autumn aubade

Yesterday morning summer suddenly turned to fall. The blue of the sky was different, the angle of sun had shifted, and autumn's breeze blew through here like a song.

Today we hit 99 and tomorrow 101, then one more 99 degree day on Friday before the highs drop into the eighties for the weekend. This is how it starts. Hours of autumn and then days. And then somehow it is here.

In the meantime the butterflies are keeping me enchanted.

gallimaufry

It was a long week with the heat, but it broke on Friday and right now it's still in the seventies outside.

The heat and the fact that I had to miss my writing group this week have put me off course with editing. Wednesday evening I came home and worked hard, but not reading on Thursday was disappointing and I haven't yet gone back to the pages. Today's the day, because I've promised to swap my first 50 with another writer.

Yesterday morning I did the usual Saturday morning feed store/errand run, but then met a friend for coffee and we both lost track of time completely - what had been intended to be an hour or so of chat morphed into four hours! It was the angle of the sun that made me think finally to check the time.

It's rare I get the chance to do that these days, and it reminded me of Saturdays when I was twenty-something, and losing time with friends on the weekend was the way of things.

As soon as I got home my children and I took off for my parents' house, where we celebrated three birthdays: a forty -year old brother, a fifteen-year old nephew, and a four-year old nephew. There was steak on the grill, Blue Moons and Cokes, an impromptu pomegranate martini for me, and sips of coconut rum all around. And cake and ice cream, of course.

We got home just before eleven and it felt like I had spent the entire day in one long, continuous conversation.

It was nice.

Now I'm going to create my day by writing it here: a shower and some yogurt with granola, a walk to the barn to deliver a hello and treats, (I had the morning off barn chores, thanks to Matthew) a long and productive writing session, a late lunch, and a ride on Keil Bay when the sun drops. And I plan to end this day with a gin and tonic on the front porch, listening to the horses snorting in the front field.

102.3 in the shade

The horses lined up when I got the hose going around 4. What a week.

heavy heat

The temps have gone up again here and we're expecting high nineties all week with 101 on Wednesday.

Our weekend has been quiet, mostly getting outside chores done before the heat sets in, getting horses comfortable in the shadowy barn with their fans for the heat of the day, and offering cool showers with the hose around dinner time, when it seems to be the worst.

Yesterday I did my Saturday morning feed store run (two kinds of horse feed, black oil sunflower seeds, a new natural oil fly spray concentrate) and then stopped by the library. While looking for something they didn't have, I found Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres and decided to read it again.

Later in the afternoon, my daughter and I went out to lunch and then to the food co-op for Dr. Bronner's Peppermint soap (great for cleaning bits) and eclairs (great for us). On to the drug store for a new stash of hair bands and stain remover for the chocolate I managed to get all over me from the eclairs.

In between, my husband got two loads of hay, 76 bales, which cleaned our wonderful hay grower out of his first cutting of square bales. The feed room is packed now and we're all hoping for more good rain so his second cutting can get safely baled and in the barn. His hay is the best I've seen, and when he runs out my stress level rises. His wife sent us homemade grape jam along with the hay.

After the horses ate dinner and went out for the night, we settled in for the first season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After watching Firefly in the spring and becoming a huge Joss Whedon fan, I'd held off on Buffy. It's not Firefly, but Whedon's sense of humor is very much there and I am getting fond of the series.

This week is going to be all about managing the heat. Thank goodness for cold water!

getting down to the bones

Today was my day to read in writing group, and I was eager to move on to the next chunk of the novel I'm editing right now.

I've been reworking the structure and now my focus is the voice of the main male character, a CIA agent who is struggling with the ungrieved death of his wife 26 years ago and his 26-year old daughter who has run off, south and west, in response to a marriage proposal.

I'm shifting the Scott sections from first person present to close third past, trying to find a more distinctive voice. What I have captures his sensibility but the expression is too lyrical. Too similar to the voice of his daughter.

Today's advice is to dig right down to the bone of the matter. The rhythm of the sentences and the actual sentence structure itself.

I have an undergraduate degree in English but if someone asked me to parse a sentence I'd be about as horrified as I was taking the GRE math section.

But as we talked about how to tackle this task, a group member read some of my sentences out loud and suddenly I could hear the voice differently. I madly jotted down notes and some very concrete things to try with those sentences.

I might have jumped right in upon arriving home, but made the mistake of opening my cell phone bill and discovered $600 worth of TEXT MESSAGING charges that are NOT MINE - I don't do test messaging!

I'm officially on a tear and have clients tonight so all this will have to wait.

But I have the notes. Will get to the bones. I read again in two weeks and I'd love to knock some socks off. :)