Blog Entry: Friends, Moondust, and Short Stories
Oof. MrD has been sick again this past week - a throat infection that started about three days after the chest infection went away, and which requires a whole new round of disgusting antibiotics to be forced down him four times a day - so we’ve all been pretty exhausted. Then, yesterday, I woke up with an ominous, thick-headed feeling, and today I officially have a Cold From Hell.
So in other words, I am very tempted to spend this whole entry whining, because colds always make me feel very, very sorry for myself! But I will take pity on you guys and restrain myself. Instead, I’m going to focus on the good stuff that’s happened in the last few days.
First, our friend Tricia drove four hours roundtrip to help us clean out our old house after we moved out, AND she brought homemade soup for us to eat after she’d gone. That was way beyond the call of friendship, and it made such a huge difference to us. (The soup was delicious, too.) Thank you sooooo much, Trish!
Second, I’m reading a really fascinating book right now: Moon Dust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth, by Andrew Smith. It’s about the twelve men who walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972 - still the only twelve men in history to have done it - and how they spent the rest of their lives afterwards.
It’s got elements of a history book to it - I love the intensity and vividness of his descriptions of the actual moon-walking experiences - and elements of biography, too. It’s mostly written like a memoir, though, with the focus on Smith’s own personal experience of meeting with the moonwalkers and finding out their stories. I’ve never been particularly interested in the history of the space program, but I’m finding this book incredibly compelling, and it’s really inspiring me to find out more about the whole subject.
Lastly, I just got an invitation to a very cool-sounding anthology, so this morning I started a brand-new short story. It’s a bit different from any of the stories I’ve written in the last year or so, so it feels like it’s stretching me in really good, creative directions. Working on it reminds me of Ursula LeGuin’s theory that what everyone in life is really looking for, deep down, is work-play - the kind of satisfying, challenging work that feels like playing.
It’s the kind of work I love to do…even when I do have to sniffle and gulp down gallons of tea as I do it.