Just in case

First thing on waking, I cleaned up the kitchen as usual, which had been a right holy mess from the night before. Then I settled down at the dining table, in the spot beside the big window to work. It was rainy and dark out, so the lights were on inside the house. I looked around at one point, and kitchen looked so shiny and clean, so I took a picture. 

Then I looked across the room where the arrangement my son-in-law made for my husband for father's day was still adding color to the room, so I snapped a picture of that, too. Then I thought about another photo to share, but first, here's the back story of how it came to be.

Sunday night, I lay awake long past midnight, scrolling on Tik Tok, tumbling down many, many rabbit holes, the way one can on that mind-stealing app. First the algorithm was feeding me one video after another explaining that I had been quantum leaping between timelines for the past several years, and giving me points of evidence to convince me that this was indeed the case. I was frankly fascinated by the idea that I could exist simultaneously in several different timelines, though I wondered why I had chosen to tarry in the one in which I am currently conscious, where our leaders have now gone to war for dubious reasons under rather nefarious influences, not that anything is clear to us mere onlookers, who knows what's happening behind the curtain, but it looks bad from here, let's just say that. 

In any case, at a certain point the app started feeding me videos of people predicting world war three, some insisting it had already begun, others giving advice on how to protect yourself should it actually happen, and for some reason I was taken with a video saying the first thing that would occur if my city was attacked is the electrical grid would be knocked out, and that would mean we wouldn't be able to get any water, and the next thing I knew, at 3AM, it seemed like a good idea to just have some extra gallons of water in the house, just in case. So I pulled up Instacart, that's a grocery ordering app on my phone, and I put four gallon jugs of water into my shopping cart and paid, and it said it would be delivered to my door at seven the following morning, and then I turned over and went to sleep.

At 7AM on the dot, the intercom rang and I buzzed the delivery person in. I heard them in the hallway on our floor moments later, leaving the water bottles outside the front door of our apartment. I burrowed under the covers, thinking I'd bring them in later when I got out of bed. I was still dozing at the ungodly hour of 8AM when my husband was leaving for work. He bid me goodbye and opened the front door, where he stopped and called out to me. 

"There is water out here. Did you order bottles of water?"

"Yes," I mumbled from under the covers.

"Do you want me to bring them inside?"

"Yes, please," I said.

I heard what sounded like a lot of effort and floor swishing for four gallon jugs of water. I was confused, but not enough to get up and investigate. 

Then my man called out, "How many did you order?"

"Four," I called back.

"Why?" he asked me.

"In case of World War Three," I said.

I guess he's been married to me a long time, because he only said, "Okay, they're in. See you later," and was on his way. But I was awake now.  Minutes later, I wandered into the hallway and found this.

Four cartons, each with six gallon jugs of water. I have to tell you, the price couldn't be beat, because it didn't alert me that I was ordering cartons, not single jugs. Or maybe I was cross-eyed at 3AM. In any case, if they knock out the electric grid, guess who will have water.

Men in touch with their love languages

 My daughter and her husband came over for Father's day. Our son in law made a beautiful arrangement for the big guy, and he also said some very moving words about the man we all love in a post he made on his social media page for bros who arrange flowers. It's on both TikTok and on Instagram, and it's called Bros(e) Garden. The post has gone somewhat viral. I'm not sure if that link will work, but you can look it up if you have a notion to. He credits my husband with teaching him the fundamentals of flower arranging and getting him interested in the art of it to begin with. I love the colors he chose for his Father's day offering, the tropical blooms, the vivid jewel tones, the mix of red and orange and purple and yellow, just gorgeous. But what he said, oh my heart. I took that photo when our son in law had just walked in with the flowers for my husband, who was sitting at the kitchen counter making oatmeal rum raisin cookies for the rest of us. How we adore these men who are in touch with their love languages. Maybe I'll come back and transcribe what my daughter's husband said about her dad for posterity. Not right now though. I gotta keep churning out those words. I'm closing in on 70K words, and my contract calls for 75K. But I can't celebrate yet because I'm only on Chapter 13, following a narrative outline I made that runs to 19 chapters and an epilogue. I've got a way to go yet. I'm aiming to have a full draft completed by the end of July. May it be so.

