OK. Taking deep breaths. Trying to think rationally. Considering cheating on the diet in hopes that not having the hunger shakes will enable me to actually think rationally.

Okay, here's my stab at the drabble.

Number Four

Carrie loved the way the sand would pull away from under her feet as the waves receded. It felt like the sand pulled all the tension out of her body and banished it far into the depths. The water was cool this time of year and the sun teased her with the promise of warmer days, but that didn't matter. The salty smell of the water and the caw of the seagulls always made her feel warm. She came back here when she needed to feel more centered, more herself. The ocean was the calm in the storm of her life.

Oooh, ChiKat, I like that. It's very much how I feel about the ocean.

All three of those were excellent - but Anne's really talked to me. Been there, done that, thrown my hands up in despair: "Tekla! You freak! Are you being less territorial than I am? You're a damned cat!"

Susan, a glimpse of the obvious here, sweetie: the freakout gains you nothing except heartburn. All publishing is a crapshoot. You can't predict a damned thing. If you love the book, then finish the thing and go from there. Why flip out over stuff you can't possibly control or even have an immediate effect on? That''ll just distract you from your writing.

And another one.

Picture #5.

More Than Money

We’d been in that house twenty-five years on our anniversary. Our parents bought it for us as a wedding present. How they did it we didn’t know, but it gave us the freedom to build our lives up without the worry of a mortgage. Calvin earned his accounting degree in night school at that table. Only after twenty-five years, did we realize that the house had come with a mortgage. With every child’s birth, every graduation, every marriage, we were putting more of our hearts into our home. It wasn’t a mortgage paid with money, it was paid with love.

Home

The aeroplane unfurls its door into stairs with the magic inherent in coming home. The heavy tropical air waits patiently outside, warming the chill off the metal tube, and arranging a welcoming bouquet.

Humidity threatens, but never truly makes good, defeated at each turn by an ocean that's never very far. Salt breezes come in from the north, riding the sussurus of the waves. They meet and mix with the slow sounds and smells of the city, food and smoke and animals. Music binds it all together.

In Jamaica someone is always smiling, and a radio is always on.

(Better now. I just wish I'd understood that I was primarily having a blood sugar freakout and started out by getting something to eat instead of publicly panicking over stupid shit first.)

I just wish I'd understood that I was primarily having a blood sugar freakout

You didn't sign any documents, you didn't sell Annabel to Gypsies, you didn't lob heavy objects at passing strangers, you didn't give your credit card information to somebody on the phone. It's cool.

Heh. what connie said.

Ouch. Writing muscles creaky. Pared it way down, ran way over anyway. Not terribly fond of it, but if I don't start somewhere I'll never start writing again at all. Home.

The summer house used to sit alone at the edge of the Keys in a wilderness of weeds and wildflowers and grasshoppers snapping up into your face all summer long, glittering snowdrifts all winter: a ten-minute bike ride into town. Now it’s boxed in by condos, a 25-minute drive from the woods.

Even so hemmed in, the grasshoppers snap up all summer; the snow glares you blind all winter. Inside are Disney books and ragtime records, decades-old menus and birthday cards, a college portrait of the flowerchild who became my mournful Christian aunt, a Little Mermaid from Copenhagen. Outside are the plants at the waterline, thriving on Mem’s ashes. Outside is where Jack’s ashes will soon join hers.

No one lives here. We all live here.