I’ve been working hard on my non-fiction book about creating story bundles/collections, and it’s finally starting to feel like a book!
Up until yesterday I felt like I had a mental block or something. The book felt like a bunch of random bits of information all jammed together, but by the end of the day it had started to feel like an actual book. Hooray!
It may have felt odd initially because this is my first non-fiction book, and for a while it really was just a bunch of bits of information all jammed together. I’d be working on one section, then realize I should add something to a section elsewhere in a book, then remember something I should add to yet another part of the book…it felt very scattered. At this point, all of that seems perfectly logical – it just felt disorganized at the time. But the apparent lack of organization was because I was trying to get a bunch of information out of my head, and in a lot of cases what I wrote down involved things I normally think about or do when putting together a collection, but hadn’t consciously realized I think about or do.
I’m much happier with the manuscript now that it’s coalescing. And I think the next non-fiction book – because I’m sure there will be another, although I have no idea what it will be about – will be much easier after this one.
Here’s my update on new things I’ve learned and experienced in the past week!
Learnings
Apparently my parents have a very prolific pear tree – or at least it was quite prolific this year. 🙂 I am not sure I even knew they had a pear tree at all!
It turns out they did, and they also have a plum tree, and have – or had – a peach tree. Sadly, this was the first year that the peach tree made a full crop, and that appears to have been too much for it, as it collapsed. It was sad to see the poor, broken tree. But on the plus side, I brought home a bunch of scrumptious peaches!
I went over to my parents house on Saturday to help pick pears, and came home with quite a bounty. These are D’Anjou pears, and even though they’re not quite ripe, they’re still yummy.
My mom’s grandparents had a farm back in Pennsylvania, and she grew up helping them from time to time (or hindering…I’m not sure I have all the facts yet…). She wouldn’t let me use a ladder or a step stool, so we used rakes to pull the branches down toward us so we could reach the pears. The ones on the highest branches were left as a challenge for my sister and her family.
Now I need to figure out what to do with a bunch of pears that will probably all ripen around the same time. 🙂
Experiencings
We actually don’t remember when they last got a bath, which sounds pretty irresponsible… But in the winter they’re out in the snow, and in the summer (or at least the earlier part of the summer) they regularly jump in the nearby creeks. (They’re actually irrigation ditches, but they feel like creeks. And it’s much easier to tell your dog “go jump in the creek” than “go jump in the irrigation ditch.”)
Clean border collies are so cute and fun to pet!!! I keep wanting to pet them, and cuddle with them, and brush them. Neither Rosie nor Jasper are fans of the brushing idea, but I brush them nonetheless.
And yes, I am saving their fur. Someday I hope to have enough to make a scarf or something. 🙂
No, I don’t know how to turn dog fur into yarn. Well, I understand the concept, but am not sure I’d be good at it. But my good friend Kathryn, who does, has won awards for things she’s knitted out of her dogs’ fur – so I know it’s possible!
Kathryn has a herd of alpaca and a number of Tibetan Mastiffs who work as livestock guardians, and protect the alpaca. Her super awesome dogs were recently in a Dogumentary.
If Rosie and Jasper were ever in a Dogumentary, it would almost certainly include tennis balls, pine cones, and a lot of wrassling. 🙂
