Of ChickenGurlZ & Bluestone Quarries

I went out early this morning to let the Chicken GurlZ out of their coop only to discover that I'd forgotten to go out & lock their coop up last night.

The coop was empty...

And I was seized with panic because if something happened to the Chicken GurlZ on my watch, I would never, ever forgive myself.

I stood in front of the copse of woods where the Chicken GurlZ like to hang out—the new GurlZ are still pretty shy—making desperate clucking noises and instantly, Black Chicken appeared, asking (in Chicken), All right, Human. Where are my tortillas?

And right behind her were the other two GurlZ.

So whew!

But I am still beating myself up over my carelessness.

The two new chickens are growing very fast, and Black Chicken is just over the moon with joy that she is once again the leader of her very own fowl posse.

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I've gotten into the habit of doing Remuneration and Work In Progress every other day because try as I may, the two types of writing use such different parts of the brain that I cannot easily go back & forth between them.

Yesterday was a WiP Day. I skipped around in Chapter 2: a couple of dense paragraphs about why it is so difficult for people to leave New York City, the all-important opening banter between Neal & Grazia.

I left off just as Neal & Grazia are taking off on an invigorating tromp through Kingston's Rondeout District. There's a lot of (no doubt) bor-rr-rrr-ing history of the D&H canal—well! Boring to most people, but interesting to me and therefore, interesting to Grazia. They tramp 19th century bluestone pavers past 19th century row houses with weird cast-iron lintels, and dilapidated hotels, and, of course, the old churches—since churches are the things that most often survive attempts at urban renewal.

Neal has to say, If we really hit it off, I'll take you to the bluestone quarry!

Grazia has to tell Neal about her online diary, which also has to be foreshadowed in Chapter 1—though I have taken the Vow not to do any rewriting at all until the First Draft is completely finished.

I am still trying to come up with Grazia's existential crisis in Chapter 3.

I am thinking it has to do with being an ER nurse in the time of COVID, using Public Policy Eleanor's anecdote about scoring N95 respirator masks on a street corner at 4 o'clock in the morning because Kaiser was too cheap to provide their medical staff with adequate personal protection.

Grazia can have a breakdown when a fifth person dies—amidst much gagging and horrific Cheynes-Stoking—in the ER waiting room because there's no place to segregate COVID positives.

I'm still not sure how Neal helps her resolve this existential crisis, but hopefully that will come to me—

And then it will be time to start Part 2, which will be first-person Daria!

The very first part of Chapter 4, Daria’s first point-of-view chapter, will be memories of Mexico City and the contrast-compare to San Francisco when she moves there at age 11.

About the only thing I know about Daria at this point is that Daria’s defining characteristic is that she thinks in several different languages simultaneously: The narrative voice in her mind is not English but is not Spanish and not French either. In other words, she speaks & understands a language nobody else does.

This will be difficult since I only speak English, but oh, well...

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And now it's time to Remunerate!