Winter                                     Waning Moon of Long Nights

I’ve had a long stretch of no tours at the museum, little direct work for the Sierra Club and, of course, no gardening.  That means I’ve had plenty of time to focus on writing and I’m well into a new novel and have the research underway for Liberal II:  The Present.  It’s nice to have extensive time at home, especially when the weather has been as brutal as it has been.

The act of writing has a therapeutic edge, no matter what form the writing takes, but when the writing is fiction, something else comes into the act.  I don’t know what it is, other generations have called it the muse, inspiration, an angel, a devil but it does feel like there’s a second party in on the action.

We got our mutual present to each other today, a Kitchen Aid Artisan stand-mixer.  Bread and pasta are on  my mind.  As Kate has been home since mid-October, I’ve noticed a tendency to put more time and love in to the act of cooking and to put more of a focus on the kitchen.  I enjoy it.