Halleljuah!

I am done, finally done, with the massive editing project.

And here I am lifting my hands to heaven in thanks for finally finishing. I can't write anything very specific about what I worked on, but I did learn something very valuable that I would like to pass on. Be very careful about taking mega-doses of vitamins and minerals under the illusion that if "a little good... more is better." The fat-soluble vitamins and many of the minerals can do be seriously dangerous at high doses.


There are a bunch of things that I have been thinking about writing about but all I have managed is to come up in the last couple of weeks is one-liners that that pop into my head while I am in the shower or walking down the road. I will have to elaborate on some of these in the coming days after I catch up with the work that I shunted aside to finish this project.

• Many of the landowners in the area where Richard and I grew up planted acres of eucalyptus trees in the early 1900s, and some of them were still standing in the respective neighborhoods where Richard and I lived (we did not know each other then)  when we were kids. We still remember the pungent smell of the seedpods and the leaves on the ground. Richard saw a "eucalyptus" scented reed diffuser in the store and bought it because he thought it would bring back pleasant memories. Unfortunately, it smelled nothing whatsoever like eucalyptus.
• I saw a meadowlark take off from the newly mowed grass of the churchyard next door, with its flashing yellow breast and the black "V". It landed on the barbed-wire fence and began to sing. It reminded me of hearing meadowlarks singing from the undeveloped land on the other side of the freeway from the house we moved to when I was 13. An oasis of wildness in the sprawl of urban south Los Angeles.
• Our boy brought his friend's Jack Russell terrier over to the house for a visit.I have read about Jack Russell's terrier (a character in one of my favorite novels) and I have seen programs about them on Animal Planet, but I had never seen one in real life. I had no idea. I was exhausted just watching him. Of course, I assume the dog would calm down some after becoming familiar with the surroundings. I think. How do you cope, Wild Woman? Don't you have two of them??? Whew.
• Before we could think to stop them, the wrens have yet again built another nest inside the canvas tote bag that hangs on a hook by the back door, hatched babies, and now spend the day on the back porch making a racket.
• That will be 5-cents my husband says to me after I started outlining a problem I was having with one of the manuscripts I was working on and how should I handle it. He had no real advice at all, except to say "Well, how would you handle this if it was any other manuscript," and of course when I answered that question I had the answer. I am beginning to understand why therapy is so good for the soul.
• A day or two after watching a special on why Pluto is no longer a planet (horse puckies I think to myself) I was making corn tortillas from masa harina and it occurred to me that I felt like Pluto when I was a kid at elementary school. Me and a couple of other "small planets" - a Mexican girl who lived with her grandmother who made their tortillas by hand, and another boy who came from a large family who was very poor and who did not fit in -- found each other and circled on the periphery of the orbits of the gas giants -Marcia and Georgia and Yvonne and Twila -- the attractive and popular kids.

And my friend Judy is off on an adventure and she invited me to pick asparagus. I picked once...

and now I need to go again. I've got to get out of here..... tee deedle deedle dee tee tee...