My friend Siobhan went skydiving a couple of days ago. She’s in a wheelchair because she has ALS. She was diagnosed last year, when her youngest child was just five weeks old.  Siobhan’s determined to make the most of the rest of her life, and I can’t wait to see what she accomplishes next. She’s amazing.

Meanwhile, my most major recent accomplishment is I cleaned up my Yahoo inbox. I was motivated by GC’s inbox, which never has more than about ten messages in it. Mine had 14,565 messages.

You should never undertake a task like this in a single session; you’ll go insane. It took me a few weeks of an hour here, an hour there. Eventually I was rewarded with a message that said “There are no messages in your Inbox folder.” (Which I must admit felt a bit anticlimactic. I think I was expecting something more dramatic, like an animated parade and a marching band.) Next up – my gmail inbox, which is home to another 8,527 messages.

Speaking of accomplishments, remember when my doctor said I had crazy high triglyceride and cholesterol levels? But since I didn’t have any other risk factors for heart disease, she wanted me to tackle it with diet and exercise rather than meds.

I’m happy to report my triglycerides went from very high to normal (5 point something to 1 point something) and my cholesterol went from very high to merely high (8.2 to 6.1). My doctor said it was very impressive.

What else? I’m teaching myself how to sew.  I’ve rejected sewing all my life, as an act of political protest. When I was a kid we moved to the country and I joined the 4H Club, believing I’d get to raise a calf, but they said no, boys raise calves and girls sew dresses. And then I was forced to sew a dress even though I didn’t even wear dresses. My mother ended up sewing the dress, which I wore to school once because she insisted. The other kids pointed out that my dress was see-through and I was mortified and never wore it again.

But now, 40 years later, I’m over it. I want to learn how to sew.

I made some cushions and I’m making a pair of pajama pants from an actual pattern. They’re almost finished – I just need to hem them. It’s a “Learn to Sew” pattern, but it’s not as easy as you might think. There are some confusing bits. Starting with the first line on the back of the pattern envelope: “Not suitable as sleepwear.” But it’s pajamas. (Turns out the pattern manufacturer puts that on all pajama patterns, to avoid being sued if you make your pajamas out of flammable material and then set yourself on fire while sleeping.)

That’s about it for my recent accomplishments. How about you? What have you been up to?

GC and Rosie and I spent Saturday afternoon hanging out with these people:

We filled a castle with dinosaurs, built a marble race, ate imaginary elephants, raced cars, flew jets and taught a triceratops how to ride a horse. And every time anybody pooped on the potty, we all got to eat a gummy bear!

The Writer’s Idea Book, by Jack Heffron, contains more than 400 writing prompts and writing exercises. I borrowed it from the library a couple of days ago.

First thing I did when I got it was read the table of contents. Then I decided to just randomly open the book up to any page and poke my finger randomly on a writing prompt. I would complete that writing prompt regardless of whether or not it appealed to me.

I closed my eyes, opened the book at a random page and chose the only writing prompt on that page. Here’s what it said:

PROMPT: Open this book to any page and do one of the prompts. Don’t consider if it interests you or is appropriate to your background. As you do it, try to move past distracting thoughts and feelings. Focus on the prompt and let yourself go.