NaNoWriMo

It's a big day here, the birthdays of Celia and my brother Drew, the day before my work trip to Malawi ... and the final day of National Novel Writing Month.

On November 2, I found a 500-word story I'd worked on years ago, and, on a whim, decided to turn it into a novel. The goal for National Novel Writing Month (fondly known as NanoWriMo) is 50,000 words in 30 days. I wasn't sure I could do this, but I did some quick math and realized that if I wrote 1,667 words a day I could produce a novel. It wouldn't be a great book, but it would be a book.

I'm proud to say that I crossed the finish line late last night with 50, 009. But I'm still trying to finish the novel. The  main character's husband is stuck in Chicago when he needs to be in Lexington. The main character herself, a realtor, is juggling two important sales, at least one of which could tank. And there are other stray plot lines flying around like loose wires after a big storm.

In short, I need another another hour and another thousand words.

But then, I hope, I will be done.

Happy NaNoWriMo!

(A P.S. to this one. It took me several more hours, but I finally finished about 7 p.m. The final product is about 54,000 words. One of these days, I may actually read it!)

A Change in the 'Hood

Last year this time two longtime neighbors moved to Hawaii and sold their house. This year, the neighbors across the street moved out, almost on the same exact day. This time the move was only two miles away rather than 4,700 — but the effect is the same: a hole in the neighborhood, in the fabric of life in this little corner of the world.

When John and Jill moved in, they had a baby about the same age Suzanne was when we arrived here. Now their baby is in high school, and his two brothers not long behind him. It is only life, of course, only time. But when it's the people you wave to on a daily basis, who you chat with at the mailbox, who are part of your life in the way that good neighbors are, it makes a difference.

The house won't be sold till the spring, so for now it just sits there empty, a missing tooth in a lopsided grin.

(This is actually our house, but theirs isn't much different.)

Windy, with a Chance of Jet Noise

It is not just a little bit windy today. It is gusty enough to send incoming Dulles aircraft into the dreaded alternate runway pattern.

This means that as I sit here snug and cozy in my house, proofing, editing and listening to a webcast I need to write up, I also have one ear cocked for the sound of sudden jet deceleration.

It's unnerving! But also, not unexpected. This happens on super windy days.

All I need to do is keep on working, hang onto my hat — and try not to listen.

Tale of the Transponder

Paying for speed and ease of use makes sense to me. Which means I'm theoretically in favor of toll lanes on busy roads.  But when the toll lanes are the only lanes and the fee can hit $50 for nine miles of pavement, I have to draw the line.

Tolls on Route 66 can be avoided, though, when there are two people in the car, so Tom and I drove in together this morning. The toll, which changes every six minutes based on volume, was $34 when we passed under the sign. But four minutes later, when we hit the restricted section of the highway, the supposedly free-flowing part, the road was still clogged. We crawled along the expressway for miles, not seeing clear pavement until more than halfway through the trip.  Bad enough when you're traveling for free, but hardly worth paying for.

And that's not all. The main reason we drove in this morning was to avoid a $10 surcharge for not using the special transponder that has a switch you can set for "HOV2" (signaling that there are two or more people in the car). It had been a year since we rented two of these transponders and apparently had only used one.

Paying for open pavement — and paying not to use a transponder. If this is the modern world (and it most assuredly is), please drop me off in the 19th century.

We Brake for Trees

I can't remember how we discovered Snicker's Gap, the Christmas tree farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. But I do know that Claire (pictured below with her puppy Bella; her beau, Tomas; and their older doggie, Reese) was in middle school. So it's been a few years.

And in those few years, a few other people have caught on that trekking out to the country and felling your own fragrant Douglas fir provides more seasonal cheer than driving to the shopping center at the corner and choosing a tree from the parking lot. We did that often, too, when the children were younger. But Snicker's Gap has been the tradition for 15 years now.

What's become abundantly clear, especially since yesterday, is that many others have made the same calculation. We waited 30 minutes to get into the place. The lesson for next year: Leave earlier, arrive later ... or find a nice tree in a lot somewhere.

Shopping Season

What's the saying, when the going gets tough, the tough go ... shopping?

