Er...What is Crawling on My Ankle?

Good morning/afternoon/evening! I'm back at the picnic area, enjoying the cool breeze that comes with cloud cover and the will it/won't it grey of potential rain. Wind in the oaks sounds an awful lot like rain, actually. And things (such as leaves) will fall on you. Probably still safe for the devices, though, right?

Today there have been more,larger bugs at the table. At least one carpenter (?) ant...it looks like an ant but moves fast. And it's maybe half an inch long? So far, it's explored the water bottle, my keys, and, just now, my ankle. As it turns out, ankles carry significantly greater risk of minor crushing injuries...although in this case, more sweeping than crushing. It seemed fine. I'm sure it's fine.

I don't know why sitting out here makes me so solicitous of the insects. Perhaps a mild form of Writer's block? Probably the same reason I'm facing the parking lot, so I can see all the people who are jogging and feel completely sedentary trying to write around the ants and whatever that thing is that looks like a crawling chunk of concrete. And that jet engine masquerading as a bug.

In front of me is a circular concrete pad that used to have a small grill bolted to the center. Crawling concrete and former grill pads in the chape of tiny saucer-landing platforms should spark something...combined with the guy who is 'jogging' while catching up on his phone calls. Guess that's just modernity, though. Aliens who encounter too many blasé people? People who aren't really interested in first contact but in better phones and hey-what-kind-of-cool-tech do you have?

Maybe the aliens aren't interested in us, either.

I'm sure the bugs would prefer a clear table for hunting and whatnot, if not sloppy patrons with scavengable trash. All I have are pens and paper, which I'd prefer to not have chewed while I'm...er...working. Is there something on my ankle again?

Mercer Mornings

Okay, let's try this again. Maybe Google won't eat my post THIS time. It's been awhile since I posted--I've been missing Magpie Tales and the poetry prompts and caught up in the poetry collection that I'd like to have finished by the end of October, jut in time for the literary marathon that is NaNoWrimo. When the collection is done, I'm sure I'll have a post about whether or not I'm brave enough to put it up on Amazon.

Meanwhile, it's one of the last cool mornings until the next cool front next week (that's fall in this part of Texas, waiting for each gust of seasonal temps in between the heat) and I came out to Mercer's picnic side to catch up on some writing. Instead, I find myself watching the ladybug with the one damaged wing crawl all over the top of the picnic table and contemplating how to convince the tiny green spider to move from the lip of my water bottle so that can have a sip, too. Pretty sure the spider is set for the day. I have to wonder what a clear, condensate-heavy water bottle looks like to a spider. Probably not something you'd want to climb down.

There are other small bugs that blend in with the concrete picnic table. I notice them when they scuttle across my draft, seem to realize they are reality-tv exposed, and leap back onto the composite surface. At this point, I'm convinced several of these little stones might conceal creepy-crawlies, but it's cool and the shade and presumably we're all happy to have our own little patch of picnic table. I am herding the carpenter ants away from my shorts.

I've been thinking about doing something slightly different for NaNo this year: two novellas rather than one novel. My short story about birds and wizards in Houston has swum into wider waters than I expected and I think it would benefit from the increased length and I'd still like to work on my robot story. I'm not a sci-if person, generally, but I have reached a point where I hate abandoning devices (cell phone, tablet) for the latest model because we can't upgrade them or whatever reason the consumption/growth-minded crowd comes up with this year. Would we continue to do so with sentient tech? So...two very different stories, two different side of the brain? NaNo has been pretty rough for me the past few years and I'm hoping this keeps me motivated.

It seems that the day has warmed up enough that the spiders are restless. Guess that means I should get on with the day.