It's like a Thanksgiving present to myself

My wife and I decided to stay home today rather than travel to see family for Thanksgiving. That meant it was going to fall to me to make a Turkey and all the trimmings. That's just how things go in the Kreutz Gallardo household. I'm fine with it. I like to cook, and I'm good at it, so I really don't mind. But I had made myself a little crazy over the last few days because I'd never made a turkey before. I think I devoted more time to researching roasting techniques than I have on any piece of homework so far this semester. (If my advisor is reading this, that's hyberbole!) I'd also never made stuffing or from-scratch giblet gravy. Even more time spent researching.

But you can all rest easy, everything (except the stuffing) came out fine. Great, in fact! Not to toot my own own horn, but I think that turkey ranked up there with the top five turkeys I've ever eaten. And, because it was just the three of us -- and one of us is a two-year-old -- we have tons of leftovers. Yes. And it may have gone well, and not been as difficult as I imagined it would be, but I was still confined to the kitchen all day. And the last hour was a mad dash to make sure everything came out at roughly the same time. The point I'm trying to make here is that I felt the need to indulge myself. I'd suggested renting a movie, but my wife didn't feel up to it.

So I wrote. I made a public statement on this forum two days ago that I would be taking Wednesday and Thursday off from writing. That, I can now tell you, was a lie. I am apparently in a place where writing is something I do when I want to treat myself. Who knew I'd ever get there? I feel like mI'm a long ways from the days when staring at the blank screen would just about reduce me to tears. And I may very well get back there again, but I'm enjoying it while I'm able.

I just wrote 1,000+ words on the short story I'm writing. I'd been experiencing some frustration with this story. I had a beginning I liked, and I was pretty sure I knew where I wanted it to end up. It was that pesky middle part that I couldn't figure out. Well, t seems to be coming together now. Hopefully I'll wrap it up the first draft over the weekend.

And now I'll give myself another Thanksgiving present and send myself to bed.

That photo, by the way, was taken by my wife and is of my son regarding the thing that kept his dad from playing with him all day long.

Here are today's numbers:

Daily word count: 1,073 (all on the short story)

Monthly word count: 26,508 (21,419 novel, 5,089 story)

Novel word count: 92,923 (unchanged)