Oh my, so much going on in my life, but most of it is highly personal and therefore un-bloggable. Is that a word? The squiggly red line underneath it indicates no, but then there are so many new words that I had never heard of until just recently, like "selfie." I also used to think "content" [the noun form] was a fairly obscure word, but now, as a writer, "content" is the word used the most to describe what I do. Writers today don't just write, they "create content."
I have been working feverishly for a couple of weeks, helping a friend of a friend with her PhD dissertation. Tons of typing. The fingers of my right hand have actually gotten sore, and the other day I had eyestrain. I turned down the brightness of my computer screen and stopped typing for half a day to recover.
Let's see, what else is going on in my world?
It's not too hot but the humidity is horrible. It rains about every afternoon, a nice thunderstorm to cool things down from the low 90's, but then I walk outside with Lola and it feels like stepping into a shower where the water just got turned off. My hair just looks like a bunch of damp curls, like a giant mussed it all up. Good thing I am 54 now and I really don't care any more. Short hair is my friend..
My gardens have petered out. I learned, to my dismay, that eggplant is not my friend, digestively. I have a wonderful, huge eggplant that's thriving in my otherwise ruined garden. The other night I peeled one and sliced it, then made fried eggplant using Italian seasoning flavored breadcrumbs. Dipped the slices in egg, then fried them in olive oil, which is the only oil I use. Delicious. I pigged out. Regretted it the next day.
When I am not creating content, I content myself with reading..
I recently finished reading the highly lauded book The Goldfinch, which won the Pulitzer for fiction not long ago. When I started reading it I just couldn't get into it. Hated the very long descriptions of everything. Hated how slow it was. Stopped reading it, in fact, and just put it on the shelf in my room. I read a couple of other books, including Flight Patterns by Karen White. Terrific book.
Eventually I ran out of reading material, and I reluctantly turned back to The Goldfinch. One of my cousins who reads a lot told me she loved it. So I finished it. Holding the darn thing was hard - it's over 700 pages and even the trade paperback version is really heavy. Too bad I hate reading on a Kindle. Anyway, I didn't like the main character and I was sort of appalled by his life, but I can't deny it's well-written. My cousin told me her book club was evenly divided between folks who loved the book and folks who hated it.
There's not much more to report, not that I can discuss publicly. I am going to take a break from blogging about my children. They are grown now and entitled to their privacy.
I saw a trailer for a new movie that looks really interesting, and it's Meg Ryan's directorial debut, Ithaca. IMDB has it listed as a 2015 release but according to this interview with Meg Ryan it got pushed back to this September. It's based on the Saroyan book The Human Comedy. Looks like a good one.
