I just finished writing Year of the Dog ! It had a massive plot hole that I had to fix which turned out to be more work than I expected. Here’s a snippet: “Hey, Auntie Nell.” He wrapped his arms around her, bussing her on the cheek and breathing in pikake flowers and shortbread cookies. And suddenly he was nine years old again, and her solid presence had made his chaotic world stable once more. “What are you doing here?” He usually took her to dinner on Wednesday nights, but today was Tuesday. The edges of her smile faltered a little before brightening right back up again. “What, I can’t visit my nephew?” She angled around him to enter his home. “Is this your new house? Looks lovely.” Which was a blatant lie, because the fixer-upper was barely livable, much less acceptable to a neat-freak like his aunt. She also left four matching pink and purple floral suitcases on the stoop behind her. Only then did Ashwin notice the cab driver standing slightly to the side of the walkway. “Can ...
I know that sounds weird but I’ve discovered it’s totally true. For the past couple days I’ve been closely monitoring how I eat. I hadn’t realized before I started this monitoring that I tend to eat whatever food I see. If there is a bag of almonds on the kitchen counter and I go into the kitchen to get some tea, I’ll eat an almond or two without even thinking about it. Isn’t that awful??? So now that I’m trying to keep within my calorie range per day, I’m paying stricter attention to what I put in my mouth. Stopping the random grazing is not as hard as exercising self-discipline during mealtimes. I’ve always loved the book French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano because she teaches you how to be more thoughtful about eating--how to enjoy eating as pleasure without eating large portions. I had fallen out of that habit, so I started reading the book again to help me limit my portion sizes at mealtimes. I won’t say my mealtimes have been easy, but they haven’t been horri...