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There is a doom upon you, but of what sort I know not.

Completely unrelated: When my daughter was younger and I tried to share my copious experience in an effort to stop her from making the same butthead mistakes I did, she didn’t exactly cover her ears. What she did, instead, was declaim loudly, “Doomed! I’m doomed!”

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This orange came off my husband’s tree. Isn’t this the most disgusting orange you’ve ever seen? I have a few thoughts on what it looks like, but I’ll let you pretend you’re a Muppet Baby and use your imagination.

I work from sentence to sentence. The first sentence of a chapter sets the tone and tells me where to go. I’m lost until that first sentence is hammered out.

The clean smell of Nolfetul floated across the water. The breeze carried the scents of spices and fruits neglected in Bafguva, and of creature wastes untainted by flesh products. Jazlin luxuriated in the

The scent of Nolfetul floated across the water. For so long Jazlin had missed these smells, the spices and fruits not cultivated in Bafguva, creature wastes untainted by flesh products

The scent of Nolfetul floated across the water. Jazlin luxuriated in the smells of spices and fruits unknown in Bafguva, of creature wastes untainted by flesh products.

The crisp scent of Nolfetul — long-missed spices and fruits, untainted creature wastes–floated across the water. Jazlin would know that smell had

Okay, that wasn’t the right starting place.

The river tugged them downstream. Jazlin worked the footcrank, as Helfijek commanded, while at the tiller Helfijek guided the boat toward the riverbank.

The river tugged them downstream. Jazlin worked the footcrank steadily while Helfijek guided the tiller, and they

Jazlin worked the footcrank steadily, yet still the river tugged them downstream.

You know, we’ve already done enough water stuff in this manuscript — let’s start even later. (Us = the characters and me.)

Jazlin slipped over the boat’s side into the chest-deep water and caught the painter that Helfijek tossed

Now I think I’ve got a handle on it.

“Silence, traitor! Death is your doom now.”

And this one:

“I have a doom laid on me, a doom that concerns us all, and I seek your help.”

I bought this chair in a Goodwill thrift shop circa 1979. It was covered in nubby pink fabric woven with metallic silver threads. The fabric was worn so thin in places that the white stuffing showed. I made a temporary cover out of some lovely fake leopard fur, and it matched our decor quite well while the children were in their feral stage. Later I had the chair recovered, as shown in the photo. But since the children moved out the chair has been sitting in an out-of-the-way corner of the living room, forlorn and forgotten.

It needs a new home, I thought, with someone who will treat it better than I have. Surprise — my daughter needed furniture to fill out her new apartment. A new home! Alas, not even a week and the chair was again crowded out by a couch. Here you see it relegated to temporary seating where visitors can remove their shoes. Sad, sad chair.

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And those are my stylish shoes in the lower right.