2006-12-16

This has been another in a string of incredible, edible days! It reached for 70 F today and nearly made it – 68 F! And the sunshine poured over everything like honey. After Morning Offering Jim put on his chef’s hat and produced the four entrée meats for our four Christmas Clan Gathering meals – a baked ham, a roast turkey, a salmon loaf and a big pan of apricot chicken. In the late afternoon, when the roasting was done and the turkey and ham cooled, he cut everything off the bone and froze the finished entrees. That’s a huge start on getting ready for the family onslaught on December 26th.

Meanwhile I worked on Steve M’s comments on Chapter Two of The Choice 101. As always they were most helpful. Steve has a way of trimming the fat from prose that is the best of dietary slimming - loss of verbal fat with retention of all the good stuff. His suggested changes are never about changing the meaning of a phrase, a sentence or a paragraph. The few times he seems to do that, I realize I have not expressed myself well enough for him to get my point, so even then, it is helpful in telling me to say this a different way. Usually his suggestions are a question – do you need this phrase; is it redundant? And usually, it is, by golly.

This work took my morning and the first part of my afternoon as well. At the end I spent an entirely frustrating and fruitless half hour trying to make some afterthoughts of Steve’s disappear, but each time I tried that, there went the entire Chapter Two! I finally gave it up and sent the Chapter Two back to Steve. He likes to look at the material a second time anyway, after I have run through his comments, just to snug up the fit. I figure he can also remove the afterthoughts safely, which is more than I can do!

I spent most of the rest of my work day catching up with personal friends, answering ancient e-mails which have escaped me till now. Am I caught up now? Not at all. But who is these day! We do what we can and call that good. At least I do!

Jim came in late from his hard, long afternoon of yard work – he had gone around the yard with a rake and worried out four garbage-can-fulls of leaves from our many plantings and borders – and he still had a bit more to do before he was through, so I came back up and started on editing last Sunday’s meditation, which Gary had just transcribed. I did not get that finished, but got a good start on it.

For the rest of the evening, we just enjoyed our bath and then the company, as Gary was home. We enjoyed the Gaia Meditation together, we me offering the ending prayer. Then it was a late supper together before Gary bade is good night, and Jim and I went up for a snuggle with the pussycats before bedtime at midnight.