Have settled in, in Santa Fe. They got a recent heavy snow, which has been steadily melting in the bright sunshine. But it’s rather lovely at the moment, creating snow and ice effects all around.
I’m not really a Southwest girl generally, but the composition of sunny bright blue sky, dark evergreens, adobe buildings and ice / snow is quite pleasing.
I’m not trying to write yet — I always need a day or so to decompress from my regular life when I do writing retreats, and this one is complicated by my being on school board and therefore fielding questions today from community members about what’s happening with the schools and closures (see previous post). I didn’t feel like I could just go offline for a week with all this going down.
I also have some cooking to do — I offered to cook dinner for George and his minions and all of their partners and some of the other local SF/F crowd he invited; when you add in me, Alex, and Susan (who are writing retreating with me), it ends up about 25 people.
But not to worry — I cooked at least half the dinner in advance and brought it with me (packed in Ziplocs, frozen, double-bagged, filling a suitcase, the way my relatives taught me).
And I’ll have lots of hands to help with the rest of the cooking tomorrow afternoon. That’ll be fun, and I’m hoping to write in the morning too. We’ll see. For now, I’m resting and reading — Amy Thielen’s food memoir, _Give a Girl a Knife_.
