Prescript: I wrote the post below earlier today. I want to add some exciting news first that I was just emailed about. 

Many thanks to County Lines: A Literary Journal for accepting my poem “Knocking Stars Out of the Known Universe.” It will be published Dec. 8, 2025. I have been invited to read my poem at the launch party in North Carolina. Here’s hoping I make it there. Either way, it’s a lovely invitation, and I’m so pleased to have my work given a home. 

Now, WR has been pacing. 

She keeps checking the front stoop.

“I told you that it’s not coming until tomorrow.”

She’s looking for her new pink office chair. Pink! She was asked if she wanted to review it, and before I could tell her she has a perfectly comfy office chair, she said yes!

Mainly because it’s pink.

It does look cozy.

It’s supposed to have arms that fold down so you can let your pet jump up beside you. Oh, WR is thinking she can sit beside me when I write instead of on my shoulder. Got it.

Anyway, I assume it will be all assembly station over here tomorrow evening.

WR can’t wait to sit in it, especially if it spins.

She is now clamoring for breakfast.

We visited the orchard again this past week and bought apples for cooking. I’m going to make fried apples this morning, but I fear I will lose my Southern card because, sob, I’m not going to use butter. (I said I’d give this nondairy thing a good two months to see if it helps. WR is furious.)

I cannot resist sharing these apple photos. Sorry if it’s a lot. So much color and texture!

Now, do I go big and make a Southern breakfast and use the remaining time to write? (Creatives actually consider these things, don’t we? But don’t forget that cooking can be a creative act, loves.)

Specifically, do I make biscuits to make up for the fact that there won’t be any butter in the apples? And if I make biscuits, do I make fried potatoes, too? (I rarely make a “big breakfast.”) Sausage goes without saying. Or bacon.

Or do I use the time to write instead, here with Sam Cooke in my ears, me on the porch before the neighborhood wakes. 

No, I can’t make biscuits today. I was just picturing making them and all I can see is my dad rolling them out and cutting them out with a glass, dipping them in the melted lard and placing them in the pan side by side, like snug siblings after a bedtime story.

He was so happy when he was cooking, so proud to feed his family.

Add salt, Drema, sure, but not salt from tears. 

Ok, music off.

Those mini pumpkins pictured! I had to buy some of those, too. Although the proprietor asked why we weren’t getting fall things, too (besides the mini pumpkins) but the rule around here is no fall decorating until October, no Christmas decorations until late November. Around my birthday, but usually just past, preferably after Thanksgiving. Although I start listening to Christmas music on the sly in November.

Doesn’t mean I haven’t picked up a few fall decorations already.

I’m debating mums this year. TBH, they don’t have a great scent, they look like nature tossed in the leftovers from spring flowers and added corduroy to the mix. Color, sure, but even that is muted. 

(Well that’s more than I meant to say about mums. Mum’s the word. Oh god. Not a word pun. They’re the Keurig pod of language: single use, disposable. I’m not being fair about puns for personal reasons and I don’t care.)

On the writing front, I had another moment yesterday where I was like, how to poem?? Words are what? And I had to take a break.

WR danced for me, but I wasn’t having it. She pointed to the fact that my stressed hip seemed to be rebounding, which, yes, is cause to celebrate.

She reminded me that our cafe is going to start serving soup again on Oct. 1, and that we have lunch planned with a friend to celebrate that on Oct. 2! (It’s the little things.)

Then WR took our Kindle app and showed us what we are reading, as if that might be part of the problem.

“Drema. Oh, Drema. Why?” she said.

She pointed to a pop nonfic book whose entire message is in the title. Ok, there’s one tiny piece that isn’t. But if you put those two things together, book read.

I lowered my head. 

She shook hers. “We don’t need to figure anything out. We are a lighthouse, not a ship,” she said.

I wonder what she meant by that.

In any case, I understand what she’s saying about my reading. She means I need to read something real, something meaty. Preferably fiction. Something that gives me all the feels and thoughts and even fears and makes my whole self feel alive. That inspires me to write.

Someone once called me sensitive. I think I forgot to thank them for that. Labels are helpful when they explain you to yourself, especially when it names a quality others have maybe disliked about you.

Because God forbid we have a big feeling.

WR says sensitive is now her middle name, and she doesn’t hate it anymore. 

It’s almost 8 a.m. now, and am I really out here writing about apples and lighthouses and feelings and squirrels?

The squirrels have been thumping across the carport for some time. One is out front demolishing a baby sunflower stump she stole from the neighbors. 

There. Now I’ve written about squirrels. I swear they are endlessly entertaining and I could see myself writing a children’s book someday about them.

UPDATE: WR and I made fried apples out of the Melrose apples. They were so sweet they didn’t even need sugar. We also made fried potatoes and sausage patties: done and done. And just in time because Word Raccoon was feeling hangry and under caffeinated. 

WR stands upright. “You don’t want to encounter me when I’m like that, Babe. I’m more than half animal, and I might even turn my back on you at the water fountain in a futile attempt to shake loose the thing I’m not “supposed” to feel. But no matter how much I pretend differently, raccoons are gonna feel. I’m sensitive, remember?” 

Excuse us. I think it’s time for her nap. Or time for a snack. She’s delirious again, obviously.