62

One of the moments that makes me wonder how the hell did I ever get here is always on my birthday. Some numbers weigh lightly, others heavily, and still others not at all.

But today is sixty-two, and it’s a number that makes me pause to think. Sixty-two years. If you’d asked me that I thought I’d make it this far and be this active at 62, I probably wouldn’t have thought it possible. But here I am, sixty-two years old. I woke to an inch of snow outside, which faded throughout the sunny day until it’s mostly gone. I went out to the ranch and rode a snorty, grumpy Mocha who wanted to run and not come on the bit. No chance, little mare, not on my birthday, not without your snow shoes.

It seems like ages since I got back into riding regularly, first as a lesson rider, but then as an owner. Twenty-two years ago, I got dumped by a palomino paint gelding who allegedly never spooked but of course, when he did, it was on my fortieth birthday. So it’s been over twenty-two years since I got back on horseback, with no regrets.

I spent the rest of the day buying new glasses because my reading/computer glasses have broken and are now held together by tape. Literally broken, the temple shattering right at the hinge. And since these frames are over ten years old, and are from a line that my local optician doesn’t carry…nope. But the glasses I wear for bifocals have a distressing tendency to delaminate after a couple of months, so…I like them, and they’re getting made over into reading/computer glasses. I sucked it up and bought a frame that is supposed to be nearly indestructible (an important thing when doing the outdoor stuff I do).

Then, after riding, I wrote around 2000 words, bringing the book to about 93k. This time it’s not going to top out at 100k–just from the scenes I’ve roughly outlined, I’m guessing more like 110k words. We shall see.

Meanwhile, the earworm for the last section of Judgment is Bad Wolves’ cover of the Cranberries’ “Zombie.” Not so much for the words but for the mood evoked–Rekare is going to kick ass at this point, she has no more fucks to give, and what happens…happens. We shall see how it unfolds. I wrote four pages of outline last night.

And that is that. We did some getting out into the woods before the weather shuts things down over the last two days. I’ll blog about that later.

But for now…here I sit, now sixty-two, and I wonder what the hell is going to happen next. More books, I hope. Maybe another horse.

We shall see.