It Doesn't Feel Like Friday

I am so not used to working on Friday. I'm sure you're tired of hearing me whine about all the working I've been doing but it's summer and I'm working more. I haven't been able to go walking with Dusty and Julie for weeks because I refuse to get all sweaty and smelly and then sit in damp pants all day offending everyone who comes in. Next week Mrs. Boss will be back, although I still have to work Saturday because they've got a family wedding but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and it's not a train.

July 29--Rishiri, Japan. It looked like two different worlds, Jai thought as she lay atop the hill overlooking Sarobetsu Plain. She wished she were in another world right then, not hunkered down behind a pile of rocks. Not tired and sweaty. Not listening with all her being for a step or a breath telling her that she was found. The view before her would have made a good postcard. The foreground was a rolling plain of waving dandelions like a yellow and green carpet and in the distance across the narrow Sarobetsu Strait Rishiri Volcano brooded in the blue light, wearing its ski runs like dreadlocks. She needed to get across somehow. In a little gray house on the side of that volcano lived her Great-uncle Hiro who had spent his long life navigating the choppy seas of diplomacy. Uncle Hiro had calm eyes and hard hands, he could look through you and see a lie, and Jai knew he would be able to fend off her pursuers and help her on her way home. Voices behind her made her draw in her breath. It was a group of tourists and their guide come to hear about the war years and the coast watchers who served on this stretch of the shoreline. Maybe they would walk near enough for her to join them and get down to the shore and the fishing boats that plied the fish-filled waters of the strait.

I was too sleepy to write last night, then I was too busy at work to write, so I plugged earbuds into my ears at the mechanic's shop and wrote while I was getting my oil changed. After my oil change I got my car washed. It looks like rain. Of course.
--Barbara