Post-Birthday Assessment

Last night’s birthday dinner was not the Bar-B-Q of my wishes, but I wore shorts and a t-shirt as we sat, dining alfresco, enjoying the Tuesday night special of liver and onions at Tanner’s Terrace on the Green, overlooking the Granada Golf Course.

Then, we came home and watched the recorded episode of Gracepoint, based on BBC’s Broadchurch.  Though I much prefer Broadchurch, Gracepoint is grabbing me; after watching just the previews of the first show, I had decided it was not going to be worth watching.  I was wrong.

I should watch more recorded television, but it’s tough to maintain my interest.  I no longer like television, even good television, as I once did.  And I’m finding shows I wanted to record, even those I once liked, have not retained their appeal.

Now, as I type this, I hear creatures of some kind scurrying across the metal roof of the screened-in porch.  For inexplicable reasons, hearing those sounds makes me think of two vanity Arkansas license plates I saw today; I do not recall the vanity message, only the imprinted “choose life” message.  My instant thought was to wish for a vanity plate imprinted with “support recreational abortion” imprinted on it, just to piss them off.  Do the imbeciles who wish to withhold a woman’s right to choose not understand that abortion is not something that’s hoped for, sought after, valued as a prize but, rather, the result of careful and often painful assessment?

I spent time this afternoon mapping out ideas for the first chapter of a novel I started writing recently.  The map is radically different from what I’d written; what I’d written now needs to conform to the map, not the other way around.

As for the birthday; I’d almost forgotten I had one scheduled.