Notes from the Red Bird House

Five months from right now, I'll be on a plane to Copenhagen. Today, everywhere I went I saw Volvos. I still see this as a sign that I made the right decision. Of course, I've never doubted myself on this one. Not once. Because really, what could be more right than scratching something off your Bucket List? Many people are aghast that I'm going alone. I haven't traveled abroad since I was in high school and that was with a group of tennis players. Everything was set out for us. All I had to do was follow the group and show up in the right place at the right time. This trip will be completely different. It'll all be on me. I'll have to get myself from A to B and do all the navigation in between. 100% of my time will be spent in unfamiliar surroundings while trying to communicate in a language I can barely speak. All that said, "alone" is my favorite state of being, so why wouldn't I go alone?  It sure sounds like a perfect idea sitting at Lola S

"At the tennis courts, two young women were in the middle of a match,  playing well, their pleated skirts flying as they raced after the ball." That one sentence changed my life. More to the point, it changed the direction of my art. I doubt the author - Sarah Waters - even remembers writing the words. They describe a scene in a park as observed by the two protagonists in her novel, The Paying Guests . I focused on them because of tennis (obviously) but within my imagination something came to life. The two women playing became Anna and Adah, who had a story all of their own, a story I had to tell.  I was at the inevitable low point that follows the completion of a major project. I'd finished my first novel and, because I was steadfastly procrastinating its editing, I re-started work on another novel project I'd left unfinished while in grad school. After a couple weeks miserably slogging and fighting my way toward an ending, I realized I was deadlocked. I

I recently started rowing. Like at the gym, not on a lake. I don't know why I started up. I'd done a little in the past, but rowing never seemed to burn enough calories for me. Historically, I have worked out purely for the caloric deficit it creates. Burn a paltry amount of calories for the time spent? Yeah, no. I'm not going to do it. Or rather, I never would do it. Then I hurt my elbow and went into rehab. And I was stocking freight at night. I started going to the gym to "warm up" for my shift and thought rowing might accomplish a couple things - (1) a full body warm-up and (2) get the elbow ready for action. It seemed to work great. Then I quit the night freight thing and kept rowing. I know. It makes no sense. Other than I actually like rowing, crappy calorie burn aside. As crazy as it may sound, my body is changing. My arms, even though the elbow prevents a lot of lifting, are showing decent definition. And my legs... My upper hamstrings and gluts seem