Brooklyn and whiplash

My youngest niece here in the city will be moving into her own apartment in Brooklyn at the end of the month. Her current roommate's international work visa will not be renewed, and so the roommate will have to leave her tech job and the country to return home. My niece got approved for a place in a walk-up yesterday, and the apartment itself is a gem, perfect for a twenty-something, computer-coding brainiac. It's also fairly near to where my daughter and her husband live, so that's good. But it's on a busy main drag, and the outside of the building is in dire need of a paint job. It's also above a dingy looking hardware store with a rusty yellowing sign, making the building entry to one side look like a dark hole in the picture on google maps. Plus there's construction across the street, all of it making the block look like it might be not quite ideal for a young woman on her own in the big city, especially one who, depending on the light, can look like she's maybe fourteen years old.

On FaceTime, my daughter helped me put things in perspective just now. "Ma, I walk down that block all the time," she said, "and it's fine. Nice older ladies are out walking their dogs and young couples are pushing baby strollers and fitness girlies are heading home from the gym at all hours. And do you see that luxury building going up across the street? Do you think they're putting that up on a block that's iffy? Plus living above a hardware store will be clutch. I promise you, your niece will be much safer than you were living one door over from drug dealers when you were her age, and you didn't give one thought to your safety then, so stop worrying. Besides, the neighborhood she's moving to is safer than where she is now. Your darling niece will be fine." 

My girl then "walked" me around on google maps and pointed out a couple of sidewalk eating places on the next block, and some other useful looking shops, so trusting in my daughter's assessment, I went ahead and texted my niece congratulations on finding a super cute place, as I sensed that my reserve was making her anxious. This one and I are alike in that way, we both know it. Update: She signed the lease.

The photo is one my niece took of another house in Brooklyn. I just like the sunshine yellow of the bay window. We were all hanging out in my daughter's back yard yesterday. We had gathered for brunch with our friend Brooke, who was leaving to fly back to Boston later. My girl and her love really lucked out with that outdoor space in the city. Can you believe I didn't take a single picture? My son would call that progress.

__________

On Sunday, as I was traveling home from Brooklyn, talking on the phone to my friend Elizabeth in LA, thousands of national guardsmen were being deployed there, because of protests against migrants being rounded up at their workplaces and herded into unmarked vehicles by plain clothes men in masks, claiming to have the authority to take them. Make no mistake, these deployments are already scaling up in a neighborhood near you. If you live in blue state anyway. Still, what happened in LA this weekend is what you would call an escalation. As Elizabeth said, if these immigrants are such a drain on society, why do they have to go to workplaces and schoolrooms to find them?  At least we got jerked out of the natural human tendency to mute the insanity happening in the world at large and fall back into our daily stupor. Hard to do that with this crew, though. Continuous whiplash is more their style.

This post, man. It has such a deceptive quality of life just going on, of people renting new apartments like it's just the regular everyday. We gloss over the fact that the necessity arose because her bright and credentialed roommate's work visa was cancelled, despite all she has to offer and has already given. Okay, no wringing of hands here. She'll have a perfectly good life back home. But then there's also the terrifying spectacle of thousands of armed military on the streets of LA, tear gassing minuscule crowds, a mere eighty people or so, no violence unless there's a ringer in the mix, which we know happens.

In happier news, my daughter just texted that she and her love are going to start fostering dogs again. They get their first pup this weekend. She's hella excited, which makes me so happy. They lost their dog Munch last year, just before their wedding, and their heartbreak was profound. I feel like their readiness to let dogs back into their home is another step in their healing.

Merry, merry month of May

Y'all.

I spent the last month trying to decide if I'd come to the end of the line, whether I had any juice left to keep writing here. It feels a bit schizo to just keep living your life as if the madness isn't also happening. 

May kept me busy though. Apart from work, it was a socially eventful month, every weekend booked solid, starting with my paint-and-sip birthday party slash early summer cookout, thrown for me by my girl and her husband in their Brooklyn back yard. The next weekend we drove upstate with my girl and her love to have lunch with her in laws for mother's day. The following Sunday was my choir concert, during which we sang an exhilarating 10-minute medley from Phantom of the Opera and actually pulled it off. And then the New York extended family decamped en masse to Dallas for Memorial Day weekend, to celebrate little Harper's second birthday and help her parents stage a "Harper's Beach Club" themed pool party. In between all that my son in law ran a half marathon, my daughter modeled office summer wear on Jenna and Friends, formerly Jenna and Hoda, her fourth time appearing on that morning show, and my son and his wife went to the woods, and shared pictures of their adventures. Here are some photos from the month of May, for my record here. 

I guess there's some writing juice left in me after all. 

