Now that I have finished The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit on books on tape, along with a partial set of Sherlock Holmes stories I bought at the library book sale, I thought I might use some of the time during my car ride to work on a story for the Central PA magazine short story contest.  It’s not due until February, so maybe I’ll actually finish it this year.  I have started this same story several times, and this year I realized that one of the essentials that it has been missing is an actual plot of any sort.  Maybe this year I’ll give it a bit of a plot and by next year I’ll be able to submit it.  Who knows?  Maybe even this year I’ll get it whipped into shape.  Meanwhile, it’s a lovely thing to occupy my head on my daily journey.  It’s based on my dreams of my grandmother’s house.

Gratitude List:
1.  Broken light, which is to say, rainbows and sun dogs.  I haven’t seen a rainbow for a little while, but sometimes I see sun dogs as I drive west on 30.
2.  Glory cloud on the way home from work today.  Sun streaming in beams through the clouds, like the sun was a great eye and the rays were lashes all around it.  And then a tangerine sunset beneath.
3.  That fever has gone down and seems to be staying down.  May the Little Kid stay well now.
4.  Tea.  We are entering the season of tea.  Tea and gloves.
5.  Word play, poems, shapes of words on the page, the taste of words in the mouth.  A story that might get born.

May we walk in Beauty.