You can find my previous logs on this trip here.

After breakfast, I got back to work on the patio, although the dry air was making my sinuses pretty unhappy. I found that warming up by working on something nonfiction, like this, helps me start writing easier than going right into something cold. My book has been a little bit slow going but it's been worthwhile work, just mapping things out and organizing them. There was one section that I realized I'd basically written twice and so I cut that out, which was painful--three pages of work--but I may re-integrate it later.

I read some more, took a shower, and then went back to work for one more hour until it was time for lunch. I made an amazingly rich grilled cheese sandwich laden with butter and mayo and cheese curds and havarti that was great when I was eating it but now it makes me kind of want to be sick just thinking about it. Over lunch we gossiped about a particular famous writer we had heard who loved to do a certain thing and who was bad at doing that certain thing (I'm being purposefully vague but if you knew what we were talking about you'd be shocked, saddened, intrigued and grossed out.)  We also discussed how successful the retreat had been thus far. I am pretty sure that if I were here in this house by myself I'd get much less work done because I'd be tempted to give myself "breaks" and check Facebook and stuff. I've done some Facebook and email but not much. In between my work segments it's just been nice to exchange a few words with my friends. We never put the TV on once so at mealtimes, in between gossip and true confessions, we really did talk about writing and its business. I'm sure I've gotten more information this weekend than some people pay for at writing conferences.

After lunch, we drove to a shrine we'd seen a sign for: Our Lady of the Fields. It was a beautiful but somewhat stressful drive for me (we took my car) because the roads had a lot of blind hills and drops where you weren't sure where they'd go or stop, but it was beautiful nonetheless. The shrine was located within a tiny wooden chapel. You can learn a bit more about it here. The last entry in the guest book had been a week earlier.

We explored the cemetery, which ranged from tiny gravestones whose names had been worn away to some that were only a few years old. Its inhabitants were mostly Irish and there were some headstones that featured a husband who was deceased with a name written and a birth date carved for his wife to join him eventually. It was chilly and windy and a little bit spooky but also beautiful, a nice resting place. It was an excursion that was great for the imagination: you can see a lot more photos of it here.

I got back to work for an hour and read for an hour, making it through my last New Yorker (I always feel so accomplished when I'm up to speed on them), including this disturbing story about sexual abuse in a Hasidic community. The sun was starting to set by then and despite fortifying myself with Diet Coke and cheddar popcorn, I started feeling oogy, so I took a little nap. Afterwards, I forced myself to get through one more book section so I could feel like I had earned my break for the rest of the night.

Kate made delicious spinach lasagna roll ups and we drank wine in the kitchen and talked about acquiring an agent and what Melissa Bell has been up to and then birth control and sex, so I guess it got less serious as it went. We polished off the cheese curds I bought at the Piggly Wiggly. I FaceTimed with Steve and Paul right before we ate. Paul was trying to use the potty and I sang him Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" to him which he seemed to enjoy but it was a bad idea because the song was stuck in my head all night long.

After lasagna and salad and bread, we drank some tea and baked some break-apart Pillsbury Reese's Pieces cookies and discussed memories from our past, some of the guys and girls who we'd always hold onto in our memories, and also gossiped about media people we knew. This is the kind of stuff we discuss basically every time we hang out. I went to bed but didn't sleep well: the room was stuffy; I was having hot and cold flashes (I think I had a little bit of a cold); that stupid Taylor Swift song was in my head and I couldn't' remember what the fourth phrase that went with the "haters," "breakers," and "fakers" (turns out it's "players." I was really tempted to look it up at 2 AM just to have it settled.)