As Americans hit the malls and big box stores, as they weed through websites in search of cyber deals, I think about the pastime of shopping, what it can do for you and what it can't.

My mother liked to shop. If she had time to kill she would while it away in a store or two.

This is not the way I unwind. Put me in a darkened movie theater or downstairs in the basement with an episode of "The Crown." For me, shopping is a means to an end.

But the shopping season is upon us, so today I'll do my bit for the economy. Not with joy or gladness but with a sense of duty.

Gratitude on Ice

It's one of the coldest Thanksgivings on record here, with wind chills in the teens and temperatures that won't make it out of the 30s. A perfect day to stay inside, chop onions, peel potatoes and baste the turkey, all in a steamy kitchen.

Though it's tempting to put heat at the top of the list of things I'm most grateful for today, I'm going to push it aside for friends and family. We haven't celebrated Thanksgiving here for a couple of years, Suzanne and Appolinaire having stepped in as the hosts with the most lately, but today the clan (minus Celia, who's in Seattle) is gathering here, and by late afternoon there will be a full house.

It has lately been made clear to me (as if I didn't already know it), just how important family and friends are. Not just for celebrations like today's, but for the dreary mornings and frantic evenings of life. So on a day for giving thanks, my heart is full of love for the people who make life worth living for me. Not just today but every day.

Give a Little Whistle

The old Russell Hobbs tea kettle gave up the ghost a few weeks ago. It seems like just the other day it was the new Russell Hobbs, so I was unprepared for the breakdown, at first thought I must have been turning it on the wrong way.

But oh no, it was truly broken, could no longer be babied along by turning it every so slightly to the right on its base, like cracking a safe. Now, the search for the new tea kettle will begin, but given the craziness of the season I could see it taking a while.

In the meantime, there is a stand-in I brought up from the basement and dusted off. It's the trusty whistling tea kettle, decades old. It may be made of aluminum, it may be hastening our senility, but I love the jolly way it announces that the water is tea-worthy. Not with a click of a power switch but with a shrill whistle that brings me scurrying from the far corners of the house. It brooks no interruptions, knows its own mind. And the water it produces makes a fine cup of tea.

Switching Browsers

Continuing on the tech theme, I write today from the office. It's been many weeks since this was possible, all due to a log-in problem I could have solved much sooner had I just switched browsers.

Switching browsers is often the remedy to the problem at hand. I should know this by now. Is there a stubborn streak at work here? Am I making things more difficult by failing to switch browsers first?

Possibly, but it's unconscious on my part. It's part of being a digital emigre, someone not born to swim in these waters. I may find a solution, eventually, but it will never be an easy one. It's as if my brain circuits won't work that way.

Maybe writing this post will help me remember that before I pull my hair out, before I decide to completely redo my blog (which I hope will happen soon anyway), it's better to take one simple, elegant action — switch browsers.

Calmer Computing

It was a day to rake leaves, plant bulbs, do laundry and prepare the house for visitors later this week. It was also a day to be frustrated by various computer glitches.

There was a new system update with all of its attendant woes, the retrieval of passwords once entered automatically, the held breath that formerly well-oiled systems would start up again.

There was the banishment of junkware called Gilpierro, which slipped onto my machine when I was downloading a schedule from a third party. That took about two hours.

With each snafu I worried that I wouldn't be able to access this blog or my email or the document I'd just been working on. But so far, so good.

I like to think I'm becoming a little saner during times of software distress. One might not notice this by looking at me, but I have a little more faith in the power of machinery than I used to. It's a calmer computing I engage in now.

(The photo doesn't have much to do with computing, but it's a calm scene.)

Waylaid

It was one of those days, one that seemed to start without me. I meant to write when I came back from my walk, but was waylaid ...  then waylaid some more. And now that it's evening I wonder, why bother?

Because writing here is a creative comfort, a way to soothe jangled nerves.

Because writing here is a way to celebrate walking, which also soothes jangled nerves. (Notice a theme?)

Because I try to write every workday no matter what.

Because there is much to be grateful for, even on a wind-whipped November evening.

Early Snow

There are still leaves on the trees, but that isn't stopping the snow from falling. What was first billed as sleet and freezing rain has turned into snow that's sticking on deck and railing, yard and street.

