It’s very late, so this dispatch is going to be more fragmentary than most.

I spent the daylight part of the day outside with the horses. Everyone was either ridden or walked. I also did agility with the mares who picked up on doing what I was asking them to do really fast. And Shadow has learned a new trick. I tell her kiss the horse and she licks Tyra’s lips. Obviously, she’s a dog with too much time on her hands.

A very good thing for us all, me being outside from mid-morning to dusk, but I was neglectful of my inside duties.

Pete, good man that he is, he spent a large portion of his day putting the finishing touches on the Palmer Community Foundation grant.

Alys in the Big Box

We now have a saying around here: “Alys’s projects become Pete’s projects.” It does not seem to work the other way around. If, though, he produced a poem or short story, I would make content-related suggestions to him. I am at a loss when it comes to technical writing. The other day he had a term for a certain type of paragraph – substrata or something. I hadn’t a clue as to what this was, before or after he explained it to me. Hmm, I’d like to see him write a sestina.

So now there very well may be the Bright Lights Little Free Library Project. I am optimistic about this because we are asking for something specific, which are materials to build little libraries. This, I foresee, will be an offshoot of the Bright Lights Book Project, something that those who are enthused about will bring into fruition.

If I must, I will run around town stocking these boxes. If I must. The good thing is that having these boxes around will be saying to passerby that Palmer residents put a high value on literacy.

I came in near dark and then decided that I would submit The Books I Carried to the Alaska Daily News Creative Writing Contest. This is THE contest, the one every single writer and wannabee writer in Alaska enters. I don’t know of anyone who does not enter it. I would not be surprised if Pete hops on the bandwagon and submits a chapter from his chainsaw book.

So, do I stand a chance of having produced the winning essay? I say yes, I think I do. I did an amazing job of cutting out the chaff, cutting this down from 5,800 words to 5,000 words. I didn’t cut out much of the story, but I did eliminate extraneous words.

Most importantly, I took the initiative to do this. I could easily have blown this off and said it didn’t matter. No, instead I at the very last minute dug down deep and got it ready to go.

I did budget my time well in that I did get to spend time with my horses, in the daylight hours. But right now, at 11:46 p.m., I am paying the price. Pete is doing the animal chores and I suspect not very happy about this. Who can blame him?

I will put the chickens in their roost.

Next: 46. 2/15/21: Going Back in Time