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I like napping on purpose in the middle of day, crawling into bed while it’s still bright sun outside, leaving the bedroom door open so any of the seven animals living in the house can get up on the bed with me (except Clara, she’s too big and kicky to share the bed — she goes into her crate and lies on her back). I like having the kittens play bedmice with my feet (they sleep in the yarn room at night because I am a light sleeper and all they really need is each other, anyway). I like when they sleep pressed against me, surprised to be allowed up with me. I like when Digit pushes them out of his way with a hiss and half-hearted swipe as he stalks to his rightful place next to my head (where he sleeps every night, my wakefulness bedamned). I like when Harriet demands to be picked up and placed on the bed (she must be getting shorter — at 16 she usually can’t quite jump up on her own anymore), and I like when Miss Idaho scrambles under the covers and curls up behind my knees. I like when we are a big bed full of sleeping things together. I like the sun against the curtain. I like the noise from the high school track across the creek. I like the sound of planes overhead and distant, bored-sounding barking dogs. I like reading, lying on my side, until the book drops from my hand.

I didn’t do any of this today, because I don’t try to nap on days when I have to go to bed early for work. And I was too busy running errands and getting the brakes fixed and cleaning the house and doing laundry on my one day off. But boy, did I think about it. I can’t wait for a napping day. I like to think about napping.

I am in the top three so far! I am duking it out with a fourth person — there are four of us with very similar scores in the romance competition, and right now, at this second, I am in the top three! And still a whole week to go!

Okay. Let’s talk. I DID NOT WANT TO GET ATTACHED TO MAKING IT INTO THE LAST ROUND. I wanted to be all cool. All calm. All like, whatever. It’s great to be a semi-finalist. I finished a book, therefore I am a winner already.

I did NOT want to turn into a woman obsessed with checking the scores. I didn’t want to have the pipe dream of making it to the final round, didn’t want to have it running around my brain all night, waking me up early. In the words of lolcats everywhere, DO NOT WANT.

But okay, I do want. If I were in 15th or 20th place, I’d be happy with that. I’d talk myself into being completely content — I’m good at that. But in the top three? With a WHOLE WEEK to be bumped out by people with bigger email lists and more friends?

So Saturday I found myself doing this: I wrote an email and sent it to everyone in my contact book. YOU probably got one — you did if I’ve ever emailed you from my Gmail account. (I almost sent one to Corey Flintoff, since he DID write back to that post (swoon), and I wrote back to him. Can you imagine spamming Corey Flintoff with a request to read a romance chapter?)

I sent so many emails that Gmail thought I was spam and locked me out of my account for 24 hours! Indignant, I told Lala, "Gmail thinks I’m spam!" She just looked at me and said, "Well, you sent a mass email, with links, to a huge number of people. You ARE spam."

BUT I AM A CRAZY WOMAN, PEOPLE. I am now insane. I want Simon & Schuster to read the book. Even if they reject it. Just to know it got there.

So here’s my last request. I swear I won’t ask again.

Lovies, will you blog about this? And if YOU have people who like to read, who like books, or hell, who just know HOW to read on your email list, I have composed an email for YOU with which to spam your friends. Copy and paste, my ducks, and I WILL OWE YOU FOREVER. (I am quite aware I already do. MWAH!)

Dear friend/coworker/exboyfriend- slash-girlfriend/landlord,

My knitting-romance-writing friend Rachael has an urgent plea which I have pasted below. Please make her LIFE for her by voting for her, and if you enjoy it, please pass this email along!

**************
Hi there.

Please forgive the mass mailing — I have a favor to ask.

I’m
in a competition you may have already heard about. I wrote a book, a
romance, full of yarn and alpacas and sheep and hot knitter-on-shepherd
action (no, really). I entered it in Gather.com‘s
First Romance Competition. I posted the first chapter, and it garnered
enough votes to move on to the second round (in the top 25 of more than
300), so I’m thrilled to say that I’m a finalist, with people now
voting on the second chapter. It’s kind of an American Idol type of
thing, if you can imagine, and this second round is still vote-driven,
and the the most important thing to know is that if I end up in the top
three, with the most votes, I move on to the last round where THE WHOLE
NOVEL IS READ BY SIMON & SCHUSTER and their favorite is published.
Oh, my god. I would like that. I would love that.

