Peeking into the rock

Today I am doing an outline and first draft of a floor. ( endless tile neepery ) The center of the floor is the setting for a mosaic, which I am still planning as I look at what I have, but which will be vaguely representative of kelp. Kelp is the tree of life, really, whatever anybody else thinks.
So I was thinking about the way I draft things. The way I do an outline usually is to do a short treatment -- either a long short story length or a fragment -- it looks like a failed short story. When I see what I've got, then I can plan the real novel. THat's sort of what I've done with the tiles.

So I'm taking a break because the hand therapist says you really must, and I woke up with burning sensation from my fingertips up past my elbow this morning, presumably from stacking tiles yesterday.

( Bride of fluff )

Best intentions and all that, but it's after one and I've been here since eight, eating too much and writing too little. But the chapter is more than half finished, I think, and I've almost finished setting the stage for meeting Candelario.

I think I have some anxiety over this next part, because it's the beginning of the heart of the book, or at least it's the scenes I started with.

So yesterday I had field training for First Flush. We tested conductivity, ph, transparency, and temperature on samples from two storm drains, and we collected samples for a lab to test for metals, nutrients, and coliform bacteria. One of them -- the one I will be doing the night of the first big rain -- is at the inland side of the culvert that runs under West Cliff Drive and opens out on to a sheer cliff lined with riprap. You can smell the ocean water right through it. The gully made by the creek that is the storm drain is lined with all the worst invasive plants, including an echium whose leaves are taller than me. There is a fine growth of beautiful water cress -- but knowing what I do, I would not eat it! The other spot is also a little creek running into a culvert under a road, but it is less visible (the first one is part of a park) and was full of trash, including a moplike thing (a duster?) and a bicycle helmet. It reeked of methane, and there were bubbles in the murky water. The stream bed leading up to the place where we collected the water was completely dry. The people I worked with were very very cool.

( nothing to see here, really )

Two ways this applies:

My son is moving out today and taking his re-functional computer with him. I love him dearly and enjoy his company but he wants to camp out on the computer as much as I do, and for construction reasons his computer was not online most of the time he's been here. Meanwhile, my daughter still does not have a functional computer. She's coping better, though she still has things she must do, like homework.

The other way -- I have started trying to think of each day the way I think of each chunk of writing. For writing, I have a long-range plan which is prety well thought out, and a mid-range plan for the next chapter or two, and a short range plan for today's writing. I don't do that for any other aspect of my life. So today, I said to myself: "The kitchen chapter I am on is to finish touchup on Impossible Yellow Bits, second coat on Two Doorways in Wonderful Easy to Paint With Linen Color, first coat on Cabinet Doors in Both Wonderful Easy to Paint With Linen Color and Palest Green. The wine chapter is Taste and See If It's Really Vinegar, and If It's Not, Add Sugar and Move It to Secondary." The Family chapter is "Get Dead Rat Corpse From Vet and Deliver to Daughter for Burial." The Social Life Chapter is broken into 2 scenes: "Make Appearance at Coastal Cleanup Day if Possible" and "Drop by Jeannie's to Help with Yard Sale."

And writing? Well, I'm going to send my guy through a hiotchhiking nightmare. My son and his friend were talking about the genie class in D&D and I think the people in my guy's first ride do that, so my guy can contrast himself to those wish-granting entities and wonder if he could do the things they do, and realize that he has been doing some of them, and he could never do others. Then he's dropped off at a gas station at an offramp somewhere in the East Bay, and he goes into the little market thing and buys a snack, showing his money in the process. When he gets out, he's mugged by a little wad of suburban boys. There. I've lost my guy's money and injured him a little so he doesn't feel up to the kind of hard labor he's been doing and he has a motivation to return to San Francisco.

And the other thing is( today's story fragment: look, this really is just for me and maybe Emma, it's not required reading )