We had a nice Thanksgiving in the Rowland/Hoffstadt household. Anna decided to sleep in until 6:30am and then came and cuddled with us and slept a bit more. After we all got up I headed over to Slidell to do a bit more work on the house. Kelly (the woman who will be renting the place) met me over there and helped me haul the dead linoleum and carpet to the curb, then we both went back to my home and cleaned ourselves up.
We then headed out to Copelands restaurant for our Thanksgiving dinner. Jack and I had no desire to cook, since it was just the three of us, and we had planned to go out to eat a while back. We invited Kelly and her daughter along, our treat, and had a really nice time. Any restaurant that stayed open for Thanksgiving had booming business since there are so many people in FEMA trailers, and you can’t cook a turkey in a FEMA trailer. But we must have timed it perfectly between waves of people because we only waited about ten minutes before getting a table. We exchanged evacaution stories, and Kelly told the story of how she had carefully placed all her pictures and photo albums in plastic bags and put them upstairs in her condo, since she was pretty certain she was going to get water, but she’d figured they’d be all right up there, since she was at 13 feet elevation, even though she was on the waterfront. She hadn’t planned on coming back to find nothing. She figures that those bags of photos are somewhere in the swamp. But she amazes me with her resiliency. She’s picking up the few pieces she has left and continuing to grind on.
After Kelly left, Jack and I had a nice lazy day of relaxing and reading. Anna was amazingly cooperative and played quietly byherself for several hours while we sat around and read and just kept track of where she was. I read Bee Season by Myla Goldberg which I HIGHLY recommend because the writing is excruciatingly beautiful and the character studies are incredible, and even though is it not being marketed one bit as speculative fiction, there’s a strong mysticism element (especially at the end) that would definitely place it in the genre. This is actually a book that my husband read, and I only read it because I wanted him to read some literary SF and we made a “I’ll read yours if you read mine” deal. I made him read “Sergeant Chip” and have bookmarked “Bears discover fire” and “Sandkings” for him for later. I’m going to wait a bit before having him read “Story of your life” because that story, as fabulous as it is, I think requires a certain immersion in the genre before one is able to fully appreciate how stunning it is.
No writing yesterday, but I do have more ideas and concepts brewing. I’m also getting back into working on the novel that I’m doing with Kat. But for the rest of this week I’m just going to relax and see what happens.
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