So I need your vote. I *really* need your vote. I’m in the top four right now, and the three people ahead of me have LOTS of friends. I need to be in the top three to move on, and you will make ALL the difference.

Here’s what you do: Read chapter one, but don’t vote on it.
That one is nice and content and voted on as it is. Please ignore the
typos. They hurt my soul, but they’re there.

Then read chapter
two and please DO vote. If you like the chapter at all, please give it
a 10, as they only count 10s (they throw out all votes of 1-9). The
chapters with the most 10-votes win.

Even though I know you want to, don’t vote more than once,
since they’re watching for IP fraud. And you DO have to register with
their site in order to vote, but they won’t spam you, and they don’t
share or sell email addresses. They will send you a daily email which
you can easily opt out of.

Oh, please, please? And will you forward this note on if you like the chapter? To all YOUR email contacts?

Thanks so much. Here you go:

Don’t vote on chapter one:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977094360
DO VOTE on chapter two:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977126255

All my thanks. Really, ALL my thanks. It means so much. Whoo-hooo!
xo
Rachael

Four of them. Miss Idaho is up top, and Harriet, Willie and Waylon are the Black Hole. Boy, they’re cute. They like me just fine even though my new hobby is stepping on animals. Every time I take a step, there’s a little foot underneath mine. I used to think it was cute when Harriet and Miss Idaho followed me into every room. Then we got Clara and she did the same. Then Digit came home (o, frabjous day) and he took up the following, now that he is Mr. Indoors. The kittens don’t follow me — they just want to be where the action is. Adah, happier than she’s ever been, just watches from the top of the fridge. She is the only one escaping the wrath of my heels. No wonder she’s so cheerful.

But really. I feel badly every time I hear a high-pitched squeal because I know it’s my fault. But they PUT their little feet there, they really do. They stick a paw out, right under my foot, I step, they scream, and I pick up and cuddle. Hey. Wait a minute. Is that a plot?

The kittens (who are not kittens anymore, look at them!)  have an amazing trick: They run at speeds of up to eighty-seven miles per hour through the house. I walk through the house at a normal human pace, maybe a bit slower. I raise a foot because I plan on moving forward, as one does while walking. Suddenly, an entire cat is beneath my foot. Right under it. I stumble, trying to place my foot somewhere other than the floor, where I’ll crush that poor cat, but that poor cat has by that time circumnavigated the entire house three times.

It’s just safer when they’re on the couch.

I don’t have that much to say. I’ve been working too much, I think. I find I can work on no knitting but socks. I swear, I have a sweater that’s got to be three-quarters finished, Lala’s yearly sweater, and I can’t look at it. It’s too big. Too much work.

The house is a mess. And I don’t care that much. I care in an exhausted, can’t-be-bothered kind of way. There’s this one ledge that I’ve been noticing lately — it has a layer of fine dirt on it (the window next to it is always open), and it’s something that I would normally clean off during the weekly house-clean, but I haven’t had time in WEEKS. We had people over about a month ago, and the house hasn’t really been cleaned since then, other than a sweeping or three and one toilet-scrub. I just can’t stop thinking about that ledge, but not enough to clean it.

Struggling to do my writing. I tried to write in spare pockets of time last week, and got a thousand words which all felt like they had been ripped from under my nails. Then I wrote for an hour on Monday, my day off, and got more and better words in that hour than I had the whole week prior.

Extended-family drama is occurring around us, sad drama that is exhausting, especially for Lala. There’s not much we can do but watch and wait and hope, but that’s hard.

However, the animals are fine, and Lala and I are fine, and last night Digit was curled on my chest, purring, and I realized that it’s all okay, it’s all going to be okay, someway, somehow, and it’s all right just to be tired, to rest.

The Whining is Followed by A Fun Thing Or Two

Lala’s band The Whoreshoes is playing Hardly Strictly Bluegrass! DUDE! If you know about this yearly event, you know it’s so exciting —  it’s HUGE and it’s FREE in Golden Gate Park. This year, the Whoreshoes will be playing with the likes of Gillian Welch, John Prine, Robert Earl Keen, Michelle Shocked, Steve Earle, and Emmylou Harris. You should come! Obviously, I’ll be knitting at the gals’ Saturday gig, and I’ll be wandering the rest of the time — knitters represent!

Also, they’ll be on an episode of the upcoming reality show, Girl Meets Cowboy, premiering October 14th on the WE network. Not sure which episode, but it should be fun to see ’em play on national TeeVee!

