I've decided to start a league of lizards and small desert birds, joined together, in the full twilight of righteousness, waging an eternal battle against the evil forces of Daylight Savings Time.

Elaine will fly on an airplane for her first time today. Myself, I've avoided flying for about five years now, but this should be a pretty easy flight: Seattle to San Jose. And, thankfully, Daniel was able to change our seats around last minute, so we can all sit together. It may be a challenge keeping her happy for the full flight, but I've done what I can with packing toys. For one, she'll get a plush Ernie doll when we get to the plane.

Elaine's been extremely enamored of Ernie since my dad introduced her to youtube videos of classic Seseame Street last week. Kermit's pretty good -- but Ernie is her favorite. Yesterday, she kept trying to share her breakfast with him. She'd hold her toast out to my computer screen and say, "Eee!" and "Shaa!" Meaning, "Ernie" and "share." She also went around finding rubber ducks and offering them to the alter of my monitor.

I have a hundred marked up pages of "Otters In Space" to work through, but, instead, I've been spending all my free time on a short story. There's something about the returning sunshine that always make me want to write new things. I've heard a lot of people say that the winters in Seattle are good for creativity -- there's nothing to do but stay home and write. I haven't found that for myself. The darkness makes me hibernate, creatively. Editing is okay, but I just don't feel like writing new things when the sun goes down at 4:30, and it probably spent the three hours it was actually in the sky behind clouds anyway.

Handfuls of sand = happiness. Or so I'm told. Not with words, though. Elaine was too busy to speak, trying to move the entire park's worth of sand, handful by handful, into her stroller. She thought we should bring it all home with us.

It's very freeing to be between drafts for editing "Otters In Space." For the last half year or so, I've felt like any free time I have time to work on my fiction, I should spend editing. But, now, I'm waiting for Daniel to read and comment on the current draft, so... I'm free to work on short stories or whatever other project I want. Of course, this will only last for the next several days, as Daniel plans on reading draft three while he's in Florida. So, once he gets back, it'll be polish, polish, polish and then research packaging it up to send to publishers or agents.

But, for now... I'm free! Free!

And, to that end (the end of exercising my freedom), I've decided to take part in a current internet meme. Thus: 25 things...

1. I spent my evening dancing to the Rolling Stones with my daughter and sister.
2. When I go for too long without writing fiction, I actually start getting headaches.
3. Sometimes I'm jealous of my cats when they're hanging out together on a sunny windowsill. I think it would be nice to be a cat and join them.
4. The first time I realized that I would rather have a fruit smoothy than a chocolate milkshake was a moment of true identity crisis for me. Fruit over chocolate? Seriously?
5. I have too many animals I like too much to pick an all-time favorite. Over the years, though, my favorites have tended to include otters, cats, octopi, Utahraptors and, most recently, giraffes.
6. I find it strange to count a non-carnivorous, non-vicious type of animal (namely giraffe) among my favorites.
7. Watching an entire season of Stargate (or, better yet, Farscape) in one week feels a little like having my brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. This is a sensation I kind of crave.
8. I'm very, very glad that my daughter is not at all shy.
9. I'm actually a luddite. Ironic, no?
10. My favorite part of the week is my daughter's music class.
11. I listen to music as I fall asleep. In high school, it was Brian Wilson. In college, the soundtrack to Camelot. Now, James Marsters.
12. My imaginary friend from childhood still visits me, though not as often as he used to. And, generally, he doesn't stay very long.
13. I picked out the name for my first dog, Patrick, ten years before getting him. And, though I don't know when I'll get him yet, I've already named the next one.
14. My favorite part of Daniel's and my wedding was the processional music: the theme from Jurassic Park. It makes a great processional.
15. If I didn't have a cat who would eat them, I would have Jade trees in my house.
16. It makes me happy that, according to at least one source, my hair is essentially a shade of green to people who are red/green color blind. This seems right.
17. I like to play silly mind games like "which actor would play me in a movie?" or "what kind of car would my pet drive?"
18. My husband is practicing the guitar chords for a song he wrote about my sister right now. It's an incredibly pleasant sound.
19. I've managed to keep my pet betta fish alive for an entire month. Things looked really dicey for him at first, but now he's going strong.
20. I will be really surprised if I agree with the people who like Babylon 5 better than Deep Space Nine after I watch it. However, I've been surprised before.
21. I started wearing baseball caps in college to make me feel anonymous. Now I wear them to feel more individual.
22. I miss the intensity of my imagination as a child.
23. I'm looking forward to finding out my daughter's favorite color, assuming she has one.
24. My favorite color for flowers is yellow.
25. Daffodils are my favorite flower, and my favorite poem, William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," is almost certainly responsible for this.

Red bell peppers make a good substitute for tomatoes, if you're out of them, in a BLT. They give the sandwich a kind of spicy taste.

Draft three done!