For me, anyway. A friend of mine is having some yucky issues, with which I am attempting to help her, but it’s rough for her right now. Thankfully, she has pretty good friends like me, and she’ll make it through okay.
My friend is NOT the reason for my goals not being met. I signed up for this round of ROW80 fully intending to write 10 minutes every day without fail. I don’t believe I’ve done that once since then. It crosses my mind occasionally–usually when I can’t do anything about it–and then it flits away again. I’ve been out of town, and busy, and somewhat lazy in the days needed for recovery from the traveling. Not beating myself about any of it. 🙂
I drove to California with my friend Blyss and had a great ride. Well, she drove. There were a couple of long days during the driving as we took roads a little less traveled, but just being with Blyss and traveling territory neither of us had covered before was pretty cool. One of the highlights of the trip was driving through the Redwood National Forest in California. While we were in the car, it was kind of like, “wow, that’s a lot of big trees. Yay.” Then we stopped in a little pull off point and walked around a bit and really took in the size of these trees, and it kind of hit me–those trees were pretty damn amazing. There was one in particular I really loved where we stopped that had a big knot coming out of it that was almost tall enough to be out of my reach. From different angles, I thought the knot looked like a head of different kinds–kind of a goblin, kind of a grimacing skeleton, kind of a woman with long hair. I got pictures of it plain, and I sat my Wisconsin hat on top of it and took some more pictures as well. Blyss made an offering of tobacco to some of the trees, which is a very “Blyss” thing to do, and I respected it. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.
The last day I was with Blyss was in Malibu at the Geddy Villa Museum for a symposium called “Excavating Aphrodite” that was a day-long symposium of archaeologists and historians presenting papers and findings of artifacts and proof of Aphrodite and Venus worship in Greece and Italy, including Pompeii. It wasn’t really my thing, and I got in some sweet naps during some of the presentations, but watching Blyss’s head spinning excitedly all day was definitely fun. 🙂 We had a good time, and flirted with a guy during the wine and cheese event after the symposium was done. Well, he was flirting with me, but I think I was assuming he was gay, so I completely missed it. Oh, well… I was heading to the bus station to go to Phoenix that night, so it was okay. Apparently I need to be reminded what it looks like when people are attempting to flirt with me…
Then I spent a week in Phoenix with my sister, her four and a half-year old triplets (!!!), and some family who came to visit her and meet the kids. It was a good time, but it got a little long for me by the time my mom and I left to head back to Seattle. I think I’d been gone too long–two weeks is a long time, as it turns out–and I just wanted to get home. I did that, and then spent the next week at home with Wanda, for the most part. She certainly didn’t mind, and it was a really good way for me to unwind.
So, back to my original point…no writing goals met. I’m working as a barista for the first time ever–first full shift today by myself, and it’ll probably be a double. And I am doing pretty okay, if I do say so myself. 😉
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