Not only is tax season in full swing, but I've been plane-hopping to Boston to stay with my challenging mother while my father is in the hospital and rehab. He's doing fine. But my mother can't stay alone and she hates the 24 hour aides. So we've been taking turns spending a few days there. I have the last shift from Thurs to Sun of this week. She's a challenge because you never know when she'll have a good day and all her cleverness is in full swing and when she'll have a bad day and fold into herself for hours at a time. She seems quite chipper that my father is on the mend and in the same facility so she can spend time with him. So chipper that she has figured out how to disarm the alarm on their apt door and get out...while her designated family member is sleeping, of course. The aides aren't allowed to sleep and for good reason, obviously.

So I went swinging up to Boston for 3 days, came back for 2 days, and then went to the IMP workshop in Blue Bell, PA for 3 days. There were six of us, but apparently that's enough creative critical mass to make my brain explode. I have 3 nights back home and I'm off to Boston again to babysit my mother through the weekend.

Oh, what? Oh. Yes. Well, I seem to make my own head explode, it isn't anyone's fault but mine. I have to process what was said. But I wanted a workshop where I would work hard and I got one. Mouse King's Revenge has some issues for new readers of the series and while I'm touchier than my cat Goliath about my fairies, nonetheless they told me what I needed to know about what confused them. Most of it would seem to be easy to fix, though I seem to need to add 2 more scenes. As the story is currently sitting at 7.5k, it's going to be longer than the traditional short story unless my big sister Anne can point out places where I can cut and pick up word count (which she claims she can). I keep running Rich Chwedyk's stories through my head and trying to figure out just how much he tells me of what happened in other stories with each new one about his dinosaurs. And he works at novella length, which gives him more room to work. So maybe a story that is so dependent on the two stories that came before simply *has* to have a higher word count. After all, the other two push up close to 7k.

That's where things stand. I still have to go back and work on Mouse King's Tail. But first I need to get through the weekend in Boston and put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Frog Out

PS: It snowed overnight and the chickens are having none of it.