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Gratitude and Thanks

November 26, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving United-States Americans! I’m pausing for breath for the first time in what seems like weeks. Work this week has been overwhelming, as folks try to slide last minute “emergencies” in before they leave for the holiday. Since we were out for much of last week due to illness (and by “out” I mean we worked 8-12 hour days instead of our usual 15-20 hours) it added an extra catch up component to the onslaught that left me feeling breathless by last night when I finally closed my email client and read a book for a minute or two.

But it’s been a good week, too. I finished a first draft of a very crappy novel, and am exhilarated by it – there are some actual good ideas I’ve been working on for too long, and I needed to do something to show that I could write a draft from start to finish so I could learn the mechanics of it and apply it to these long-term projects like Cheshire Cat Moons and The Second Attic (the Minotte story).  I probably have twice as many words as I need for a complete draft for both those projects, but not very many of them are in the right order yet.

nano_09_winner_100x100

So I finished a novel draft, attended my grandfather’s funeral, saw my dad for the first time in ten years, had food poisoning, stayed mostly caught up with work (mostly) and made homemade mac and cheese for the first time (a funny way to end the list, but it’s another long-held goal that I accomplished. And I’m not doing it again until I have a food processor to do the grating for me).

That’s some week, right there, and I am grateful for every second of it.

Our neighbors gave Fitz a big overflowing pot of cat grass, and when I carried it inside for him his whole little body perked up and his eyes widened and he meowed and ran straight for me. He’s spent the last few days curled around the pot and nibbling on the grass like a lion on the savannah, peeking through the green blades looking for a gazelle to take down. When I carry the pot outside to give it sun, he cries at the front door until I can distract him with something else. It’s terrifically cute and has given us loads of entertainment so I’m sharing a pic with you:

fitzgrass

Today is Thanksgiving and we are staying home and spending any downtime we have sleeping, because the one thing this past amazing, cosmic rollercoaster of a week didn’t have enough of was sleep. In fact, my eyes are half-lidded and I started this blog entry specifically to keep myself awake another five minutes, because it seems so wrong to want to sleep at the height of this golden afternoon.

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