I Looked At The Window And I Saw Brain Falling

WORD COUNT: 5,673

In case you don't remember, my friends young and old, THIS IS NOVEMBER and once again I will update my word count so by the time I post my various blog entries you'll see where I am on writing my latest magnum opus, “The Judgment of London”. I got a big part of several scenes done by participating in a “write in” yesterday from 2 to 4 at Main Street Books with several word wars – essentially, how many words can you write in a given amount of time – and am actually getting a more

… let me say, linear plot in that I see central characters emerging, like Parisi Gates who's one of three editors at the New Troy Times (oh, the world is changed from our own as a result of Paris choosing either Athene or Hera to receive the golden apple 'for the fairest' instead of Aphrodite) and Hermes who survived and has hid out for thousands of years on Earth due to a Trojan/Greek alliance against the gods, and Cerriwin Farthingsworth who's a breakaway from the Laoconic priesthood. But I digress.

Yesterday at church I had Sarah and our niece Josceline's second and third grade class in Sunday school for the final lesson this rotation on David and Goliath – ten kids in the class, and Dalyce who celebrated her thirteenth birthday this past Tuesday got a card from me and was also designated “script girl”(though I did not call her that, it's so twentieth century) – and we likely accomplished more with the banter among us than with the play itself.

And to be fair, it's a lot easier to read some of what I write than act it out, especially if you're a kid. References to “fava beans and a nice Chianti” and the like may be too period-specific … this morning, if it weren't for the fact that Roman history as we know it might not exist in my novel's world, the line about 'Janus-headed underwriters' referring to my own frustration at finding out Again. This. Farking. Morning. that the holders of our home mortgage need yet another letter proving that what I've already stated and documented and written out is true.

JANUS-HEADED UNDERWRITERS: look to their left, look to their right, never straight ahead.

And evidently don't know how to add either; the copies of our pay stubs we send them can't all be cutting off year-to-date earnings. The kids need to not hear or see Martha and I so frustrated at this. After swallowing some really humble pie this morning, I got some words cranked out for the novel, updated my word count to what you see at the top of the page, and got word that a friend of our who went into the hospital this weekend for diabetes-related complications … died.

Adam was twenty-three, and I would ask for prayer for his family and his girlfriend's whom we know from church. This weekend I had to pick up refills on my insulin, and instead of the bottles I typically get – there's two types I'm assigned to take daily in assistance to my meds – I got two five-packs of injector pens. Costing more (at first I thought this was the “savings” of the Affordable Care Act being passed on to me) but actually easier to handle. You take one injector pen out and can keep it at room temperature for 28 days, so I've essentially a five-month supply of both insulins. Breathe easy.

And today's title comes from something Sarah said at the breakfast table that I misheard; she said she thought she saw rain on her window, but I'll go better with what I heard! Thank You, Lord, that Sarah and Jeffrey are both getting to be better readers and writers – still needing work, granted, but I love what I am seeing. Last night for Sarah's reading she had planned to read fifteen minutes of Pinocchio (the Disney storybook) and as she was reading and I helped her with some of the words, she got so into it that when her time was up she wanted to keep going.

So I go to get some work done at the dining room table while Jeffrey was on the couch because the kids like hitting each other – I urge you, please, you two are gonna need each other when you're older! – so I keep them in separate rooms as much as I can. But about fifteen minutes later I saw Sarah with the most excited look on her face saying she had finished Pinocchio and she was so excited. Tried to start with her this weekend on an Oz book I had from the library, but that's ok – it took me a while to get into them too. (Tip: Ozma of Oz is almost horror film in quality, or in Alex's words “horrorshow”.)

So now it's time to write the underwriters WITHOUT calling them Janus-faced, David