so I am not the target market. But I’m going to say that this is the single best book I’ve read all year. It’s the one that will most live in my memory, the one that thoroughly gripped me while reading and still has a hold on me weeks later. I wish I could add star graphics to this image, but I’ll just try a little emphasis to make sure it’s obvious how much I liked it!

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My niece loves this book so I told her I would read it. I did not love this book. I don’t like worlds where girls are symbols before they are people. And my niece isn’t old enough for me to want to talk to her about rape culture but I found the boys’ reactions when the girl shows up to be so profoundly disturbing that it appalls me that we live in a world where that goes unnoticed. Or at least doesn’t prohibit it from becoming successful. Not sure I should really say I’ve read the book, either, because I started skimming pretty fast by the end.

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This cover is a really different style for a Jayne Anne Krentz book but the content between the covers is just the same: a quick, straightforward, fun romance with elements of setting, food, and character that I enjoy. They’re sort of a female version of a Robert Parker novel — plain dialog, an uncomplicated and not overly dark mystery, a story that relies on friendship and family at its core.

My SIL was rolling her eyes over some of the writing — there’s a scene (I think in this one, possibly in one of the others) where the hero describes the color of the walls as saffron, which really does make him quite the sophisticated color connoisseur for a guy depicted as “all-male” in other places — but I’m not usually so inclined to quibble. I don’t generally buy full-price books by Krentz (or either of her two other pen names, Jayne Anne Castle and Amanda Quick) but I happily read them when they come my way, whether by library, garage sale, or hand-me-down.

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Library book. I liked the cover and I’m willing to read kids’ books when they seem successful. I sort of view it as research, because maybe someday I’ll want to write one. I enjoyed this one, but I didn’t love it, probably wouldn’t bother to recommend it, even if I knew anyone of the right age to be the target audience.

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I read the first book in this series a long time ago (and then re-read it in October). When I saw that the series had a lot more books, all of them available at the library, I thought I’d give it a try. But after two books, I’ve concluded that it’s not for me. Too violent, too bloody, too many vampires. Which, you know, is probably obvious from the fact that the heroine is a vampire killer. And if you like that kind of thing, it probably is a solid series: it’s quite readable. Just not to my particular taste.

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Seanan McGuire is an award-winning fantasy author who I’ve heard a lot about. I tried the first book in her first series, the October Daye series, years ago and didn’t enjoy it — it was too dark for me. When I saw that the library had her InCryptid series, I decided to give them a try. I read five of the books in October, finishing with this one at the beginning of November. Interesting reads. Still a little dark for me, and they made me think a lot about how authors reveal ourselves in our work. But they’ve got good flow, interesting twists and entertaining world-building, so they’re certainly worth the read. I didn’t like them enough to try the other series again, and her science fiction (under the name Mira Grant) looks definitely darker than I want to read, but I liked them enough to read all six books in the series.

I thought this would be a quick post. Ha. I should have known better. Eons ago, back in fifth grade I think it was, my English teacher wrote on my report card that I didn’t read enough. My mother was appalled and called the school to ask what she was talking about. The teacher told her that I had only read two books all semester. My mother pointed out that I read all the time — between classes, walking in the hallways, during lunch — that my head was always in a book. But as far as the teacher was concerned, the only books that counted were the ones I wrote book reports on. As far as I was concerned, there was no way I was wasting my time writing book reports when I could be reading instead. It’s why I’m always sympathetic to people who don’t write book reviews and why I hate asking for them. But it was kind of fun to look back over what I read — enabled by the discovery of a history button in my library app — and be reminded of what my month was in books.

Gratitude

Kyla wrote a lovely post on gratitude at Thanksgiving and it made me want to do the same. But I haven’t eaten breakfast or walked the dogs and it’s almost 9 already, so mine’s going to be shorter and less detailed!

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My dogs

B is still technically dying, of course, but we all are, really. Ten months after his congestive heart failure diagnosis, he’s still ticking along, snuggly and loving and adorable. Admittedly, the last time we were at the vet, I did tell the tech to just muzzle him, because I was pretty sure he wasn’t pretending about wanting to bite us. She called it “a party hat” — I called it self-defense. But mostly he is snuggly and loving and adorable.

And Z is terrific. Almost 13 years old and playing with toys like a puppy again. She’s very much losing her hearing, so I’m making special efforts to make sure she’s looking at me when I’m telling her how much I adore her, but she’s otherwise happy and healthy and a joyful companion.

Listening to the music of rain on the van

The reason I still haven’t walked the dogs or had breakfast yet. But the rain sounds so lovely and a peaceful morning is delightful.

Clean water Living in a van makes me very aware of my water sources. I finished off all of our “safe” water making coffee this morning. There’s some in the tank and it’s probably reasonably safe, because I filled it from a clean source just yesterday, but the tank hasn’t been disinfected since I got the van, so I don’t drink out of it. But I can literally walk about twenty steps, maybe thirty, to a source of clean water, and that makes me incredibly lucky. I am very grateful, and very aware of a great many fellow Americans who can’t currently say the same, and even more people around the world who can never say the same.

Family and friends I’m so grateful for the times I’ve had this year with friends and family. Grateful and greedy, I suppose, because I’m looking forward to many more of them! I’m spending Christmas with R, and I’m already busy making plans for things I want to share with him — movies and television shows, music and food. And also thinking about next year’s travels and how I’m going to get to Massachusetts again, and Michigan for the first time.

And my Alexa just spoke to me and suggested that I was missing out on blueberry muffins inside, so I am also so grateful for blueberry muffins, Alexa, and getting to have breakfast with my dad and stepmom. And I am now going to go enjoy all that!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you find much to be grateful for on this day and every day!

The Fear of Missing Out

The Fear of Missing Out: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Instagram showed up in my inbox this morning. (Follow the link! Read the article. Then come back, because this will make more sense if you do.)

It felt really beautifully timed. Like the universe was telling me something. Except not really, because I like traveling and I love my life, but it was a good reminder that every life involves trade-offs. We’re all making choices, every day, about what we want to be doing and how we want to do it. No matter what, we’re going to miss something.

A while ago, I mostly stopped posting to Instagram because I discovered that it was making me feel… disconnected, maybe? Fake? I didn’t like looking at a meal or a view and thinking about it within a framework of what other people would appreciate about it. A fantastic dinner that was maybe not aesthetically pleasing in a photo didn’t stop being a fantastic dinner, but when I imagined posting the picture, it was with justifications and explanations. And when I looked at a view and rejected it because I’d never be able to get a good picture of it… I didn’t want to disdain my life because it wasn’t pretty enough to share, if that makes any sense. Instagram can’t capture the intangibles — the taste of good food, the smell of autumn in the air, the feelings of community and friendship.

But maybe I’ll learn to love it again, because what I liked about it when I first started using it was that it worked for me as a reminder to appreciate the moment I was in, to celebrate the meal that I cooked instead of just shoveling it in, to pause and admire the view instead of glancing out the window and moving on.

Today is going to be a highly practical day: picking up a prescription (I hope), doing some grocery shopping, dumping the tanks, washing dishes… but it started with peacocks.

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