Roads, mostly untreated, are slick and getting slicker.

It will turn to rain later, they say. They being the Capital Weather Gang, my go-to weather source.  But they also said there wouldn't be much accumulation, so I'm not believing them at the moment.

What I am believing is what I see from the warm confines of my living room. The snow is falling, and there may be a little sleet mixed in because it's making a sound when it hits the ground. No silent snow, secret snow here. It's early snow, loud snow.

National Landing

It was before 8 a.m. when I landed at National Landing, landing in my usual way, which is to say via bus — not plane or boat.

National Landing is the former Crystal City, transformed overnight from a slightly down-on-its-heels and not-so-aptly-named set of office buildings, hotels, restaurants and parking garages to half of Amazon's new HQ2 (HQ 2.5?).

As I walked from Metro to my office, I noticed a car with broadcast equipment staking out a spot for a stand-up shot. It was parked near the basketball courts that were painted with pink and green flowers a few months ago and accessorized with a ping-pong table and life-size chess board. A few steps away, on the other side of the street, was my building, now being shown in a promotional video with a faux glass-walled eatery in front.

I don't know whether it's the winter or the weather — or the fact that the HQ cat is out of the bag — but the basketball court isn't protected from vehicular traffic like it was earlier this year during the "courtship" phase. And I saw no evidence of the painted bicycles that had been adorning the area until recently. I was feeling a little bereft, like the bride who wakes up the day after the wedding and finds that her beloved isn't quite what he seemed before the nuptials.

It's not disappointment, not exactly. But something very much like it.  I must remember the mantra that the building pictured above (formerly Noodles restaurant) reminds me every time I walk to the office. ... "Good things coming."

Let's hope so.

Damp, Drizzly November

A walk at lunch time yesterday, a dash outside and back before the rain moved in. Crystal City was almost deserted, federal employee haven that it is, so I had the sidewalk almost to myself.

I made my way down to Long Bridge Park and back, Gershwin in my ears, a big, soothing sound.

It was cold enough for gloves but I left them in my pocket. There will be time for them soon. For now I counted on the brisk pace to warm the extremities. And it almost did.

On the way back to the office, I looked up at the sky. The sun was trying to break through. It never quite made it, but I liked the way it was trying, the way clouds gathered and puckered, the pockets of light they let through.

It was a November Monday, not yet the "damp, drizzly November in my soul" that Melville describes in Moby Dick. It was just Monday, just November. The damp and drizzly, that would start a few hours later, would continue on through the night and into the dark morning. I hear the rain now, a steady beat on roof and road.

Local Heroes

History becomes personal when the people we know and love are part of it. I've written before of Dad as a tail gunner in a B-17 bomber, flying raids deep into German territory and flying air support on D-Day. But I've written little if anything about my grandfather, a World War 1 veteran.

Mom's father, Martin J. Concannon, above and top, served in the calvary in France during World War I. Details are hazy about the length and nature of his service so many generations later, but I think we can all agree that he looked dashing in his uniform.

Not to be outdone in dash, here's a picture of Dad leaning against a B-17.

Heartfelt thanks to them and all the men and women who risked their lives for our freedom. May we always be mindful of the gift they have given us — and may we always use that gift wisely.

100 Years

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. Today we celebrate 100 years since the end of the Great War, World War 1, which killed an estimated 10 million soldiers.

My grandfather fought in the cavalry, and when I went with Mom to Europe many years ago, she shuddered as our train passed through Verdun and other battle sites.

The past not that long past to her, because it lived on through the memories of her father.

World War II is the war that lived in my memory, and in a way similar to Mom's — because my father fought in it.

But it is World War I we memorialize today, the War to End All Wars (oh, how I wish that were true).   Here are the last paragraphs of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front:

He fell in October, 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

(World War 1 trenches, 1916. Photo: Wikipedia)

For the Birds

The other day I was on the phone with the pharmacy, talking with a real human being instead of tapping in numbers.

"Do you have birds?" the real human being asked me, not surprisingly, since Alfie and Dominique were chirping up a storm.

"Yes, I do," I said.

"Parakeets?" she ventured.

