Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

I'm starting off the New Year with a very, very, very rough draft of my short story collection finally completed. The last story of the collection took me three years to write. I started over writing it four times as the first three attempts just didn't capture what I was hoping for. Months between starts and stops passed by. Then, recently, just before the end of the semester, as I was calculating grades for one of my classes, the way to write the story presented itself to me. I started writing it the first day of break.                                                                               Today, putting the last period in place on that story was one of the most satisfying feelings I've ever experienced. I still have a lot of rewriting to do to get everything right, I still ne...

My epic walk on Monday left me with a blister on each of my feet, both exactly in the same place near the heel. These aren't just run of the mill blisters; they're ginormous. The one on my right foot is the bigger of the two, and yesterday evening I was in some major pain. I've had blisters before, and none of them ever hurt like the one I have now. The slightest pressure on the skin near the blister was painful as well. I was fearing it was becoming infected. As soon as I got home (we were at football practice with my youngest), I dabbed triple antibiotic ointment on it and took a couple of pain relievers. An hour later, the pain was nearly gone. Today, the pain is there, but it's much less than what I was dealing with last evening. I've not had to take any pain relievers today, so hopefully whatever it was is on the mend. With it now being August--can you believe it?--the last couple of days I've been mulling over my goals for the summer. At this point, I...