A couple of days ago I updated our garden/fence/privacy situation. I was feeling pleased with myself. Ha!
Yesterday morning I was woken by what sounded like a naval battle on the roof. It turned out to be a stunning thunderstorm, ripping and thumping and smiting, a storm gone beserk. Casualties: many of our perbs got mashed flat, the beautiful curly willow snapped at the base and fell on our neighbour's house, and, again, we've lost some privacy.
Here's how it used to look:
Now there's a hole. So if you know any genetic fiddlery that will produce fourteen-foot honeysuckle in a week, or, hey, any spells to magically grow our fence to that height, please: don't let me get in your way. Oh, and a reanimation spell for the perbs would be lovely.
I'll be over here, winkling out every single gloom-and-doom track available on Spotify, and playing it very loud...
Here's Kelley's latest Clarion West writeathon piece, "The Rock and the River". It actually went up yesterday:
It was good they got off the boats for lunch, because by then Betsy was within a twitch of tossing the Larson kid over the side, preferably straight into the vacuum suck of the rapids, still clutching his stupid phone, whining all the way about why didn’t they have 3G down heeeeere? Bets didn’t think anyone on the boat would miss him, including his parents, who had raised Ignoring The Adolescent to a fine art. Then she would only have to get the Anderson family and Encyclopedia Guy eaten by snakes. The rest of them could stay as long as they left her alone. And then maybe Bets could enjoy the Grand Fucking Canyon.
When she signed up for the river trip, she imagined a small group of other adults, people of calm competence and intellectual mien and passionate adventurous spirit. She didn’t expect three motorized rafts of competitively-sunglassed executives who took a quick look around as they set off, noted that the Grand Canyon had a lot of rocks, and then got down to the serious business of checking each other’s status in the real world and telling the driver how to steer. All except Encyclopedia Guy, who went into full-bore full-volume download mode on the specific amount of damage that badly-conceived government management policies were doing to the river and canyon and wildlife and downriver ecosystems. Why, it’s all dying right this second! [more]
I haven't been keeping up, but Kelley has, writing one of these every single day for 38 days. (Today's will go up Very Soon Now.) You can read them all here. All her sponsorship slots are full, but please consider making a donation: $5 or $5,000, it's all good.
