List of tasks for the new year

* go through this blog and see what's pertinent for novel

* some of the ideas were good - follow up on them - i.e., where are those letters?
* keep up the Miss Daily Writing Habit habit - remember: excellence is a habit

Our little array of just desserts

Found entry, from July 24, 2009:

On our counter is one last pice of raspberry pie, a plastic bag with two remaining strawberry wafers and one cocnut almond cookie, and two slices of leftover angel food case.

Are we too polite to eat the last ones; or have we had enough sweets?

Now, in December, are we better at cleaning our plates, finishing off the chip bag (if it's within reach and didn't fall back in the cupboard)?

Half a Thanksgiving pumpkin pie is on the counter. I finished the Good 'n Plenty. The tiny pink and white box is ready for recycling.

Maybe we are just rich...with sweets.

Tripping the bannister lights fantastic

Last night I wound 3 garlands of lights around the railing going upstairs, and on the mini-balcony. This will work well for our mini Romeo and Juliet series, in which I swoon and ask where Romeo is.

Romeo is at the bottom of the steps, as is Mr. Darcy, his first foot on the stairs, holding up his hand. I swoop down, something of a cross between a bat in jeans and a slightly over age Juliet. Just slightly.

The lights, blue/green, red, and yellow are merry and it's our first time for them. We leave them on all night.

I think about how lovely it would have been to raise children in this house, to provide them this holiday fantasy of warmth and comfort. But yesterday is gone. We enjoy them now.

I dream of fruit

Last night I opened the freezer and on the top shelf, eye level, was a large clear bag of precious jewels of fruit: black raspberries, peachy cantaloupe, red raspberries, green grapes, strawberries. We harvested the fruit in the summer, and I forgot we had these jewels.

This was a dream, but how true it is, isn't it, that we forget our treasures?

Last night we put up the snow fence, in the dark. I have on a lime green tank top, a white long sleeve sweater, a green cardigan, a yellow hooded sweatshirt, a gold jacket, and a red overcoat. Two pairs of gloves. Not that it was cold. At least I didn't have a purse.

In the dark, standing high on a step stool is my husband, swinging a sledgehammer to drive in the fence rails. He looks like a coal miner. Is it deep enough, he asks, and I shine a light on the ground. We stretch the orange plastic fence along the rails.

It takes one hour to harvest our coal. The fence is up, it is straight, and if we're lucky, little snow.

What I want when my heart lights up

When something good happens to me, and my hear lights up, the first thing I want to do is write about it.

Writing centers me, I get centered with writing, writing comforts me, provides me solace, is my friend.

If writing is ilfe or death, what would you write about to save yourself?

To plummet my depths, I need to write.

All I have to do is write about it. That's what I tell myself, when I'm tensing up and feel I have to be ... "on." All I have to do is write about it. Nothing else is required.