Inching along

[pameladean]

The Evil Cooking Luck has reversed itself, so that I successfully made pasta with soy crumbles, steamed brussels sprouts, bread, and salad for dinner one night, and a slightly more ambitious lentil and spinach stew with grated fresh ginger and serrano pepper and caramelized onions, with steamed broccoli and brown rice, the next night.

Fifty words in the two days, however. Sheesh.

I had lunch with my mother today; we usually do that on Wednesday, but she has to take what she is pleased to call "the geezers' driving test" this Wednesday. I'm having dinner with daedala tonight. But that is hardly a full schedule. There's plenty of time left for writing. I'm having trouble visualizing some architecture, and should perhaps do a bit of research or maybe even, the horror! thinking.

We're having a heat wave, by ordinary Minnesota definitions. It was 44 degrees F, so I took my cat out on his leash. He sniffed a great many things with vigor; considered climbing trees but decided against it; tore across the front yard, dragging me, to greet a departing David; made a determined effort to get into the neighbors' yard; and finally dashed up to the back door and pawed at it until I let him in.

I noticed that the miniature irises that Susan Levy Haskell gave me last fall, and supplemented with an additional handful that she gave David at a party I didn't attend, have little new leaves. I planted them rather late, which concerned David a lot, since he had been entrusted to deliver them; but she said they were tough, and I guess they are. I can't wait to see them bloom. Susan says the buds are the best part, but it sounds as if I'll like the flowers too.

Not much else is doing in the garden, warmth or not. Plants get it that when the amount of light is diminishing daily, one should stay put.

Lots of cardinals and nuthatches and juncoes, plus the usual assortment of house sparrows and house finches. I've heard bluejays, but they have not honored me with their presence recently.

I'd better go glare at my sluggish novel.

Pamela

Comments

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear.

If cooking is going to drain off your creative energy, then I'd bloody well stop cooking.

Um, if I were you, YMMV and all that.

Although the lentil-spinach stew sounds divine...as do the miniature irises, albeit in a completely different way.

[pameladean]

If it did, I would, and in fact traditionally I have stopped cooking for weeks when I had a deadline to finish a novel by. But it's not an issue of creativity, since cooking and writing use different parts of my brain. It's just a time issue.

P.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

That's good then.

Time, indeed. On Sunday, I made a vast pot of chili and a large pan of cornbread so that my sister and I wouldn't necessarily have to cook this week. (We're not doing anything a fraction as interesting as trying to write a novel, just attempting to get all the wintergifts finished and wrapped and mailed ...)

Of course, I'm already tired of chili...

[pameladean]

That sounds a lot more interesting than my novel, at the moment.

I am familiar with the results of having lots of the same leftovers. Some of them like to turn into science projects. And people in this house don't eat leftover bean dishes. They'll praise them fresh and eat seconds, but they won't eat the leftovers. Unless it's all under a biscuit crust or layered with tortillas in a casserole. It's weird, that's what it is. Mind you, I don't eat them either, unless I force myself.

Pamela

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to get a chance to do anything with my writing energy after tomorrow until January 7th. So you can have it from Friday until then, OK? It seems to work best facing west and in the late morning and afternoon.

I am jealous of your cardinals. All we have are sparrows and grackles, which I feed on the back balcony. I keep being terribly tempted by the christmas wreaths of birdseed they sell in the cool hardware store.

[pameladean]

Good heavens, Jo, are you going to Mars?

I appreciate the offer and will try to grab the burgeoning energy as it escapes. My computer faces south, but I can look west very readily, since my office is a sunroom. I'm not sure about the timing, however. I'm just blearily getting up and taking medication in the late morning. I promise, however, to look at the book while I'm doing that. At the very least the results might be amusing.

P.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to Mars, I could probably write on the way. But Zorinth's dad is coming for Christmas, arriving late tomorrow night, and while this is in most ways a very good thing, I have a lot of experience of not being able to write with him in the house, let alone an apartment this size. Then, of course, Zorinth will be off school until the 7th, which makes it hard to write. It's better for me to decide I won't get anything done until then than try to force it and get cross with myself because the energy is wrong and the time windows are too small. It's Christmas -- for which I have thus far done nothing except hang one strand of tinsel and a seahorse over the front door. It's a holiday. This is OK.

Once I start not-writing I won't mind half as much as I think I will. I always feel the same about weekends, and I enjoy them when they happen.

So you're welcome to it, though I will need it back when Zorinth goes back to school because I am supposed to have this novel finished and checked by the end of January. Thank Apollo I don't re-write! (Actually I do have to make a revision pass, to put in heraldic posture and month names consistently all the way through and that sort of thing. But not anything major and time consuming.)

[pameladean]

Oh, good, I'm glad to know it's okay. I'll be sure to hand it back in good order on the 7th.

Assuming it decides to make a visit, anyway.

I'll have a smaller piece of time when I too decide that it's a holiday and it's okay not to write, so somebody who is not caught up in Christmas might want to snag both your energy and mine, such as the latter is.

Pamela

Cardinals

[pameladean]

Cardinals tend to be shy. They are not quite so urban as sparrows and grackles. Often, though not always, they are ground feeders; and often they will slip in at twilight after the other birds are done. They don't much care for breadcrumbs or corn, but they love sunflower seed and safflower seed. Something else that might fetch them is a potted evergreen. They like evergreens. A birdbath with fresh unfrozen water in it will also fetch them, as well as many other birds. But one could easily go well overboard trying to lure them.

P.