Knuckle crack the bone, 21 to win

This morning, the first of two landscaping/hardscaping dudes came out to check the premises. He took some measurements, we went through some catalogs, and he'll get back to me with some estimates once he's run the numbers. I liked him just fine, and I think he's good at what he does; he was my first pick, after all...though my second pick was such a close second that it was almost a coin flip, anyway. (And we'll see what the other dude thinks about matters on Tuesday.)

Not gonna lie, I'm getting pretty excited about it - despite what's bound to be an exorbitant price tag. It's a lot of work, and a lot of materials, but the results are going to be amazing. I've had visions of patios and paver walkways dancing in my head all day.

Which reminds me, Monday I'll take some photos and shoot an email to the historic zoning people, just to cover all my bases.

* * *

I checked the flower baskets today when I went out to do my watering - whereupon I spotted one wee little nest, a tad bigger than my palm. No eggs yet, and the birds wigged out when they saw me messing with the basket. (No, I didn't water it.) They were apparently watching from the dogwood tree nearby.

I can hear them right now, chirping back and forth to one another on the porch. I trust that means they've forgiven me the small intrusion.

* * *

Here's today's progress on my witchy art-deco horror novel about Lizzie Borden thirty years after her parents' deaths - now featuring ghosts and non-ghosts alike, anti-Catholic conspiracy nuts, supernatural political shenanigans, the mafia, and a Bonus! space-worshiping murder cult hiding behind the KKK:
Project: Chapelwood
Deadline: October 1, 2014
New words written: 1236 (meh)
Present total word count: 64,874



Things accomplished in fiction: Read a sinister newspaper article over breakfast, and received an alarming phone call.

Next up: Courtroom results and fallout. (I know I said that yesterday, but I really mean it for tomorrow.)

Things accomplished in real life: Neighborhood jaunt with dog; replied to an email interview; met with the landscaping dude; cleaned the whole house even mopping the relevant floors; refilled all the bird feeders and watered all the new stuff except for the bird-occupied flower basket; started a load of laundry.

Other: Cleaning the whole house eats up a fair amount of brain CPU, thus the lower word count today. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 98,267