Not Only Brakes...

... but when he took it for a test drive he heard an ominous noise in the front right.  Bearings.  Since I'm going to be taking a 600 mile drive in the next week (and 600 miles back home the following week), he thought I'd want him to replace the worn and squeaky bearings.  He was right.  I was car-less until 4 o'clock and it added a couple hundred bucks to the bill but better safe then sorry.  *sigh*


I didn't do much today (ran a couple loads of laundry and changed the sheets) but I did manage to get all the way through The Seaview manuscript, tucking in all of the small scenes I've been writing except for the last one, then got it emailed to the Kindle so I can read it like a real book and find places that need fluffing or elaboration.  I'm up over seventy-eight thousand words and 245 pages.  Just under two thousand words to hit the low end of the required word count.  I know at least two thousand words and I know that I can use some of them more than once.  I can do this.



At knitting tonight I worked on the foot of the Choco Rainbow sock.  The foot of a sock is like an endless slog through mud, each round isn't long but it seems to take forever for them to add up to 7 1/2 inches when it's time to knit the toe and the slog is finally over.  I'll get there.

1 November--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire.

Suddenly the air at both the Art League and Literary Roundtable meetings on the island became charged with more than just artistic furor or literary passion.  Neither Sonia nor Irina was willing to give up their memberships in either group, everyone knew that to miss one of the meetings was to miss being in the know about island goings on and, even more important, whoever was not at a meeting automatically became the main topic of conversation.  A less polite person would call most of the discussions gossip.

Sonia was the newly elected Vice-President of the Art League by virtue of her computer-enhanced digital photographs’ popularity in the local galleries.  Irina was overheard to say that manipulating a mediocre photo with a computer and calling it art was shameful, but she did agree Sonia was good at cutting mats and selecting frames.

Irina, in her long-held position as secretary of the Literary Roundtable, could keep a tight rein on the discussions and had considerable influence in who was invited to introduce either a favorite passage or poem for discussion at meetings.  Though Sonia offered to read many times and submitted reams of her own writings for consideration, somehow her works were never chosen and her opinions never made it into the otherwise meticulously kept minutes of the group.  Sonia could be heard sitting with her sycophants in the back row of the meeting, sharing, just a bit too loudly, her opinion that Irina was a famous poet only in her own mind.  That opinion was followed by a mixture of shocked gasps and embarrassed giggles.

The Literary Roundtable meetings took on the aspect of a junior high cafeteria with half the women in the room on Sonia’s side and the other half on Irina’s.  As a woman entered she would gravitate to one side or the other depending on her loyalties, darting poisonous looks at her perceived enemies.

The whole war started after Sonia finally got the chance to read a few of her poems one evening.  She prefaced her reading by saying, “these probably aren’t very good,” in the way people, especially women, do when they are looking for reassurance.

Unfortunately, Irina took the opportunity after Sonia had read her admittedly amateur poetic efforts to say loudly, “You are right, Sonia.  Your poems aren’t very good.”  The collective gasp that unusual statement generated nearly caused the curtains of the meeting room to flutter.

Normally the women were very supportive of each other’s efforts; the group, until Irina’s arrival, had consisted of poet wannabes.  Irina was the first member who had actually been published extensively and who had a reputation outside her family as a poet.  Irina felt she raised the tone and level of the group by freely sharing her vast experience and knowledge.

Unfortunately this was also a night that Irina led the Literary Roundtable meeting so she was able to let fly with her down-her-nose views of Sonia’s poems without being called to order by a moderator.  “Tripe,” she said, scanning the group as if daring anyone to contradict her.  “Ladies, see how a modicum of approbation gives license to such superficial tripe?  In my first book, Laid to Rest, in the eponymous poem, I used words like bullets as a weapon against tyranny, not as Sonia has, as a feather duster to tickle a reader saying, in essence, look how clever I can be.”

With every word lobbed in her direction Sonia sunk lower in her seat and her cheeks burned redder.  The women seated around Sonia looked away in embarrassment as she began to sniff, plunging her hands in her purse and pockets looking for a tissue.  Finally Sonia jerked the napkin out from under her teacup to carefully wipe unshed tears from her lower lashes.

Irina kept up her destruction of Sonia’s poems the rest of the evening, earning her a few allies who also considered themselves above the rest, at least in literary terms.  Most of the attendees felt sorry for Sonia and squashed any thought they had ever entertained about daring to read their own secret scribblings to the group, at least while Irina was in charge.

I got so chilly today I put flannel sheets on the bed and I'm thinking of plugging in the electric blanket to preheat the bed.  There has to be a Polar Vortex for me to sleep with the blanket on all night (on the lowest setting) but it's nice to have a warm bed to crawl into.  And, since I woke up at 5am and couldn't go back to sleep, now I'll say goodnight.
--Barbara