Mainly, I just miss you all.

____________

ALBUM ONE: PAINT AND SIP

At my birthday party on May 3, the painting and wine came after we ate delicious street corn, burgers, and hot dogs grilled by my son-in-law on the newlyweds' (not so new anymore but still less than a year) spanking new backyard grill. Most of us finished (or improved) our paintings after we got home, but we had big fun getting started as we sipped. I had a wonderful time with my husband and all our heart children. Truly one of my best birthdays ever.

____________

ALBUM TWO: DALLAS

Over four days in Dallas, the extended family, including two grandmothers, a granddad and step grandma, plus assorted generations of uncles and aunts, traveled from other cities to celebrate our little one, who is firmly in her "no" phase. My daughter, daughter-in-law, and niece created another one of their amazing charcuterie tables, which was down to just a few crackers and grapes by the end of the cake cutting. Except for during the 2-year-old kiddie party, which very wisely ran from 10 am to 1 pm on Sunday, after which all the babies and their parents went home for naps, the rest of us lived in the pool all weekend. The photos are all mixed up time wise but you'll probably be able to figure out when the party was happening and when it was just the family, happily eating and imbibing and acting the fool.

____________

ALBUM THREE: OFF THE GRID

My son and daughter in law spent a few days restoring their spirits in nature. They also played with their new drone camera, creating these atmospheric self portraits, which I think are rather awesome.

And here's one more photo which I swiped from social media, because how could I not post this glamor shot of Harper's beautiful mommy.

Let's pause the doomscrolling for some joy, shall we?

My forever Broadway buddy and I went to see the matinee show of &Juliet yesterday followed by dinner downtown. You may recall I saw this show last December when Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson fulfilled a lifelong dream to appear on Broadway. She brought down the house with a walk on role written just for her. As I watched the show that night, I knew my daughter would love it as much as I did, and so, for her birthday, I got us tickets to go. And the production was every bit as fabulous the second time around.

The show reimainges the ending of Romeo and Juliet, in which Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway, swipes his quill and rewrites the story to have Juliet not kill herself when she wakes from her sleep potion and finds Romeo dead. Instead she goes on with her life, embarking on a empowering, self-actualizing journey of discovery with her best friends May, who is trans, and April, who is played by Anne, who takes the liberty of writing herself into the tale. The sparring between mansplaining, casually sexist Will Shakespeare and his wife Anne is a witty take on an often overlooked slice of literary history, in a musical that manages to be full of lines provoking belly laughs yet also poignant and socially optimistic. Juliet (below) is played by Maya Boyd. This girl has some pipes!

The production is a jukebox musical, meaning the songs are all Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 singles since 1998, which makes them the pop ballads that provided the soundtrack for my daughter's middle school, high school, and college years ("Eye of the Tiger" or "I Kissed A Girl" anyone?). Seeing it with my daughter opened up whole new dimensions of the show to me. She gave me the backstory on some of the songs, the eye wink of now middle aged Tony Fatone of the former boy band NSYNC playing the French king, the buzz created by the huuuuuge TikTok influencer Charli D'Amelio being a member of the dance ensemble ("the one in green, Mom, wearing the tiaria"), and other such details I completely missed the first time around. And just to see the enjoyment on her face as she watched, the way her eyes danced, how she happily clapped her hands without even realizing she was doing it, it was one of those perfect moments in life, where nothing exists outside of just being present for what is currently happening.

We took our obligatory "look at us on Broadway" theater selfie, then Ubered to an after matinee dinner at a restaurant called Ruby's in Murray Hill, where the sweet potato fries sprinkled with chili oil were a revelation.

There, over spicy margaritas, we planned the paint and sip birthday party my daughter is throwing for me next weekend on her back patio! It will be just the NYC fam, our kids and their spouses and the nieces, eight of us in all, and we'll have pre-drawn canvases on which we can follow the outlines or ignore them completely, as we wish. I'm so excited for this I could burst. I don't think I've had a birthday party thrown for me that I just had to show up to since moving to New York, which I was startled to realize this morning will be fifty years ago come August. 

Anyway, that was my Saturday. In the midst of the tsunami we are living through, it was a perfectly joyful day.

No erasure

I understand there are groups that have set themselves the task of actively preserving all the science and histories and archives and data that the current admin is trying to erase in the name of rewriting the American story in their supremacist image. These preservation task forces are storing the records they rescue for posterity on servers abroad, in countries like Canada. One should also not underestimate the cultural and generational resiliency of oral storytelling traditions. All this to say, I refuse to despair.

