So many kitties, so little writing done!

bronwyn's right: Thistle and Whisper deserve much more virtual attention than they have received. Whisper just had a kitty abortion, and both of them just got snipped, so they could use a little support. The grey one is Thistle, the other is that scamp Whisper... here is what bronwyn said in an email about this picture:

here are thistle & whisper yesterday...i think they're learning to get along!
(thistle is licking whisper here; shortly after this she bit whisper's
neck. cats will be cats...)



Spending today thesis-writing, and it's going relatively fantastically. I'm at kind of a daunting stage where I have only a month (tops) to sew all the different patches together a-la-jigsaw puzzle. The problem is that I always end up without much sewing but with many more new patches!

Today, though, is different! I've already been at it for a few hours, so this is my lunch sorta break thingy. I'm not sure if Wayson would approve of interrupting the "writing psyche" by going online (he doesn't have the Internet at all for that very reason!), but I figure this is semi-productive. I spent most of the morning building outwards from the core of the scene where Leslie dies in the manure pit... sorry for the spoiler, but that bit was a given right from the beginning... I'm having trouble making it chilling enough, real enough, tragic enough. I'm also having trouble getting them out to that damn manue pit in the middle of a thunderstorm in the first place, with some sort of plausible premise! Leslie is helping me out though, because she's such a conniving little demon-child, and since Del is a complete push-over (and ridiculously susceptible to Leslie's intimidation), it's turning out to be not as hard as I thought. A little taste, from when Leslie is convincing Del to come with her outside in the thunder storm to fly a kite (to see if they can get their own electricity, because the power is out in the farmhouse), and Del is hesitant because she knows her mom wouldn't approve...

Leslie’s arm swings grandly outwards and drapes across my shoulders. “In a hundred years,” she says, “your mom will be dead and rotten and it won’t matter what we do today. So we might as well.”

Then she slides off the bed and twirls towards the door, taking the flashlight with her, and I am left in the semi-darkness with my mom’s decaying, maggoty face swiveling towards me, the skin half eaten off, the craggy jawline caught in a fierce skeletal grin.

I lurch forward so my head is between my knees, the way Leo taught me. After a moment the burning dizziness cools to a familiar, lazy spin and I drop to the floor and follow the clatter of Leslie leaping down the stairs, two at a time.

Over and over I tell myself: It won’t matter what we do today.

Okay, time for more tea and more writing. Tycho, my muse, has been helping me a lot this morning, mostly by acting as a very effective paperweight for all the pages I fanned out on my bed. Keep up the good work, T-bone! Show those gale-force winds who's boss!