With my daughter
and grandson here this week, I haven’t gotten much writing down, so I was
delighted this morning when an entire empty morning loomed before me. But when
I opened the file of the novel I’m working on, there was a lot missing.
Computer search followed, but I couldn’t find it. The most recent file was
dated a week ago, and yet I knew I had written the scene I was thinking of. Finally,
I decided I just had to bite the bullet and rewrite it. The words flowed
because I had the scene so clearly in mind, and eventually I convinced myself
that I never had written it, except in my head.
I wrote my daily
quote of a thousand words, which just about did the scene, saved it, and then
prepared to move on. But when I scrolled down, guess what I found? The original
version of the same scene. I thought I’d gained a thousand words today, but
when I erased the duplication, I was right back at the total I’d started the
day with. I’d essentially been treading water all day—no forward motion.
In a way, I was
relieved to know that I hadn’t closed the file without saving. That puzzled me,
because the computer doesn’t let you do that. I couldn’t believe I’d been so
careless as to click don’t save by mistake. I was fully prepared to think it
was something I’d done, and I guess in a way it was. Somehow a blank page had
snuck into the text between the previous day’s work and the missing text, so I
mistakenly thought I was at the end of what I’d written. Almost too confusing
to explain, but I guess all’s well that ends well. And in a week of lost days,
another doesn’t matter.
Meantime the
celebrations continue. I had a good, solitary lunch of leftovers. I’d planned
to fix the girls some Italian tuna sandwiches—tuna with pesto, since Megan
dislikes mayonnaise (who raised that kid?). But we have so much food left over
that it seemed silly to fix something new. And leftovers are so good.
Tonight, we went
to the Star Café, owned by good friends Don and Betty Boles. It’s sort of a family
place for us. Can’t beat their chicken-fried steak, and Betty had even baked a
cake that had cherry pie filling, crushed pineapple and chopped pecans.
Delicious! There’s something about going a place where you always have a good
time—you’re in a mind set to have a good time again, and we did. Lots of
hilarity. Good times.
Home to a neighbor’s
woes with the gas company, a wildly barking dog, and a vegetable salad to be
made so it would be marinating. Life goes on.
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