First things first: I wrote a piece for Mom.me about how I "inherited" Thanksgiving this year from my mother. Jesus, take the wheel!

You can find the first installment of this travel diary here.

Thursday night I slept just okay: it's hard for me to sleep in new places sometimes, but I felt well-rested in the morning.

In the morning, after making coffee, the five of us wrapped ourselves in blankets and jackets and long sweaters and sat on the porch with our coffee and inhaled the cold fresh smoky air: we all live in the city and so we relished the quiet and lack of anything to do that wasn't imposed upon us by anyone other than ourselves. We talked about Shel Silverstein and how creepy his author photo was and remembered some of our favorite or craziest fourth and fifth grade teachers and finally decided it was time to get to work.

I took a shower because I didn't get to do so before I left Chicago, and even though the name of the game was comfort and efficiency, if I'm more than 36 hours unwashed, it starts stressing me out, because I know it's only a matter of time until I have to take a shower. Wendy showered before I did, and so I got to eyeball her different beauty products. Maybe it's just me, or because I don't have a sister or haven't had a lady roommate in years, but I find it fascinating to see what other women use in the shower or makeup bag (Wendy, I didn't touch your stuff, I promise!) What do they know that I don't? What do they need that I don't? It makes me think about them, making their own decisions in the beauty aisle, those private little choices that are ultimately probably meaningless but are informed by dozens of different biases and traditions and preferences.

There was a ladybug in the shower. When I was a kid I used to find ladybugs charming and symbols of good luck, but then one peed or pooped in my hand and wouldn't come off and since then I've found them creepy. I swished some water to wash it down the drain and then felt bad, because really, why did I need to do that? While I was drying my hair afterwards, I spotted another ladybug on the bathroom sink and decided that it was the previous ladybug, somehow surviving, and I needed to let it live its life.

I sat on the upstairs indoor patio and worked, listening to the wind in the grass and looking up to see blue jays landing on the trees in front of me and two fat Jack Russell terriers who were scooting around in the yard in the house next door. The porch is heated in this wonderful way where an iron stove will switch on to heat the room to the desired temperature and then switch off again once it's warm enough. The heat woke up a bunch of flies and ladybugs in the porch but they left me alone. There were shelves of books and board games against the wall, including Friends: The Trivia Game.

I'd set my timer to write for one hour straight, although not all the same thing--I'd start working on these journal entries you're reading here (which is probably why they seem overlong and overly detailed) and then get to actually working on my book, which included both its timeline and outline. I decided it was time to start giving my characters actual names, too, instead of placeholder names, but I didn't want to waste time overthinking it so I'd grab the issue of Chicago Life someone had left behind on the green-leather-covered card table I was working at and flip through and grab one (I conferred with the girls later who said that they spent more time on names than that; Wendy said that there's actually a name generator you can use for situations like this.) Then I read for an hour: I finished the food-themed New Yorker from a few weeks ago. Kelly and I discussed whether this article on a fancy artisan mindful butcher lady was meant to be comical or not.

Before lunch I drove to Sauk Village to get some supplies from the Piggly Wiggly (driving through the sadly-named down Plain on the way there.) It was wonderful driving: lots of windy roads with a 55 MPH speed limit going past barns and dairy farms with lots of cows to see. It made me wish Paul was there with me, and made me proud to be a Midwesterner. This time I listened to melancholy music and sang along which is better for the imagination than podcasts I think.

For lunch we had sandwiches made with cold cuts Wendy had bought, and chips and baby carrots and grapes. I had salami (which I love but know there is no excuse for except for the fact that it's delicious and salty and chewy) along with three different types of cheese. On wheat bread Wendy had procured from the Madison farmers market, it was one of the best sandwiches I'd ever made for myself.

Then Kelly and I went on a two-mile walk up the road to perk ourselves back up. We walked along the two-lane county road, against traffic, and when cars saw us they moved to the opposite lane and we exchanged waves. We talked about kids and husbands and the holidays and on the way back passed by some brown-and-white horses that wanted to say hi and probably wanted some treats (which we didn't have.) We took photos for our kids and I very briefly touched the nose of one of them, hoping he wouldn't bite my fingers off because I really needed them that weekend.

Back at the house, I wrote and read (this time Anna Quindlen's Still Life With Breadcrumbs, which Jen Lancaster had recommended to me when I told her what my book is about. I'm enjoying it so far, especially since it's about an artist who moves to the country for awhile, which is sort of like what I'm doing, (albeit a very brief while) and then wrote some more.  

Then we broke for the evening: I made Pasta San Tropez while Kate, Kelly and Wendy and I chatted in the kitchen (Molly had to leave sooner because she was going to a wedding in Minnesota.) I told them about my book, making them know I am aware that is is stupid and will never go anywhere, and they gave me some suggestions on raising the stakes.  We ate our pasta with salad and bread and took some tea and vanilla cookies up to the patio to sit by the fire and chat some more before bedtime.