Best of 2011/The List – Reverie 2011 – Day 9

Snow-encrusted walks

Reading

Plane ride over the Sierra Nevadas

Bittersweet goodbyes to The White Stripes

Sun over Alcatraz

Writing

Wintertime workers’ rights demonstrations before the Ohio Statehouse

Revision, revision, revision

Hannah's 21st!

Paul Simon’s “Rewrite”

Nancy Zafris on Flannery O’Connor

Kentucky Derby

Roses

Heat

Stop ‘n’ Go

Friends

Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont

Writing alone and together and at dusk when the hummingbirds are searching the wide-open flowers for some answers

Secrets

Wide-plank floors

Sex with a one-armed man

Surprises

Concessions

Patience

Live Fast, Die Young

Hunkering

Lighting candles

Giving thanks

Jeni's ice cream

Walks with Atticus

Wrapping

Hannah - all grown up and saving China!

Zak's 18th!

Thinking

Considering

Congratulating

Sleeping

birthday candles!

Sometimes birthdays don't need

any words, just candles to light

and a breeze to blow them out.

Things that happened this past week

• my daughter became a twenty-year-old
• the sun came out from a two-month bout of hide-and-seek
• two characters in my novel did uncharacteristic sorts of things, like forgive each other
• a drain pipe in the upstairs bath finally gave out, and the deluge came down, just above my study and my desk
• the mounds of snow began to disappear and the sad-looking lawn to reappear
• and for the first time ever, a story of mine was accepted for publication after being selected as a finalist in a literary review’s fiction contest!  cake complete with icing!