Which thread do I pull?

Once, I would have written screeds about any number of things happening in our collective reality. Now it's hard to know where to put my focus. Which thread do I pull, and why that one, and not the ones just a millimeter to the right and left of it, which feel equally as urgent. The assaults are coming from all directions, in every moment, and I'm overwhelmed, off balance, whiplashed, which is just how they want us to be. I'm taking it all in. I just don't have the resources to process the ungoldly avalanche and move through the disturbing reverberations to my spirit, psyche, intellect, physical health, to my frail, compassionate, outraged, sorrowful, humanness in ways that might keep me whole. It's why I feel so fractured. It's why sometimes I feel so shut down, so suspended and invisible and gray, because there's too much to feel, too much to rake through, the implications too extreme to fully reconcile.

I said to my husband the other morning, you know if they come for us, and it was only us, I would be okay, as long as we were together, you and me. We'd face whatever came together. But what I cannot face, what I cannot countenance, is them coming for my children, or separating me from my children, and so that means I am not okay with them coming for us at all, because that means directly or indirectly they are also coming for my children. I know exactly what you mean, he said.

This morning I learned that Timothy Synder, former professor at Yale and much-quoted author of On Tyranny, along with his wife and Yale colleague, Marci Shore, and another Yale colleague, Jason Stanley, have all accepted professorships at the University of Toronto. After the election last fall, they decided to move their families out of the United States. Synder objected to the characterization that he had "fled" the country. No, he responded, he simply decided to leave and live elsewhere. Stanley, author of How Fascism Works, was more blunt. He stated that he was choosing to raise his children in a country that was not "tilting toward a fascist dictatorship" just as his grandmother had chosen to leave Germany with his father, then seven years old, in 1939. Marci Shore didn't mince words either. "The lesson of 1933 was that you get out," she said. I felt a chill, reading all this.

How did the Germans who left in the 1930s know it was time to do so? And how many stayed because they could not imagine leaving their grown children behind. My children are American born, and their roots are sunk deep in this land. Where would we go and what would we do there if, like Timothy Snyder, we were to exercise our choice, not to "flee" but to "leave." The thing is, none of us can fathom doing this, and yet it has become so clear that we are the wrong color for the future that the current regime envisions for this country, and the whole truth of it is, there is no way to know in this incendiary moment what that means for our family. 

I am remembering a Jewish man I interviewed. He and his siblings were born in America, as were his parents, but his grandparents had come here from Germany and from Poland during the second world war. He told me that all his life, his mother grouped people into two and only two categories. "Whenever we had people over to dinner," he said, "after they left, "my mother would look at us and say, 'Okay, would they hide us or would they turn us in?' Sometimes it would be 'He would hide us, but she would definitely turn us in.' That was how she taught her children and grandchildren to assess people, even though we were two and three generations removed from the war." He chuckled as he told me this two years ago now, as if it was a funny story about his quirky mother. I bet neither of us thinks it's a funny story now.

I am so insanely proud of Harvard for standing up to the bullying and extortion of the regime, which aims to crush intellectual freedom by destroying citadels of learning. Sad to say, my alma mater Columbia rolled over only to discover that the bullies only come back to crush you some more. Harvard decided to stand firm from the start, come what may. And the vengeance is raining down for sure, $2.2 billion is federal funding withdrawn, threats to end the school's tax exempt status, and to forbid international students from being able to enroll through the government canceling or refusing to grant them visas. Meanwhile, donations from proud alums are pouring in, and of course, Harvard's coffers are already quite deep, so good for them in knowing that they are in a position to take the courageous stand. Within 24 hours, the new acting president of Columbia got the message, announcing that they, too, would not allow the administration to curtail (they should have said "further curtail") their academic independence and autonomy. You can't give in to bullies. You can't negotiate with vengeful toddlers.

Also, overnight, the Supreme Court acted to order a halt on all deportations based on the Alien Enemies Act, until the court has had a chance to consider the case and rule fully. The American gestapo was getting ready to fly another planeload of men to the gulag in El Salvador, but the high court put a stop to it, with Thomas and Alito dissenting, of course. Must have be a long wakeful night for the justices. On social media, somebody said, "So we know where they're taking the men, but where are they taking the women and children?" Because make no mistake. Women and children are being kidnapped from the streets in broad daylight, too.

