Mowing makes me sleepy

No, I am not mowing. Once upon a couple of years ago when we moved into this house, I offered to hire a neighborhood kid to mow our yard. My husband insisted he enjoyed taking care of the yard himself. A few weeks later when he asked me to mow for him, I gently reminded him of his words regarding his enjoyment of yard work. We have had no further discussions on the issue (for the most part). He goes out once every week or so to enjoy his yard work, and I do not.

The retirees in the community behind our house also do not mow, but once a week an entire fleet of hired mowers, trimmers, and sprayers descend upon their yards and the common area that lies between our back yard and the first row of duplexes. Today is sunny, 60-some degrees, and the drone of mowers and scent of cut grass is drifting through the screen door. The dog, attached to my hip as usual while I sit in my super-big chair and use my laptop, caved to the whole nap thing almost immediately and is now a cozy bundle of fur sprawled the length of my thigh. The whole setup makes me want to nose dive into my laptop as I struggle to string words together into coherent sentences.

I wound up finishing draft two of "Wings" yesterday afternoon and evening, so this morning, in between grocery shopping and letting the window guy in to replace the glass in a couple of windows, I took a printout of the story and a bundle of colored pencils and marked up all the sensory descriptions. (I can't for the life of me remember where I got that trick. One of Jack Bickham's how-to books, maybe? God knows I've read enough how-to-write books and articles in my lifetime that I can't keep them all straight.) I made lots of legible-only-to-me monkey scribblings in the margins and the blank space left over at the very end of the printout to brainstorm as many additional sensory descriptions as I could. I'm about halfway through taking my notes and applying them to the ms itself, which is about a half a step ahead of where I thought I'd be today. I am pleased with my progress.

If I can resist the nap urge a little longer, maybe I can even finish up before going to fetch the boys from school.