Thanksgiving Weekend

Thanksgiving has been awesome. Much turkey (20 lb locally grown from Valley View Farms, brined. Cooke in 3 hours. What's up turkey? Why did people used to get up at 5 a.m. to put the turkey in the oven?), much pie (not enough sugar to compensate for roasted pumpkins), much stuffing (two kinds, cornbread and green chile and regular mushroom, onion, celery--thanks Mary Anne!) and possibly the best gravy ever (Thanks Grandma and mom for teaching me how to make gravy. If there were gravy-making contests, I'd enter). Besides food, we have gone on two bike rides (and I hope for a third today), cleaned the house, shopped for a mountain bike for Zoe, bought two (two! Christmas presents, none on Black Friday), eaten ramen noodles for lunch on Thanksgiving Day and sushi for dinner on Saturday. Erik's raking pine needles and putting away the outdoor furniture. But I've spent most of the weekend revising the nonfiction manuscript. It's due to the publishers on Wednesday. I'm freaking out. (I forgot there was sex in it. Sorry mom!). I'm reading Joni Trevis's "The Wet Collection" and Maggie Nelson's "Bluets" and hoping my book is as good (it's not like those books at all). I'm happy to find some common threads besides the purposefully constructing one. Lawn mowing mostly, but a recurring motif nonetheless. It is different publishing nonfiction in book form than in lit mags. I'll tell you who doesn't read lit mags. My mom or my mother-in-law. But they read books and this one has highly inappropriate sexually material. I cut some of it out but still. It's one of the points of the books (boundaries/dams/giving way/holding back) so most of it has stayed. I've also fixed most of the ridiculous phrasing and typos and possibly made some of the tangential metaphors clearer. I look forward to editorial feedback from the press. I want this book to be as good as I can make it, even if it freaks my mom out.