Writing, writing and a little bit of running

Wow, what a week. Hope everyone had a great Christmas.


This guy has been spending time with me.

That would be my shaggy-haired son, C, who will soon be heading back up to Anchorage to stay with friends for the rest of his vacation break, sigh, sigh. I don't blame him: There's not much to do in Seward for a geeky college aged kid, bless his heart.

I've been writing, writing, writing like mad and finished (hooray!!) my novel edits, though I still have to format everything and correct all of my many, many typos and grammatical errors. I am exhausted, my head aches, I haven't been eating as healthy as I should and I have a pimple on my chin. But I. Am. Finished.

And that means that I didn't lose the bet and this woman will NOT be getting my money, hee, hee:

Writing is a horrible and terrible thing sometimes. I think it's like love. It can be glorious and heady, but it can also be agonizing and dreadful. I suppose this always happens whenever we open up our hearts and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. It is a beautiful and scary thing.

I haven't been running much distance-wise, since I've been putting all of my energy into writing, but I have been getting in shortist, 3-6 mile trail/road runs.

I ran past Mt. Marathon a couple of times. In five months I'll be staggering up and then hurling myself down three or four times a week, to train for mountain races. I cannot wait.

It looks so peaceful and quiet, doesn't it? I love this mountain, though I also fear it. It isn't gentle. It's fierce and ornery, which is why I so desire it. I've bled, sweated and cried on this mountain. Just thinking about it makes my blood pump faster.

I also took C to the Alaska SeaLife Center. We saw birds:

And Squirt the Octopus.

An octopus is a cool and odd thing, isn't it?



We also learned that jellyfish have no heart or brain. Huh? How can that be? But that's what it said:

My favorite part was watching the seals and sea lions swim around in their underground tanks. There's something magical about watching their bodies skim through the water; they look so free and happy. Here's a pic of one of the seals following the motion of a woman's hands:

As we were leaving the woman in the gift shop told us that the center is free to Alaska residents every Wednesday through winter. Bummer that we went on a Tuesday but hey, all of you Alaskans out there have no excuse to drive down and check it out. And when you do, please bring me a few bags of kitty litter, okay? It's ridiculously expensive down here.



And finally, I discovered a new writer and am totally and madly in love with this woman's words:

.

That would be Heather Brittain Bergstrom, and she just won first-place in Narrative's Fall Contest. Check out her work at Narrative magazine. She is the REAL thing. I wanted to be jealous but I swear, her words just swept me away. Amazing writer. I wanted to send her a message but could find neither a Facebook page or Website.

So hey Heather, if you're reading this, I love ya!

Running: Not enough but enough, you know?

Reading: Heather (of course), and also Peter C. brown's "The Fugitive Wife"