Camping: Earthlings Go Home.

Omaha and I want our kidneys back. We can't wait to get home and have a bed that won't deflate on us. We ate cereal, and then spent the time afterward breaking down the campsite. Fold up the sleeping bags and bedrolls, put away everything in a box, fold up the tent. It was a ton of work.

After that, we went to a nearby lake that was renting boats, and I'm afraid that the week had caught up to me. We rented a paddle boat and paddled across the lake and back. It was a lovely day, but being on a paddle boat was completely different from the miles of hiking we'd done, and long before we'd gotten back I was whiny and my knees were killing me. The girls fed ducks along the lakeside from bags of cracked corn the boat rental place was selling. Omaha and I fell off our diets hard with a newfound appreciation for Pepsi.

We drove back to Seattle. The drive was quite nice and, in keeping with the tradition of the previous two years, we, dirty, smelly, dusty and exhausted, stopped by The Claimjumper and had a properly cooked meal. We ate too much, then drove home, where we enjoyed a long, hot, proper shower. We changed the bedsheets, greeted the cat, put in two loads of laundry and then collapsed into our fresh, clean beds.

Getting past chapter one: Why a story explodes.

As is typical of my writing habits, Princess Jera wouldn't leave me alone so I wrote her first chapter, and after two days ended up with 5,414 words. Not too bad. Two somewhat innocuous sex scenes (as this is in my fantasy pornoverse) that Jera and consequently the reader get to read about.

Which puts my story in the same category as that of the first Aimee novel: two stories told side-by-side, in the past a rise from crisis to victory, in the present a slow descent into horror. In this case, the scenarios are reversed: the story in the past is the slow descent into horror, the story in the present is one of discovery followed by crisis, but there is the twist: the story in the past has no happy ending. It is an object lesson from which Jera must learn what *not to do* to survive her own predicament which, in chapter one, she barely perceives or understands.

I wrote enough to allow me set the story aside, at least for a while. But as I wrote it, I realized that I had a problem: the story in the past is *easy*. It is not so easy to write Jera's story, because as a Princess of a major empire she has courtiers, hangers-on, her own proto-court wagering on her ascending to the throne, overseers to guard her purity, armsmen to protect her from the commoners, teachers and instructors, all of whom encroach on her privacy. There's also the daily, weekly, and seasonal responsibilities of a princess, with its attendent religious duties, festivals and appearances, not to mention that in two years the yentas will be getting their knives out for one another over Jera's courting-- and as rumors of Jera's newfound talents break out, things are gonna get ugly.

I just can't yet imagine how ugly.

This is why a lot of people "who want to write" stop at chapter one. The responsibility a writer has to the reader-- to tell a good story-- and to the characters-- to get it right-- becomes overwhelming.

One of my favorite Onion pieces:

Clinton Calls for National Week Off To Get Shit Together

"My fellow Americans," Clinton said in his weekly radio address, "as your president, I have had a great many things to deal with during my time in office: welfare reform, the '96 election, Bosnia, fundraising scandals-- you name it. As a result, a lot of shit has piled up that I have not had the chance to take care of."

"I am certain," Clinton told the American people during the radio address, "that you, too, have a great deal of shit piling up. Now more than ever, we, as a nation and a people, need this time off to finally deal with all the shit we've let slide."

Gods, I totally need this holiday. The article mentioned that the "National Week Off" would be the third week in October. I'm totally ready to call that Discardia 2006 week, actually take it off, and try and get my shit together.

We need rain. Blackberries need love.

This Sunday, Omaha went shopping over at the Costco by Southcenter, where there's a pretty nature-and-bicycle path that runs along the Green River, and while she was shopping I took the girls up thataway. Toward the end of the path there's a parcourse (apparently, this is a real word for an "public exercise installation) and the girls love playing on the balance beam and seeing if they can keep up with me on the push-ups.

It has been brutally hot, and as we walked past King Country River Overflow Station #17, we started to pass by the blackberry bushes that are much in abundance and started to see some actual black. Many were actually starting to lose their gloss, meaning that they were ripe and ready to drop, but they were small, meaning they didn't have enough water.

On closer inspection, I saw that their pain was even greater than I thought. Whole bushes were dessicated and dying, some bushes had switched to the "throw out as many vines as possible" strategy, and the rest had started the ripening process early in the hopes of getting some seeds on the ground soon.

We need some rain soon so the blackberries can swell out their fruit, followed by a few more days of sun to bring the ripening process to full fruition, and we can have a proper suburban harvest. Otherwise, pickings will be slim this year.