I just accidentally deleted the blog entry I was trying to write. Not that it was very witty or insightful, but dammit, it was words and now I don't feel like writing them over. This leaves me with the option of communicating to the world in the blog equivalent to caveman grunts:

Short story stalled -- started a flash about a new character -- flash got away from me -- is it embarassing to admit that you misjudged a story so completely that a flash is now a freaking novel???

So progress for the marathon has been good. I've gotten almost 2500 words in the past 3 days, just not on the story I thought I was going to be writing. And I now have exactly one chapter of 4400 words (because I started a couple days before the marathon technically began) and absolutely no real idea of where this thing is headed.

I am not usually quite this organic. But I like the characters. And there are swords and capes, which are also good things.

To add more caveman grunts -- we sold the house in St. Louis, finally, but Fed-Ex delivered our check across the street to the dairy farm. Nobody pays attention to addresses out here. It was a good thing our neighbor came by tonight, because if it didn't get here tomorrow, I was going to have a heart attack. I'm sure they didn't know at the dairy farm how flipping much money they sat on for 2 or 3 days.

Sheesh.

Closing on our new house in less than a week... we went to the Methodist church in town here today, because I am starved for contact with people who do not shove their carts into me at Wal-Mart, and the Catholics aren't friendly here and the Quakers, who are friendly, are also all over the age of 60 and have no kids. When we mentioned where our new house was to the friendly people at the Methodist church, they acted as if we would never be back. The two towns are about 20 minutes apart, but you'd think one was on Mars, the other on Jupiter.

I don't get it.

I'm also not sure I got the church service. They had Communion today -- bread and grape juice -- and so much of the ceremony seemed to be lifted straight from the Catholic liturgy. Except I don't think I ought to say this aloud. Plus, the whole grape juice thing... not sure I get that either.

This is a problem for me, because I want a community, which the Methodists have, and seeing as it's a fairly liberal church, it synchs with a lot of my own rather liberal beliefs. But -- I'm still a lot of Catholic deep down.

It's all very confusing.