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Have you read this? It’s heartbreaking, and the most lovely small great moment.

ETA: Oh, you cynics! Darlings, this wasn’t written as some sophomore attempt to make it around the world in one million emails. It was written by Kent Nerburn, and orignally published nine years ago in his book Make Me An Instrument of Your Peace, a meditation on the prayer of St. Francis. Anne Lamott called it "a lovely book." The zenmoments.org site that posted it crashed yesterday from too many hits. I’m not sure if they’re bring their server back up, so I linked to a different site above. I love it.

I spent forty-five minutes this morning staring at the screen. I typed two words, and then forty-five minutes later I erased them. It was the right thing to do: what I was trying to write about needed to be in a different place, not where I was trying to force it to be, but it was really frustrating. Once I figured out where it needed to be, I was fine and I wrote for another hour without a problem.

This is fun, this editing thing. I’ve completed all the line-edits from My Agent (even in my head, she has capital letters), and now I’m working on the bigger stuff — the scene additions, moving scenes around completely, and deciding on the wisdom of others. I’ve added a character, and I’m changing another one. My Alpha Male hero is a little too Alpha, bordering on complete jerk. I love him, but I can understand why he’s a little too unlikeable. I’m softening him, which is fun. And I feel like I’m getting it! When I first sat down last week with the changes that needed to be made, I was overwhelmed. I didn’t know if I’d be able to pull it off. But I think I will. I really do. I like the book so much better now, and I hope it keeps going that way.

In other news: I danced my legs off last night! The Whoreshoes played with Devil Makes Three, and you know how I LOVE them both. I think I might have hurt my knee a little because it’s sore today. Run six miles, no problem, but dance in heels for hours, hurts a little. I loved my outfit, though. Black and white checkered dress and shoes.

It totally made me dizzy when I walked into our bathroom, though.

I crack myself up.

Listening: My new Stopwatch Hearts station (link to left: Pandora is FREE, people, and it’s the BEST) is awesome. Mellow chick electronica highly-produced tunes. Check it out.

Reading: I finished the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (link to right). And oh, god, I loved it. It was two things I don’t usually go for: historical (WWII) and epistolary. But it was awesome. It’s about the German occupation of Guernsey in the war — did you even KNOW about that? It was fascinating and sweet and romantic and it made me cry. I do NOT cry over books. I don’t know why — I just don’t. (Lonesome Dove, okay, yeah, I did cry. But I was so mad about it I threw the book across the room and refused to finish the massive tome twenty pages before the end. I’m still mad at McMurtry.) But this book, it made me tear up, and that’s not even a spoiler — it happened in the MIDDLE of the book. It was lovely. And there wasn’t even a mention of knitting in the whole damn thing, which I thought was truly weird, and I still loved it. (I adore this picture of Guernseymen wearing their ganseys at a farmer’s market.)

Now! To the beach with dogs and Lala, where if happen to find a lox bagel, I will eat it.

Without getting religious (let’s leave that to Palin, why don’t we?), I have to say that if I were God (always a good route to go in one’s thoughts) I’d love creating salt. I’d add it to everything, even the ocean and especially potatoes, and I’d have fun with it like this:

(Salt on a metal plate on top of a speaker. Dogs don’t like the sound of this video.)

I went for a six-mile run today. Well, it started out being five, but at a crucial decision point I felt pretty good, so Clara and I kept going, committing to a longer loop, rather than an out-and-back.

That was dumb.

It was hot, and the route I choose took us inland, away from the water. Even Clara was cranky about it. I make sure she runs in shade when possible, and that her paws are fine, and that she’s getting water (although she hates drinking from my bottle because she’s a princess), but she was completely over the run after about mile four. She dragged on the leash so that I had even more weight to move forward, except when she was lunging maniacally at a groundhog skittering ahead of her.

It was a rough run. 

I worked in Alameda, where I was running, for years. I prayed for a cop car to drive by. I was planning on faking a fall just so s/he’d stop and I could get a ride back to my car. With my luck, though, I probably would have eaten pavement, so it’s probably best I didn’t.

And even with the duct-tape trick and new socks, I got blisters! What the hell? I was SO ready for the duct-tape to work. I think it did, it was just that after a while I sweated it off, and the tape then stuck to the sock, not my foot, causing rubbing in the arch area. I’ve tried everything y’all have suggested and more that you haven’t, and I am left with the fact that I just have to get calluses.

Oh! But I’ve set up a donation page, with the help of the Multiple
Myeloma Research Foundation, so your hard-earned dollars really ARE going
to honor my little mama. If you’ve already donated, your money has been
moved to that pot, and I thank you with all my heart.

Grey’s Anatomy tonight! And I’m planning on staying up late to watch it because I can. Also planning on knitting on the sofa, if I don’t fall asleep first. I’ve been battling sleepiness for days now, and it keeps winning.

My dogs are barking because people are on the street in front of the house (the NERVE) and also, my dogs are barking, figuratively. I think I deserve a little ice-cream, maybe. Yup.

Oh, and dotty old Harriet would like to say hello. She may be almost 18, but she can still be very bossy.

1. that I will never stop being frightened when I see a tow truck in front of our house. Our tags are current, and we’re parked legally, but old habits die hard.

2. that The Hives are my favorite pop-punk back to see live. I’ve loved them for about six years, but hadn’t seen them live until last night. Wow. If Chuck Bass fronted a band, dude, he’d front that one. I’ve never seen a cockier set of young men on stage, EVER, and I loved them. Except the guitar player. He seemed like an ass. But the lead singer, mmmm. Dreamy.

3. that my favorite way to spend a day is this: Write for three or four hours. Take a long lunch, say an hour and a half, walking the dogs at Pt. Isabel. Have a lox bagel sandwich with capers, tomatoes, and cucumber. No onions, thanks. Go back home, write for another two hours. Get into bed and read a while. Take a nap. Get back up and write a little more. Seriously, it makes me SO happy. Can’t I just do this? This whole Working For a Living is just the Man Keeping me Down, I think.

4. that today I will do #3.

I’m knee-deep in revisions of Love Spun, and I’ll soon be hip-deep, I think. If you hear blurblings from over here, the water is too high — send help. My Agent is awesome. She’s really thought about this book, thought about it in a way that only I have. But that makes her able to ask the big questions, the ones that I really have to answer.

The water’s rising…. Trying to shake a pernicious migraine, too. Need more coffee.