Destinations

The prompt for Sunday Scribblings this week is "Destinations." I love this word, and spent lunch poring over the new issue of National Geographic Explorer magazine dreaming of kayaking trips in Belize and stilt bungalows in Bora Bora. However, this year we will not be going anywhere exotic that I know of. There are some short trips planned to Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, for writery things like conferences, but no vacations. If I could go anywhere it would be India, perhaps on the first leg of my dream mango-tasting-tour of the tropics! (I will do that some day, I swear to you. Future memoir title: Mangoes & Me: One Woman's Attempt to Hog Every Mango on the Planet to Herself).

But seriously. There are two destinations I will be visiting VERY regularly, one with pleasure, the other not so much. The pleasure one is my writing room, pictured above and below. I am in it now, and I love it so much. When I'm actually using it rather than photographing it, the desk gets pulled over in front of the green bench. I like writing on a bench, so I can spread out reference books and notebooks beside me. I'm a dictionary junkie -- I love me a new weird word like "scutage" (tax paid in lieu of military service in feudal times) and "sideromancy" (divination by heated iron) and "helminthology" (the study of worms). I've been using the same dictionary since I was a travel book editor: the American Heritage, and it amazes me that I am still finding new words in it. And I love that "callipygian" is one of the guide words up in the corner. It's a good word to know, and when I was a bartender I actually won $20 because some dipstick bet me he could stump my vocabulary! (Okay, if you're too lazy to look it up, it means: having perfectly proportioned buttocks. hee hee!!)

We had the writing room remodeled this summer by our awesome contractor, Dave (whose wife is a Sunday Scribbler and has a blog here). Dave also built an adorable patio out the French doors, and a big patio out the main back door, and most recently, a new stair railing so that we wouldn't plunge to our deaths through the gaping hole in the floor. At least, that's what our mothers thought would happen, although we had been living with it for 6 years and gotten quite used to our gaping hole. It's amazing what you can get used to. We just found out Dave and his family are moving away. Dang! Our last contractor moved away too. Is it something we did?


And here are some writing room friends:

Now, the not so wonderful destination I must take myself off to more frequently this year is. . . the gym. Bluh. Went today and it was a ZOO. I deeply resent the gym, and I resent that I am not willowy, and that I am not someone who has to remember to feed themselves so they don't waste away to a size 0. Wah!

I wrote this the other day about a character, but it could as well be about me: "With a deep, visceral ache, she wished her true form might prove to be a sleek and shining one, like a stiletto blade slicing free of an ungainly sheath. Like a bird of prey losing its hatchling fluff to hunt, dagger-taloned and swift in cold, magnificent skies. That she might become something glittering, something startling, something dangerous."

Incidentally, I also resent that someone gave chocolate my phone number. It keeps calling me. And it shows up at the door in new and innovative and irresistable forms, like Lindt dark chocolate with intense pear? Um. . . Yum. Chocolate, please, forget about me. I know our love affair has been the stuff of legends, but I must go on and live my life without you. Or at least, with much less of you. We can't see each other every day. It isn't SANE! It isn't DECENT!

Whew. Sorry. Getting close to Big Monday. You know what that means? I have to eat all the chocolate in the house before then so I can start 2007 with a clean slate. Ah-ha-ha-ha-HA! Have a great weekend, folks!

P.S. I need to add, these photos would not have been possible without my awesome new camera. Yippee!