When you get to be my age, it’s amazing what an almost fourteen hour trip to Virginia, in steady rain, in a rental car with tires in need of replacement, with GPS directions that you find out are not taking you the way you think you are going until it’s too late to change direction, can do to you the next day. And I was only the passenger. The driver started the trip at six a.m. getting thrown to the ground after being hit in the head by the garage door on its downward trajectory. I think you may get the picture why this post will be short and disjointed!

The good news is we made it to Virginia safe and sound, our suitcases already unpacked and clothes hung in the closets with care, the driver still lively and quick. The last leg of our journey to Arizona will be by sleigh, er, airplane, that is.

I survived, and won, NaNoWriMo, with time to spare but not a creative thought lurking anywhere. I’ve printed my 2014 and 2015 winning submissions and lugged them with my original printed book (“Anne”) with a plan to ignore the Arizona sunshine this winter and return home with a completed draft comprised of an amalgamation of all three novels. We shall see…

Over a year ago I wrote a short story that

Christmas at the Omni Mount Washington Resort

partially is set in my daughter’s house in Virginia. (You may recall the experiment with the weed whacker string.) Another unfinished work. As I walked into her garage last night, after the exhausting trip from New Hampshire, the story engulfed me, reminding me of characters and story lines left hanging, like stockings hung on the mantle filled with coal. They deserve better than that. I just may finish that story this trip.

And Santa just may bring me everything on my list.