It's a gorgeous day today, my half-day of work, so I should be taking advantage of the lovely weather to let the chickens roam the yard and to start cleaning up the gardens but instead, I'm being "kidnapped" (in quotes because I ain't a kid anymore) for a drive to Moncton.
Apparently, mention the phrase "Fisherman's Paradise" and Dwayne's in. So supper is settled.
Then Mum pipes up: "Chapters."
And I say: "Michaels."
"Chapters. Michaels. Fisherman's Paradise. Where else do we need to go?" Dwayne says and I can tell by the look on his face that it's not a rhetorical question. He looks too excited for a trip to Moncton with his wife and mother-in-law.
"You want to go to Better Buy Sports, don't you?"
The grin told me I was right.

This is all otherwise known as Procrastination. My query letter is written, the book proposal is done, I'm even thinking of a brilliant writing website I could start -- and since I don't think along those lines, it's freaking me out how excited I am by the idea -- and Mum has okayed my opening pages so the time has come to start querying agents.
Ick.
I can't bring myself to start because this feels like IT. Now or never. Do or die. Shit or get off the pot. If I can't get an agent's interest who will get me a publisher, I'm going to have to go to Plan B.
And I don't have a Plan B.
Well, perhaps I do. Plan B is going to Moncton.

This may be why it's not a good idea for us to live together. Too much togetherness, methinks. Thank goodness Dwayne is out in the garage refurbishing his 1955 tractor.
I'm in the bathtub when Mum hollers.
"You'll have to come in. The radio's on. But the curtain is closed."
So in she trots to the bedroom (which is on the main floor with our bathroom ensuite) with a phone message for me. We chat about that for awhile, me in the tub, Mum in my bedroom, then she hears a buzzing coming from under the lampshade in the bedroom.
"You have a fly," she says.
"You have two flies," she adds.
My mother is obsessed by flies. Particularly with killing them.
"I'll give you two toonies if you kill them," I say. That's the price of one way through the toll booth on the Cobequid Pass and I know she's going to Truro tomorrow.
But she doesn't need the incentive.
"Don't look behind the furniture," she says.
"Don't YOU look behind the furniture," I answer. "But I need to see the corpses for proof."
"Oh, I have two bodies," Mum says. "I've just killed another fly for free."

When this kind of stuff happens, I think, "Why not get another dog? We should have three dogs. Maybe even four!" Then they get off the couch with a big, long stretch and I hear their toenails scraping against the oak floor, which was laid last summer but now looks like we've had it ten years, and I know that two dogs, four ears, and eight legs are enough.

 

Fern doesn't count as a dog -- and don't let her hear me even think that she might -- but she certainly fits in when it's time for supper:

 

I found a photo of my sister and me in our Holly Hobby dresses!

Original post linked here. 

And now I remember the details: December 1976, Christmas party at Barnum House near Grafton. This photo was taken in the living room of the apartment above our funeral home in Cobourg. We were 4 and 6 years old. And totally rockin' the shawls. 

Tweeting is not writing. It does seem like a conversation, however; one-sided, of course, but conversational.
This from Anne Lamott's Twitter feed:

"Here is how I'll write: not beatifically, not with great self-esteem, not with any real sense of what I'm doing. But I'll do it because I get to."

I love writing. Writing is the only thing that takes my mind off all the other shit (like people obsessing about us instead of seeking psychiatric treatment for their own inability to be happy) and when I write, I feel free.
It's like swimming. I don't bump into walls and coffee tables and buildings when I swim. In the water, I am graceful and fluid and strong.I don't sink like a stone because I suck at small talk, I don't drown because I'm socially awkward. When I write, I am a fish in water. Where I belong.

Life continues to trot along quietly and uneventfully. It's raining today which always makes me more productive. Not making it easy to start cleaning up the garden before winter. If it stays wet, I won't get any bulbs planted. What would spring be without daffodils?
I'm working on my book - editing the proposal and trying to believe that those first five chapters are as good as they get and good enough to get an agent - but it's come to the time to start querying agents again. Nerves! For the first time I'm going to focus on Canadian agents initially and see if I get lucky.
Good quote about luck (but I don't remember who spoke it - it's in a notebook somewhere): Luck is where persistence meets opportunity. Well, I feel I have the persistence part covered.
Once I get the querying started, I hope to have time for pitching stories to magazines. That list of ideas is getting longer every week.
Remember, I wished for this: to be writing full-time. Now I'm just trying to make it more specifically about books!

Because Mum and I were in Toronto for my Uncle Harry and Aunt Pat's 50th wedding anniversary celebration (just a 24 hour trip but SO glad we went), Dwayne was in charge of preparing Thanksgiving dinner. We arrived home in time to do the dressing and the gravy.
Plus the most essential part: the centrepiece! This is my favourite part of Thanksgiving: sure, we serve our own carrots and a locally-raised turkey but I love that the centrepiece is homegrown and homemade, too.

The Wannamakers didn't come from Ontario this year, after showing up two years in a row, so we had a small crowd at the table with Dwayne's parents and brother and sister-in-law. As always, it was my job to the say grace but I hadn't had time to plan out what I wanted to say. I knew when I got onto "the bounty of the county" that I was in danger of losing control of the blessing! It was a bounty, though; even the cranberry sauce was made with fresh (never frozen), Cumberland county cranberries. The sauce was lighter in colour but sweeter, too.

Even the dogs get a Thanksgiving dinner! Abby's first.

We do our chickens and turkeys in an electric roaster now -- 3 hours to cook while freeing up the oven for dressing, and warm/hold -- so the dogs look forward to helping Papa clean up.

After all the hard work of cleaning the house and cooking the food and carving the turkey and eating a big meal and cleaning up, it's time for a well-deserved rest.

What? You were expecting a picture of Dwayne asleep in his recliner??