The Beasts and the Fowls of the Earth

My short story, The Time of Green Leaves, is almost finished. The last obstacle was to get one scene out of a beaver's point of view and into a human's. I really liked writing from the critter's viewpoint, but I didn't think it would fly. Or swim.

Waiting for hear from agents. Always waiting. Nothing this week. I reworked the prologue for World of Mirrors and tackled the first chapter. As soon as I changed the main character's name and tweaked her backstory, the character changed completely, and started telling me stuff about her that I didn't know. This is going to be an interesting ride.

I looked at the first chapter of Festival Madness after a spell of lying fallow, and part of it pretty much sucked and needs a rewrite. O.K. I can do that.

Yesterday I wrote the annual Christmas letter, a missive I always swore I would never stoop to, but I did. It's short and newsy and not braggy, with a few photos and some seasonal clip art. Clip art makes everyone a designer. Before we had a computer, a scanner, a color printer and a digital camera, the Christmas letter would have been a huge amount of work. And now we put it together in an hour. Amazing.

Today the Scottish Highland Cattle got their weekly treat. I had celery, brussells sprouts, scallions, clementine peels, red leaf lettuce and cilantro. Old mama sure knows what her horns are for and how to use them. An alpha female, she likes to hog the food and gets bent out of shape when one of the others tries to get a few scraps. Won't let the baby eat either. I had to plough through a big snowbank, but hey, those cows are worth any effort.

The lake had a huge flock of geese last week, for two days, then nothing, and then the geese most mysteriously turned into sea gulls. Today at noon there was no avian life, and two hours later a really big flock of geese had arrived. I would love to see them all land on the lake at once.

The cat stares out the window, amazed at the snow. We've had cats that freaked out at the first snowfall and chased about the yard like crazy beasts. This cat is a calm thoughtful feline. She only eats catfood, nothing else, and has taught her housemate the same eating habits. We could leave fish, shrimp, chicken livers. . . absolutely anything out and these cats wouldn't deign to touch it. Wouldn't even sniff it. Oh, they do eat cat grass, and the young one has been known to enjoy a bit of baby's breath, but that's all. She enjoys the plant, not the small creature. Next week they will both enjoy the Christmas tree. A whole wealth of cat toys, just waiting to be batted across the floor. I love the old ornaments that have been in the family forever and hung on my great grandma's tree. Love the stuff my parents had. Love the old traditions, the carols, the old-fashioned Christmas, not the upside down fake tree that looks like it is made out of toilet brushes sprayed green. Oh oh. Grapeshot is losing the holiday spirit and becoming curmudgeonly. Time to say aloha.

Aloha

Grapeshot