More stories from the Prairie

I have become so blissfully lazy this past week that I have been unable to put fingers to keyboard. Reading, napping and swimming plus my duties as dog mother/pack leader. Oh, and let's not forget, movies and knitting. Ha! and you thought being retired was easy.


Re: current events-- I am heartened by the results of the Iowa caucuses and while my personal choice is still John Edwards; the important thing was the number of people that were galvanized to get out and vote. I hope that this wave of enthusiasm- this wave for change continues across the entire country.

I hope each and every primary becomes more and more exciting and that people recognize that together we actually can make a difference. Barak Obama is a powerful speaker and has an enormous amount of support (financial and celebrity) behind him and I think he would make a powerful and positive impression on many countries around the world who do not understand what democracy really means.



Tonight, ABC will present a three-hour event with a new format that will allow all of the remaining candidates (Republican and Democrat) to discuss with one another, several important topics. This may be one of the few remaining opportunities to see them all side-by-side instead of 30 second sound bites. And besides, I may be able to finish my knitting project!
The weather has warmed up a bit, which means that the aquatic center stays warmer, which means that swimming is even more fun. For Christmas,my brother sent me a very small but fabulous little waterproof radio, which makes 30 minutes go by much quicker. I still have to pinch myself every once in awhile and be grateful that I have the opportunity to walk 25 feet and get into my own swimming pool with 84° water and fishies on the wall. Water holds a big therapeutic power for me and always has--pricey, but therapeutic.


I am also putting the finishing touches on my epic novel and then I can begin the process of editing. Having never completed anything of this gigantitude, I find myself a little reluctant to put an end to these characters. They are like friends to me now and I want to know what goes on with the rest of their lives; which of course I could do in a sequel, but I don't really have a story for them...yet ;->

For the last Nanowrimo I had decided to take a new tack and write a first-person autobiographical story about a home health nurse. By th time I was 25 pages into it, I was soo bored with my life, which might explain why I retired. So my "nurse" began writing (fortunately for me) the end of my novel. And whenever I would hit a roadblock... my nurse would go back to work, until I got tired of talking about sick people...then back to the book. The upshot of the whole thing is that I have an ending to my manuscript in a nice short story about a nurse.

I am not dusting off the shelf for a Pulitzer Prize, but I have a sense of accomplishment and a lot of words on paper-so to speak. And now I have 10 months to edit before the next big project or... the continuation of the previous manuscript.

But the sun is shining, it's 54° in time for a swim...

Happy New Year Bloggers and Lurkers...and you know who you are...