Prodigal

Returning from the nether regions, my daughter comes home today. As a matter of fact, I'm just waiting for my hair to dry in the velcro rollers so I can take off. I'm very excited. Which is somewhat surprizing to me since she's twenty-three and has lived away, first Davis, then up on the mountain, for the last five years. But there's something about being half a world away that makes it harder. If she gets in trouble in Cali, I can jump in the car and rescue her. Not so easy when she's so far away. But she seems to have survived jumping out of an airplane with what she calls "a hottie," scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, and fulfilling the "Thrillogy," which means she's bungie-jumped THREE times, once from the highest bungie-jumping place in the world!!!! Arghhhhhh!

So I'm in a great mood having survived knowing all this has been happening. Additionally, I managed to complete another short story and shipped it off to the Writers' Digest Pop Fiction contest at exactly 11:52 New York time to meet the 12:00 midnight deadline. The last three hundred words are breathless. It ends abruptly and I'll probably have to fix that to submit elsewhere later, but I did it and I'm relieved. I think I've been worried that I couldn't really do it again...at least so quickly in less than a month of mulling, and less than a week actually writing. I guess I've been thinking that "Leaving Slackerland" just might be all I have in me to complete, but this proves I can do it. Not that I'm saying it's good. It takes a lot for me to say those words, but it has a story, I love the main character, so flawed but so dear, and I think it's got the bones to work. Whether it works now, I can't judge because it's too soon after the "birth."

Well, I've got an airplane to meet so that's all for today. Oh, and I do love the title of the new baby: "As-Is."