Worthy cookies

OMG--I'm so close I can taste it. I'm so close I'm leaving whole words out as I type. But Fish 5, tentatively titled School of Fish, is almost done, and I'm THRILLED. It's only taken 10 weeks.

I mean, I get it--one and a half of those weeks was consumed by an edit, and between keeping my Patreon up and a vicious case of COVID brain I'm not moving as fast as I usually do. That, and, including the extras that I always throw in, this book is going to run around 115K, and, well, that's a lot. And it took a while. And I feel guilty, but I really have picked up a lot in the past month. It just got hard to remember how to write when the entire family was HERE dammit.

Also, there were the shawls.

My cousin reported getting them--and trying them all on again and again to decide which one was hers and how she was going to disperse the others. I am kind of depressed about the social isolation thing--they live in New Jersey and New York, and there are people on that side of the country who haven't left their apartments for months, so I get it. I just always sort of enjoy throwing a box of knit goods in the middle of the room and letting the bodies hit the floor.

I'm evil that way.

Anyway-- besides watching old Star Trek TNG episodes to prepare the kids for Picard (which, by the way, is a fantastic journey-- God, I know the production values are dated, and the scripts go a little slower than we're used to now--but so good) we haven't done too much. I mean, you know it's a big deal day when you cook chicken and the kids go "Ooooooh.... chicken."

Some people are learning new languages during quarantine--I'm just trying to be able to fit out the door at the end of it. God, I miss swimming.

It also got hella hot here in the last two days. I have writing sprints in the morning with a friend, so in order to walk the dogs I had to be up at 8:15 so I could be showered and back by 10:15. At 12, I laid down for a nap and crashed, hard, then woke up at 2 thinking, "Uhm, I usually go down for my nap in an hour and now I'm so confused..."

Ah, circadian rhythms--riveting stuff, right?

Anyway-- Fish 5 is almost done, and tonight, Squish, who has pretty much had all the adolescent crises while locked up with mom and dad with no friends except on the phone, did a lovely thing for me. She went to get Oreos and stopped at my desk as I wrote, hand extended.

It seems like a small moment--but in spite of how miserable adolescence is, for me, it was like being handed a diamond tiara.

Of course I ate the cookie, whether it exceeded my calorie diary or not.

That was a really worthy cookie.