Much excitement...and company...over the weekend to celebrate grandson Grey's 13th birthday here at the farm.  His Uncle Jon, an MD, gave him a skeleton. Now what boy wouldn't love to have that?! Bucky, as he is named, is currently sitting in a chair, legs crossed in a yoga position, in my studio.

But here he is on a rainy weekend afternoon:

(Yes, he does have some broken ribs. No, we didn't do it.)

But now the kids are gone (Bucky remains. he will live here. They are planning to put him, covered with spray-on cobwebs, perhaps chained to the wall by handcuffs, in the basement root cellar) and it is chilly and rainy, a good day for work. I have started revisions on the yet-un-named Book IV which will turn The Giver Trilogy into a Quartet.

As a distraction from work, I am playing three separate Scrabble games on my iPhone, which is here beside my laptop. I justify this by the fact that it is word-related, therefore vaguely literary and inspirational. And I am playing with three somewhat literary friends---does that make it better? Upgrade it from just mindless fun? Guess not.

Big item on this week's local police blotter: "Young girl hissed at by raccoon."    Monday, on my way to the bank, a deer and fawn bounded across the road in front of my car....(no danger; I was going slowly; they continued into the woods unscathed)....so you can see that here in Maine it is a hotbed of exciting mammal activity. You would not know it by my own two, both snoozing at the moment.

My current guest....(another writer; she is in a distant room, working)....brought me on DVD three seasons of "Slings and Arrows," a show I'd never seen. So far we have watched the first two and I am hooked.  Last time this same guest visited, a year ago, she brought me "Dexter" and it was too scary for me to watch alone. But this one will suit me just fine. And I can knit or play Scrabble while watching.

Okay, back to work now. I need this done by August 25th, when new guests arrive, and after that I head back home and from there to San Francisco. So this is my uninterrupted time, these two weeks. Better make the most of them.