There are so many other threads I could pull, but I'm already tired. Take care of yourselves, people. Right now, I'm going to pull my consciousness back into the smallness of the present moment, and notice that outside my window, spring is more than a blush on the trees, and up on the small hill, a team of gardeners is planting white tulips along the fence line. Surely the world is still beautiful.

A little outing

Another year, another magic trick, in that once again our taxes have been filed, and oof, it wasn't pretty. I forgot to bring my checkbook to my accountant when we went to sign and pick up our copies. No problem, he said, you can pay electronically. Worked fine for the feds, but the state website was labyrinthine, and wanted us to jump through all sorts of hoops so I said, you know what, we'll just send them a check. So there I was this morning, the day before tax day, on line at the post office to get my envelope date stamped and certified, so I can prove payment was sent should there ever be a question. At least it got me out of the house, appreciating the new blossoms on trees, which was a good thing because I've been in such a mood lately. Not exactly depressed, just blah. Dull and uninspired. The old gray sweater again. My life feels so very small. 

This is the season when family members from all over reach out to say they're coming through New York and can they stay over with us for a few days. Some years, almost every week or weekend from now till August we have houseguests. It's why my husband dubbed our apartment Arrindell Arms. My friends get indignant for me, tell me to ask people to stay in a hotel, but really, we don't mind. Hosting family members is the culture of both my husband's family and mine. Not this year. No one is traveling to America this year. They don't want to entertain the very real possibility of being detained at the border on a technicality, maybe because of a text someone sent them that they didn't even remember getting, or a post they commented on while browsing social media. Who knows what it takes. I suspect we'll have a small Thanksgiving gathering this year. My cousin from Trinidad, whose company I look forward to every year, already told me she doesn't think she' going to chance it this year. 

So yes, going to the post office was an outing. I have definitely been too much inside my house, keeping my head down, working all the damn time. I need to get out more, go exploring, do activities, see friends. I'm so tired of myself. 

Here's something fun. My daughter called over the weekend, asking for pictures of me when I was pregnant with either her or her brother. My husband had some on his phone, but in them I was not clothed. They were tasteful, in profile, with very obliging shadows, no bits and bobs showing, arms crossed over my chest, emphasizing the round orb of my belly. "Send me your nudies, Mom," my daughter giggled when I explained I was unclothed. And you know what, I did. Two very tame ones, one when I was not very far along in my pregnancy with my son, and one when I was close to giving birth to her. I had such a glorious abundance of hair—that's what I noticed most of all. My daughter texted "You look gorg, Mama," said she loved seeing me in an earlier stage of life. "So are you pregnant my darling girl? Is this why the sudden interest,” I pried. "No Ma," she said, "You know I'd tell you. My friends and I have just been talking a lot about it lately." Hmmmm.

In between sleeps

lt’s 2 am. I’m tapping this out on my phone, in bed, the covers drawn up over my head so the light won’t trouble my sleeping husband. This is when I browse the day’s news. I wake up from my first sleep, pick up my phone, and do the NY Times puzzles that get released at midnight, Strands, Connections, Mini Crossword, Wordle, Letterboxed, always in that order. I have very respectable streaks going. Then I survey the different publications and headlines that get pushed to me by an algorithm based on my past reading.

I see that the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the government has to pursue the return of the innocent husband and father ICE mistakenly sent to that gulag in El Salvador. He is one of many, but this kidnapping error they inadvertently admitted. Now their appeals saying “Oops, my bad, nothing to be done,” have arrived at the high court, and tonight it directed them to bring the imprisoned man home. Will they ignore the Supreme Court’s directive too, as they have done with the lower courts? The man’s wife, an American citizen, worries he might be already dead. 

I see the administration is now pushing for federal oversight of Columbia University, a legal arrangement that would last years. Would you want to attend a college under such manners? Will Columbia find some self respect and stop this ever expanding extortion of its academic freedom and integrity? They need to take notes from Georgetown Law School, which refused to bend over and get, well, you know. 

I see directors at the IRS resigned yesterday in protest over ICE demanding data from tax filings on individuals they’re looking to deport. Nothing is sacrosanct. No one is safe. 

Through it all, we keep doing our lives. I had dinner with my darling girl at our usual place in Battery Park on Tuesday evening. She now cannot wait to start her new job and be rid of one monster client in particular. She wagers the new situation has to be an improvement. And the woman who will be her new boss seems a decent sort. Gosh, it was good to see her. Her aura is made of dancing light, I swear. 

