Saturday. Grey and intermittently snowing.
I’ve been up since way too early. Sat with my sun lamp, did the morning PT homework, oatmeal for breakfast, threw in a load of laundry, got with the WIP. Taking a break now to make rice and to heat up some soup for lunch. May add in half a sandwich, for, yanno, variety.
So! Let me tell you about last night. Around 10 pm, I’m finishing up reading my chapter and drinking my mug of tea and I hear a WHOMP from outside. I figured a tree limb had let go, and started to get up (which meant shifting Tali and Firefly) when I heard the sound of metal being hit and dragged, and I thought to myself, “Oh-oh.”
Opened the curtain and looked out. There was a car pulled to the curb, going away from town, and a largish dark pile in the lane going into town, and as I’m getting the curtain all the way out of my way, another car drives toward town, makes no effort to avoid the large dark pile of what I’m now tentatively thinking may be a deer, or — worse — a human — and drags another piece of metal with them. This car at least pulled over.
In the meantime, somebody from the car at the curb, who apparently hit the very largish dark pile while it was still moving, comes back to the scene, and a car heading out of town pulls to the curb, and somebody gets out of it. Both of these folks had their phones in hand. Someone from the car that had not avoided the pile came back down and handed what looked to be a good-sized piece of fender to one of the people who were now trying to clean the metal bits out of the road, goes back to her car and drives away.
The guy whose car had been in the accident is talking on the phone by this time. There’s a degree of consternation on display but no out-and-out horror, nobody’s kneeling by the big dark lump, so I come down on the side of “deer.”
And! since this situation was being competently handled by people who were actually dressed and in winter coats, I left them to it, and closed the curtain.
A couple minutes later, I saw a blue light slide along the curtains, then stop.
This morning — all gone! No large dark object in the road, no shred from a wounded car, nor even a bloodstain on the tarmac. Nothing in the paper. Might’ve been a dream.
I checked with Rook, who had, on the first WHOMP, jumped to the top of the cat tree to look through the gap in the curtains that I leave for just that purpose. Rook says, Not a dream. Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to tell, but this happened, Mom. I’m taking his word for it.
Coincidentally, there was a deer in the Long Back Yard this morning when I opened the curtains at Way Too Early.
And that is the end of my story.
#
Still writing. Well. Editing, tightening, writing scenes, taking scenes out. This in service of a less…goopy narrative. Or so I tell myself. The problem with the Just Write the Scenes You Know method — I’m sure I’ve said this before — is that it requires a lot of structural work, once you figure out what the story’s about.
Also, this book has a lot of characters — Ahem. You there, in the back, would you care to share your amusement with the rest of us? What’s that? Oh, there are always too many characters in Liaden books? Honey, you ain’t seen nuthin‘.
So more of the same tomorrow, with the exception of laundry, which is done now, and mostly put away. Leftover soup for lunch. After, I froze two-thirds of what was left, which leaves me another lunch or breakfast in the fridge.
Rook did me the favor of tipping over my Yeti water tumbler while I was writing — the good news! There wasn’t much water left. The bad news! I’d forgotten to seal it so what water there was went all over the desk.
Cleaned up, and Rook came back to revisit the Scene of the Crime. Whoa, there was water in there? Who does that?”
Those who have been following alone at home may be interested to learn that I found proof that last night’s accident did happen — a triangle of the yellow plastic that covers a vehicle’s fog lights. Boy, that stuff is tough. Also, sharp.
Coon Cat Happy Hour is over, and I should find something to eat, my own self.
And that? Is all I’ve got.
Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe.
I’ll look in tomorrow.