"Right again!" I replied. And from there we were off, discussing the cheerfulness of birds and the pleasures of a home filled with their song.

Apart from 18 months in 2011-2012, we've had a parakeet or two in a cage hanging from a hook in the kitchen ceiling for the last 14 years. The birds are not directly over the table, but they are in the center of the house, where they can hear the humans whose flock they have adopted.

I'm midway through Jim Robbins' book The Wonder of Birds and learning many things I didn't know. For example, scientists' study of murmuration  — birds' ability to fly in unison in great flocks that twist and turn like a cloud dancing — is enhancing what we know of human cognition and metacognition.

It doesn't surprise me that these intelligent and loving animals would have secrets to share. "I hope you love birds too," wrote Emily Dickinson. "It is economical. It saves going to heaven."

(Can't find a good picture of the parakeets this morning, so this photo of a wild baby bird in our garage will have to do.) 

Survival Plan

They'd predicted sun for yesterday, and at first they were right. It was sunny when I woke up and for several hours in the morning. But by midday the clouds had moved in ... and they never went away.

It felt like the promise of summer cut short by early winter. The rains of Monday and Tuesday had stripped off many of the leaves, and the bare trunks of winter were out in full force.

It was time for my kind of mood music, for Mendelssohn and Respighi and Dvorak. It was time for a hooded sweatshirt and hands balled into fists pulled up into sleeves. It was time to make chili and turn on lamps in the afternoon.

In short, it was time to enact the winter survival plan. To listen, to light, to cook, to hunker down.

Morning After

It dawned clear and bright today, a marked difference from Monday and Tuesday's rain and drizzle. The skies had already cleared by the time I reached the polling place last evening, and a glorious sunset was underway, clouds purpled by the setting sun.

A tempting omen, but we're beyond omens, I think. Or at least I am. What I want is harmony, and yesterday's election will not produce it, at least not in the short term, though at least there will be a much-needed check and balance.

I do know that I've started praying for our country every night, along with the people I love. I should have been praying for it all along, I realize. But it didn't seem to need it like it needs it now.

The Gold Standard

I'm thinking back to Sunday's afternoon walk. The day later than the clock said it was, Copper tugging on the leash. I dropped my shoulders, told myself there was nothing to do but enjoy the briskness, the trees at peak color.

We're not known for autumn splendor in northern Virginia. Spring is our time to shine. But still, there are moments when the sun slants in fetchingly from the west and the leaves catch it and reflect it back.

I tried to capture that by snapping some photos. But as usual, it's not just the shot I want, it's the way the air feels and the sound of tiny birds peeping, the creek gurgling and (of course) the drone of a leaf blower. You're never deep enough in the Folkstone woods that you can't hear that.

But when the leaves are swirling around and collecting in golden circles at your feet, it doesn't much matter.

Time and Illusions

I always feel this way when we have a time change, that if it's this easily manipulated, then what does it mean, anyway? If one day 11  a.m. is at 11 a.m. and the next day it's at 10 a.m., then why don't we consider more drastic options?

Could we say today is Friday and be done with the week?  Could we skip right past the midterm elections and the interminable analysis that will follow them?

For that matter, can we move right along to next spring? That would be best of all.

"People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion," Einstein said.

In these first dark days of Eastern Standard Time, I'm believing more in physics than I ever have before.

Calm Souls

A warm and windy All Souls Day, the trees finally fall-like after weeks of holding their green.

Crows caw, a sound familiar this time of year, which I often think of as a shoulder season, pausing at the top of the roller-coaster, almost time for the cacophony of year-end celebrations.

Many things are different now, with one daughter living far away, but it wouldn't be a holiday season without a little cacophony, so I think it's safe to say that will be true this year as well.

I am taking the calm when I can get it, then. The warm and windy calm. The calm that holds within it all matter of rustlings and bustlings. Which is, perhaps, the only kind of calm we can claim.

Warm and Golden

A walk today when the sun was still high in the sky — or as high in the sky as it gets these days.

A walk through tunnels of autumn leaves — or as autumnal as they get around here.

It was a different kind of October, but at times a warm and golden one. Today I felt that warmth in my bones.