The book is coming along. I’m dreaming about it now, which means I am fully immersed, the channel is open, I just need to keep applying myself and processing what I learn in all these interviews through a lens of love. Maybe that won’t make sense without context. I’ll just say that in this work, as in life, if people feel safe just being who they are, that goes a long way. 

Also, spring is coming to my gardens, even though it’s still blisteringly cold out. But soon, I’ll be able to take my laptop and work under the trees again. Okay, starting to feel drowsy again. I going to try for my second sleep of the night and hope it carries me to morning. 

The world is large, the world is small

She's turning two soon, and we're all making plans to fly down to Dallas for her birthday party at the end of May. Life goes on, even with the world aflame. I just love the picture, our little one caught mid conversation, her face full of all the hope and expectation of goodness one little face can hold. I had to post this evidence that we have so many reasons to never give up. For me, this little girl is one.

Cory Booker, whoa. He talked for twenty-five hours in the Senate yesterday, starting the evening before, and unlike past filibusters, in which Congresspeople disrupted Senate business by reading from phone books or other inane texts, Cory had his staff put together a manifesto of all the ways in which the current administration is destroying the pillars of our society, with examples from real people who are being hurt by these dangerous, wrongheaded, and mean-spirited policies, and for anyone saying his stand was a waste of time, I disagree. He did something. He made us look. He made us think and feel. He gave us the facts. He demonstrated passion and love for our country and hope for our collective ability to rescue the future. And now it's our turn to make good trouble, in whatever large or small ways we can. I really like what, Amanda, one of our friends here, said in comments a few posts back. She said one act of resistance we can take in this very moment is to not allow ourselves to be incapacitated by fear. We can choose rather to be hopeful, to look for the places where possibility and opportunity live.

I've been something of a hermit lately, just in my house, writing, conducting phone interviews with my subject and people in her life, then writing some more. One supporting player in her story, who I interviewed last week and again yesterday, should be a book herself. She has a fascinating life, starting with the hardest childhood you can imagine, growing up Mormon in Utah, running away again and again, until she finally managed to make her escape, and build a life for herself, and find the thing that gave her a sense of purpose. "I had no self esteem before," she told me, "but once I put on that hat, that was when I became a real person." 

I can't get into specifics of course, but this woman is in her eighties now, and talking to her about her own life, and how it intersected with my subject's at a certain pivotal moment, reminded me of why I love what I do, even when it feels hard. People just making sense of their lives, doing their level best at every turn, are just so awe inspiring. I understand now why I used to walk down the streets of this city, or sit in sidewalk cafes and never tire of watching people and imagining their backstories. It's because when you peel back the layers of a person's life, there is always a hero's journey to be found—or a villain's, I guess, as we certainly know. But I'm in the business of learning about the heroes, so lucky, lucky me.

I do wish I were more brave myself. Someone reached out to me yesterday to ask that I lead a public conversation with an editor who has written a book about Toni Morrison, for an arts event at one of those very cool literary gathering places in Brooklyn. She had read the tribute I wrote when Toni died, about my having been her college intern at Random House one summer. What an honor to be asked to do this thing, but the God's honest truth is I would rather stab my eyes out than sit on that stage for two hours. Thank the fates the event happens to be when I will be out of town, as I know for a fact that I do not want to do it, no matter how much I should make myself do it. I immediately started to hyperventilate just reading the email. I gave the programming person the name of another person who I know will do a wonderful job, and I am self-flagellating a bit this morning for being like this, but I also feel a great measure of relief, too, that I won't have to live in dread for two months because that event is in my future. Why am I like this???

Any way, back to work. I made something of a breakthrough two Saturdays ago. I just stopped writing and made chapter summaries for the rest of the book, and now I feel less adrift, no longer making it up as I go. I feel anchored. I have a map now. I can take tangents and veer off the path if I choose to, but I have a reference to come back to, and a way forward. The writing has been going more smoothly since. Yesterday, I even had a 3000-word day, which has not happened since I began this book. Might the process be gaining momentum at last? I'm 38K words in and by contract I have to get to 75K. I'm more than halfway there, and now I can see that I will probably go past that word count. I'm hoping I've finally unlocked the puzzle of this book. Each project has its own challenges to be solved.

I also have choir today. We're singing an 11-minute medley from Phantom of the Opera as part of the repertoire this term. I can tell that our conductor absolutely hates that she has been asked to teach us this campy show music, but I love it. That said, we definitely haven't mastered the score quite yet ...