Fifth Saturday in Sabbatical

So the weather is sunny. It was a little cool in the middle of the week, briefly, (as you can see, my Uncle Michael & Gill felt the need for jackets, but actually the morning sun already had reached the high 60s by this time!) and now has warmed up again. Which is a shame. Because tomorrow I fly to Fort Wayne Indiana, where right now it is snowing!

This week always looked like it might be hard to fit much writing in. Firts there was flying back from DC on Monday (and that's the next picture - straight down the centre of Washington out of the plane window), then it was Gill (my sister)’s birthday on Wednesday, and my uncle Michael and his wife Margaret flew in on Wednesday evening as well for a few days. Then today I am meeting up with my good friend Chris Berryman who lives down the road in Orlando.

So given I am aiming at 20,000 words a week, somehow I have managed almost 18,000, and am now at a total of just over 95,000. Which is not quite the 100,000 that was my target for today at the beginning of all this, but close enough to say I’m still very much on track.

But are these words any good? What’s the point of just churning out words? Well, that’s the question. I guess in part I just have to get to the end of this and then bravely let one or two others have a look and see. I find that everything I have hoped for, all my organising and working out, the basic plotting of the whole thing if you will, is working perfectly. I am hitting all my targets. Getting to where I want to get when I want to get there. Saying what I want to say and occasionally finding myself laughing and crying along the way.

So I am enjoying the process of writing still, very much. And at almost 80% through now, at least I can say that I will most likely finish the first draft on time! Thank you for your prayers. This is being an amazing experience. Please pray on.

Family time this week has been great. To be here for Gill’s birthday was lovely. I took her out for lunch as she had the day off work. Ben, my nephew, had not bought her a card or gift I discovered the night before. So I took him out and we put that right with a bunch of flowers. I guess as it has always just been the two of them, there has never been anyone to tell him that he should buy his Mum a birthday gift: she is the one who buys everything for him. And when he went into her room in the morning and gave her the things, she was really amazed and touched.

Also, although you are getting ready for Mothers Day in the UK, it doesn’t happen here in the States until May. So Gill never gets a card to my Mum on time, and Mum always resigns herself to pulling out last year’s card. This year, she was feeling miserable because she felt that she would have to do it with my card as well. Ah, but I’d thought ahead and taken cards for all of us to sign over here, which I posted at the beginning of this week. Mum called yesterday, thrilled.

And an Aunty of mine, Joyce (see picture - at cousin Howard's wedding last October), is very ill in hospital in Manchester. Probably the closest member of the family outside the immediate parents/sister/nephew circle. Please pray for her; I hope to see her when I get home. She may not be there.

As will not Cleo, a member of St Catherine’s, who died this week. A wonderful lady of strength and courage, whose ever present smile hid constant pain, and who will be sorely missed by her very many friends. Rest in peace and rise in glory.