ROW80 check-in from Padre Island

Did I remember that life is more convoluted on the road? There's the illusion when we leave home, that life becomes simpler. Commitments fall away. But the reverse can be true as we adapt to the new. Yes, I'm gaining distance, but the loss of the familiar can be an irritant as well. Where is the darn dustpan? Another trip to the Goodwill to replace essentials? And how many for dinner?

My update for ROW80 this week is very much pared down and will be kept to just these goals for the coming week.
1. Editing Rivers of Stone. No progress at all. 
2. Drafting a short story for The Mermaid Quilt. 1,130 words written.
3. Poets on the Page. Prompt this week: "I now see . . . " Poem written. Maybe I won't post as my poem is called 'Privacy.' Interesting that Rick Hanson's column this week was about the tension between intimacy and autonomy. He is much nicer than I am. More open. More forgiving. More trusting. 
4. Supporting online communities: ROW80 posts done! Reading what others have written for ROW80, POP, IWSG, WIPpet Weds. Just a few this week. Did I say the last four days have been complicated by a round trip to San Antonio (3 hours each way) and the Super Bowl (Broncos won!!!!!).
5. Decluttering e-mail <100? Oops. Should I try for <200?

Now for a snippet of my writing from this week for WIPpet Wednesday, kindly hosted by Emily Witt, Participants share a snippet somehow related to the date. Below find 11 lines (10 plus 2 for February and minus 1 for the year) from a short story that surprisingly turned dark. (Why, oh why don't I write humor?) The storyline: The narrator meets a woman on a beach who might be a mermaid; somehow they start talking about marriage. 

I thought about our marriage, now eleven years old. Tim had promised for life before, to someone else, and so had I. His marriage had faltered and ended, not without the requisite scars, something we didn’t talk of easily. Mine had simply ended with the death of my husband. 

When Tim and I recited our vows, I remember feeling a sense of impermanence, as if only today mattered. I shrugged. After all, I thought, who could read the future?

“I can,” the woman said. She raised her hand. “I can call the birds from the sky and your darkest nightmare from the sea. I can send this one away and bring Stuart back to you.”

A Writer Looks at Lionfish
seen at the Texas State Aquarium
(February 2016)

Start the rest of the week by checking in with other writers. Go HERE to see what ROW80 writers are up to and HERE for WIPpet writers. And may your week go well.