the latest

OK, so Miriam continues to delight me the most out of the four main characters. She is just so flippin' NUTS. We're on page 140; we have 10 completed chapters and bits and pieces of a few more. We have an end in mind but not on paper. We practiced writing a little synopsis and posted it on facebook just for kicks (no one has commented on it though, likely indicating it's as bad an idea as my inner critic tells me it is). The story seems at least moderately entertaining to me, but maybe that's just the flip side of hating your own writing more than anyone, is you also love it more than anyone. Anyway, here's the in-a-nutshell gist of the latest endeavor:

'Westport' is a tale of secrets kept, secrets spilled, things found out, and things never told. A tale of surprisingly intersecting lives as told by Abby, a pregnant teenage surfer girl; David, a seemingly average guy with a hidden penchant for various forms of escape; Veronica, turning 40 and falling fast down the rabbit hole of obsession and desperation (mental illness?) regarding her possible infertility; and Miriam, a pill-popping, chain-smoking nurse with a mean streak whose desire for peace and quiet lands her with a dead husband on page one. It's small-town living at its finest: you can only get away with so much for so long.

I don't know...maybe it's just me. But I'm enjoying it.

And then there's the school idea.

I decided it was long past time to finally complete the degree I left by the side of the road when I was but a wee lass...so I'm applying to {gulp} Universities, and have (as of Monday) officially gotten the science-requirement ball rolling and enrolled in an online class through the local comm coll: Bio125, AKA "The Survey of Human Diseases." It's spectacular so far. Who knew Memmler's The Human Body in Health and Disease 10th Edition could make such entertaining bedtime reading? Though I must say I've been having the strangest dreams this week, and am trying real hard to not self-diagnose.

My latest obsession: finding old pictures and posting them on facebook (1985 seems to be a year rife with snapshots from 10th grade lunchtime and I find myself weirdly sentimental -- mid-life crisis, anyone? Can I be pre-menopausal at 38? Or do I just need to up the St. John's Wort?)

All this while being a mom and a wife and working 40 hours a week at the best darn treatment center in the world, and my life is like, way super-full. The book might have to simmer away on the back-burner for a bit while I do the school thing. If I even get accepted to one (Will I? It's the question of the day, every day, and my sole reason for sprinting to the mailbox as soon as the mail jeep pulls away)...

So there's the skinny. I'm going to run out with this little one of mine and enjoy the last of this crisp autumnal Indian-Summer-with-a-hint-of-a-cold-front we're having up here in the Pacific NW.