So over the weekend I successfully wrote my squeezed epic, titled "Another End of the Empire." I also revised it, and sent it off! 4,000 words, and so far I've written a story every week this year. (Of course, this year is only two weeks old; I do not expect this trend to necessarily continue.)

And, because working makes me want to work, I used my leftover energy on Sunday to revise my immensely problematic epic fantasy infidelity story, once titled "Over There, and Back Again," now more simply retitled "Over There." I sent it out to two or three places, oh, well over a year ago, and it got rejected, and I realized it was profoundly broken, made some stabs at revising it, and finally trunked it in frustration. I still liked it, though, so I dug it out, re-read it, pinpointed (I think) the problems, and ruthlessly fixed 'em. It went out in the mail, too, along with "Troublesolving." I now have four stories in circulation, up from one, which is movement in the right direction...

Sunday we also went to a park, and Heather and I took turns doing kid-watching-duty so she could write and I could shoot some baskets, including playing a bit with a kid who (thankfully) wasn't much better than me. A really nice weekend; art and family and good food, that's all I need in life. And we're having a ridiculous Summer in January streak of nice weather.

Yesterday, my day off, was fabulous. River took a nice long morning nap, so I got all my freelance work done without much difficulty. When he woke we went to the park (we regularly go to several parks, which we have our own nomenclature for: "The park on Park," "Bird park," "Lake park (or Library park)," etc.). This time we went to bird park, and, predictably, River pursued birds, without success. And tried to conquer the labyrinth. And sat in a pile of dead leaves for the longest time, crackling them and throwing them into the wind and trying to feed them to me and babbling to himself. A fine afternoon with our little naturalist.