Sold!

You could have knocked me over with a feather when the first person that inquired about the treadmill came over yesterday, ran a couple minutes on it, and pulled the full asking price out of his wallet.  He had brought a trailer, they loaded it up and drove away--to their home less than a half a mile away.  If the dang thing hadn't been so heavy they could have just carried it, they're that close by.  We ran the vacuum over the treadmill divots in the carpet a few times and left it open so the pile and the pad could bounce back so now you can barely see that it was there.  I shifted the chair and end table back where it was before the giant thing moved in and now things are back to (semi-)normal.

Sorry I didn't blog yesterday but we were busy with going out to breakfast, selling the treadmill, going to the grocery (where Durwood tried to do a little LC Christmas shopping but I nixed it), cooking chili, vacuuming over and over, baking cornbread, eating chili and cornbread, watching a couple episodes of Firefly on Netflix (thanks, JJB, I'll get to the rest through the week) after supper while knitting, putting together a breakfast casserole (thanks, Aunt B), then washing a crapload of dishes before falling exhausted into bed.  Here's the knitting and the casserole all baked and ready to eat.  See, Durwood likes breakfast burritos so he wondered if this English muffin-bottomed egg, sausage, and cheese concoction would freeze and reheat as well, so we had to make some to try the premise.  I'll report.

On Friday I went to the Attic Cafe to write a new chapter in the novel.  I rediscovered my inner procrastinator--big time.  I reread what I'd written, changed the name of the resort down the beach--twice, figured out that I'd rewritten Chapter 19 but hadn't added it to the main manuscript so I did that then had to change all (5) subsequent chapter numbers, trolled through the kids' books coming out of the bathroom and found a couple of Peter Rabbit stories written by Emma Thompson, not Beatrix Potter, but the pictures and stories are good and they were two bucks each.  LC is a big fan of books so I buy them whenever I find them.  A girl can never have too many books. I did eventually get tired of myself goofing off, got out my paper and pencil and just started.  It always takes me a while to convince myself that what I put on that paper the first time does NOT have to flow with what came before or resemble a finished draft in ANY way.  I got about 2 1/2 pages scribbled, which works out to about half that on the computer but it's something.  More will come, I'm confident.  So I didn't finish a chapter rewrite this week, I didn't even finish the first draft of this chapter but I started it and it's the first real new fiction writing I've done in years so I'm content, not happy, not pleased, but not despairing either.

Before going to the Attic I zoomed down to DePere to my knitting friend JS's business, Buds and Blooms where he also has a bit of yarn.  He said on Thursday night that he has a bin of sock blanks he was willing to sell.  I like sock blanks and couldn't resist the price.  I found a pair in a rusty gold and gray colorway and another sort-of pair in green/gray/rusty gold/burgundy-ish that I think will be fun to knit into a shawlette, alternating the skeins two rows at a time.  I'm planning shawls out of both actually, and he's got one that's white and black that I'm thinking I'll go back for to make fingerless mitts.  Maybe I'll even go later today because it's nagging at me and what if someone goes and buys it?

November 8--Denny Collins.  Esther and Leo had been married for 63 years.  They had raised four children, two boys and two girls, on eighty acres twelve miles from town.  Leo had a few dairy cows, Esther had a flock of chickens and they did all right.  Life had been hard for a lot of years when the kids were small and the weather didn't cooperate so they had to buy supplemental feed for the livestock.  In later years after the kids were grown and gone, when there were only three cows and enough chickens for eggs and a few Sunday suppers, they got to know one another again.  They took long drives to see migrating cranes or waterfalls and they talked.  About everything.

You guys, look at the roof across the street.  It has looked like that the last two mornings.  You know what that is?  It's frost.  Yes, frost, white icy frost.  Oh, it goes away once the sun gets up and busy heating things up a bit but pretty soon the sun will be powerless against it.  I am not ready.  I think if the wind cooperates today I'll rake the leaves out of the side yard.  Especially since the city posted the notice that it's going to stop collecting them in a week or so.  Yep, time to rake.  I wish that neighbor of ours with the riding mower leaf collector thing would make a couple passes over here and save me the job but I wouldn't even know how to ask.  Ah well, raking is good for the soul plus it'll get me outside in the sunshine.  Sunshine's good for you.  Have a Sunday.  Put your feet up and holler at the football guys on TV if you're so inclined.
--Barbara