shadows

I didn't intend to stay up this late, but I started to read a book, and you know how that goes. I slept quite late this morning, finally waking up around ten or eleven so that I could accomplish something with my day. After I showered, I grabbed lunch at a cafe down the street since I had no food in the house, and then came back and unpacked and did three loads of laundry. My affairs thus in order, I wrote for an hour or two, with a brief interruption from my writer friend Grace, who wanted to talk shop about some business stuff.

I threw in the towel on the writing so that I could go to the grocery store; in a bit of fun or madness, I invited some people over for New Year's Day brunch, and I wanted to shop for food today so that I wouldn't have to deal with crowds tomorrow. So I went to Whole Foods and bought all the weird flours required to make gluten free baking flour (brown rice, sorghum, potato, among others), as well as a variety of produce, fruits, and cheeses. Then I stopped at BevMo and bought three bottles of champagne and some gin, which is a good recipe for a party.

When I got home, I cleaned out the fridge, put away my groceries, and attempt to work some more, but it wasn't going well, and so I was happy to take a break and have supper with Terry and her friend Amy at Perry's. I was intent on trying the writing again, though, so I didn't hang out with them when we got home; instead, I came upstairs and toyed with my manuscript awhile longer. But when I hit the point where I was spending more time checking twitter than writing words, I decided to do what I've vowed to do more of -- stop wasting time on the internet and read one of the hundreds of books on my to-read list instead.

Tonight's book was OMBRIA IN SHADOW by Patricia A. McKillip; I've been slowly making my way through her backlist, for reasons that I can't even explain. Her plots are difficult to follow, so obfuscated by lush descriptions that you begin to wonder whether there is really a plot at all; the most powerful protagonists and antagonists are rarely described, never what they seem, and unsatisfactorily wrapped up at the end; and there's a quality of sameness to all her books that is both comforting and unsettling. However, there is magic in her books, too -- I simply can't stop reading once I've started, and it feels like I've fallen headlong into a different world, one where every word is a spell and every image is an enchantment.

So, needless to say, I read the entire thing, and now my brain is dazzled and I desperately need to sleep (and dream whatever strange and mysterious dreams will undoubtedly come). And so, goodnight; when I blog again, it will be 2012!