"Secrets" progress report, day 1; also, close encounters of the skunk kind

425 words tonight, for a new total of 5,275. Got through the Ginny-and-Daphne conversation, and Ginny has headed off along the train to find her brothers. Yay progress!

This scene is annoying because I need to lay groundwork for Ginny and Daphne to resolve their enmity sometime in the next couple years, but I also don't want to make either of them back down or suddenly become friends. They dislike each other for perfectly valid reasons -- the start of their fight was stupid on both sides, but they were both complicit in escalating it, and even Ginny's attempt to apologize and call a truce earlier in this chapter was pretty antagonistic -- and they are both proud and stubborn as hell. But Daphne's not a bad person, and they have a mutual connection via Apple, and recapitulating Harry's petty rivalry with Draco Malfoy would be narratively boring... and also the importance of interpersonal connections is a theme I've been harping on all through this story, so I'm trying to strike a balance between potential for future friendship (which would probably always be a little prickly and based on one-upping each other) and current animosity and need to save face.

Bleh, people. Why so complicated?

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As I walked home from work tonight, I thought I smelled skunk in the air and figured some dog had had an unfortunate encounter. These things happen!

Half a block later, a skunk -- presumably the same skunk in question -- scurried across the street in front of me and vanished into some shrubbery beside the sidewalk. I waited a couple seconds, then made sure to make a sort of half-circle around the place it had disappeared so as to avoid startling it.

Making a skunk feel threatened is a BAD IDEA. Just saying. :-)

what I did today

1. Some sewing. I repaired a torn pair of pants (the back pocket had somehow separated from the main cloth, leaving a giant open seam on my butt through which anyone could see my underwear *twitch*), repaired a torn sheet, and got a bit further on hemming a pair of black pants -- I had been 1/8 of the way through and am now 5/8 toward completion. I hate back stitch. The next pair of pants I have to hem, I think I will do in running stitch instead -- it's less secure, but it also uses much less thread and goes a LOT faster, and since the next pair is not in such a heavy fabric, I am not as worried about needing a solid hem line.

2. Constructed two more articles for Dad's encyclopedia. I have one more left, but that one requires some active research and writing, since the writer only provided scientific career info and no biographical stuff, so I have to write those parts myself.

3. Wrote 175 words of "Secrets" -- a transition from Ginny-and-Daphne to Ginny-and-family-and-trio, basically -- for a current total of 5,450. Bleh.

4. Called Vicky and spoke briefly. We try to pick days to talk when I am off work, but then she relies on me being the one to call her and I tend to forget until dinnertime, at which point she is often getting ready to go out with friends. I think this would work better if she called me, since she is more likely to try earlier in the day.

5. Talked to Downstairs Neighbor S for over half an hour while taking out the recycling. Upstairs Neighbor K used to do that, but since he and his family bought a house last month, the job seems to have fallen to either me or to Upstairs Neighbor R, whoever gets to it first. I am glad that S enjoys sitting on our porch and being neighborly, because I am terrible at socializing of my own accord and am therefore relieved when someone else takes the initiative, but I have to figure out polite ways to back out of our interactions sooner because I hit my "okay, I've been sociable and I would like to be alone now" limit LONG before she seems remotely interested in winding down the conversation and going back to her reading.

(It's hard being an introvert. It's hard and no one understands. *silly*)