In Which The Night Is Taken Back (But Not Taken Aback)

4 April 2004

Palm Sunday church featured Lutherans steadfastly not waving their palm fronds. I am shocked, shocked. There's a reason they call us the Frozen Chosen up here. But did I wave my palm frond? I did not. Not because of peer pressure, either. I'm just...not generally moved to that kind of thing.

There really isn't an optimal time for Mark to be called away on this business trip. If it's this coming week, he misses Holy Week at home with me. If it's next week, he misses Ed and Jen's visit. If it's the week after, we'll have spent an entire month on tenterhooks, not really making plans, waiting for him to be called away. If things go on like this, I'm going to start thinking the universe in general and the work world in particular has not arranged itself for my convenience.

So. I sold a story last night, right after Stella, Mike, and King Roo left. Kenoma wants "Take Back the Night" for their April issue, so that'll be popping up pretty soon. This is another Tam Lin story, an All-Girl Tam Lin Revue! set in the Hayward hills and up at UC-Berkeley. I like Tam Lin. I like selling stories. And there you have that.

Had a good night last night, and we're still chewing on the remnants of it: I had the last of the sautéed mushrooms at lunch, and Mark had spring rolls. (We still have more spring rolls. They're good spring rolls. I'm generally not an egg roll person, but these are nice.) His Rooness turns out to be a strawberry fiend, and also he likes Auntie Mrissa's good crackers, the Kavli. (If they're going to raise this child a Minnesotan, the least I can do is help them to raise him a Minnesotan. Which includes lovely things like Kavli and, come late spring or summer, Bridgeman's.) Also, despite reports of Roo crankage, I was graciously allowed to chase him giggling with a stuffed penguin, my horsey rides were deemed adequate enough for several repetitions, and I got some gratuitous baby hugs and kisses. My hair smelled like clean baby for the rest of the night.

We didn't go to the flower show yesterday because I had not slept well Friday night (I kept dreaming someone was strangling me), so we're hoping to get there today after we talk to the folks. I've been reading Peg Kerr's Emerald House Rising, which has an odd feel to it. I think it's that it feels older to me than it actually is. It was published in 1997, but from...er...I don't know what from, actually, from something, anyway, I'd have guessed more along the lines of 1982. I have nothing against fantasy novels published in the early 1980s, so that isn't meant as a criticism. It just feels earlier to me, somehow. It feels to me like one of those books that remained a favorite among writers and others "in the know" but dropped out of bookstores long before I started reading in the genre (around 1990). Maybe it's because this book has been nigh-on impossible to find; I don't know. Anyway, I like it fine so far, but I liked Wild Swans better. So no going against the flow for me. Ah well.

Another on the "you can tell it's spring because" list: the neighbors' dogs are barking. Not constantly, but often enough. I hope we manage to pick one that can occasionally stop barking when there's a person in the neighbor's yard, because, y'know, sometimes it's the neighbor. Also, it looks like the tree in the front yard with the major storm breakage also has a fungus. Possibly more than one. Fabulous. Well, another thing for the list, I suppose.

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