Oh, and I’m working the Good Vibes (link not safe for work — unless you’re Lala and you work there) booth for the Folsom Street Fair this Sunday, 10-2 – come say hi!

There. I am in a better mood already.

Hooray! I made it to the second round of that romance-novel competition! Woot!

So now I’m totally freaking out.

I really, really need your vote. The three with the most votes out of the twenty-five semifinalists go on to the final round (where the WHOLE manuscript is read by Simon & Schuster — oh, how I would love that). There are some people with really big voting nets, but I know I can count on my knitters to come to my aid. (If you voted on the last one you can still vote on this one, since this is a different chapter.)

Will you come read my chapter? And if you like it, will you log in and give it a ten? (Only tens are counted, votes of 1-9 are thrown out — you have to join the site to vote if you haven’t already, but they won’t spam you or sell your email to anyone.)

And then there’s another part of me, the part that probably won’t surprise you, the part that says, "um, what the hell? A contest that collects votes to move on? Why am I doing this again?"

I guess it’s this: I’m still proud of myself that I finished the book. That I like the characters. That I like the premise. It’s not great literature, and it won’t change the world, but it changed me somehow, and oh yeah, there’s a small nod to EZ in there, too.

So, it’s HERE. Come over and say hello. I will now go and gibber in a corner and try not to watch the number of votes other people are getting….

Or I will go take a walk in Leona Canyon, where Lala took this picture of me a couple of weeks ago: up an oak tree!

I love climbing oak trees….. In fact, the main character in the novel falls OUT of an oak tree later on when she’s out searching for her lost alpaca….. I was lucky enough not to fall that day.

Hello, kids.

I read the BEST book last week. I can’t recommend it enough.

A Three Dog Life, by Abigail Thomas. From the Publisher’s Weekly review:

Stephen King’s front-cover endorsement of Thomas’s memoir as the best
he’s ever read—and a "punch to the heart"—will surely pique interest in
this wrenching, elegiac portrait of her third husband, Rich, who
flounders in a miasmic present after a hit-and-run in their Manhattan
neighborhood shatters his skull, destroys his short-term memory and
consigns him to permanent brain trauma.

I realize that might not grab you — sounds dark and depressing, and indeed, much of the book deals with dark, depressing things. But it’s not a medical memoir, nor is it a book about dogs (although dogs are featured, wonderful dogs), it’s just the author, grabbing vignettes in her life and illustrating them so clearly and immediately that I sat stunned in front of phrases, unable to move on, mumbling them to myself in wonder. Seriously. When did you last do that with a book?

It’s a quick read, sadly. I tried to make it last, not allowing myself to read it in bed, only at work, lines snatched between phone calls and emergencies and gossiping co-workers. Now that I’m done, I’m considering re-reading it. I never re-read books anymore, but I want to read this one again, to live in her language some more.

Here, from page 30:

   Twenty years ago I asked a friend if he felt (as I did) a kind of chronic longing, a longing I wanted to identify. "Of course," he answered. We were having lunch by the pond at 59th Street, watching the ducks. The sun was out, the grass was thick and green, the ducks paddled around in the not very blue pond. I was between lives. "What is it?" I asked. "What is it we are longing for?" He thought for a minute and said, "There isn’t any it. There is just the longing for it." This sounded exactly right. Years later and a little wiser, I know what the longing was for: here is where I belong.

"I was between lives." That sentence! Just smacked in there! Completely knocks me out. And I’ve never read that longing we all have so clearly described.

I’m in love with the book. Plus, she knits. (Buy it from your independent seller, though, obviously. Amazon link is just there for convenience.)

It’s autumn here today! Crisp, cool — the house was chilly when I woke up and I put on wool socks. How I love to have to put on handknit socks. I’m at the cafe, and I’m going to write for a while. Then I’m going home to meet the roofer — get the leaks fixed before the real rains. And I want to make pumpkin bread. Then, maybe, if I have time, I’d like to go to the movies. I want to see Becoming Jane (oh, looks like I missed that one), 2 Days in Paris, and Death at a Funeral. Perhaps The Jane Austen Book Club (although I couldn’t finish the book). We saw 3:10 to Yuma yesterday, and DAMN was that a good western. I’d highly recommend it. Full of recommendations today, aren’t I?

I also recommend y’all love on someone today. Yep.