Editing or tackling the jungle. Can't decide.

I passed out during this night again, which was necessary considering I was feeling unwell yesterday evening. It as a busy day nonetheless, and undisturbed sleep is the best cure for it. It was a short night for sure, not the required amount of hours that a body really needs, but who cares, I’ll just rest when I’m dead. Hah.

After the usual morning rituals and arriving in the house, big brother and I get to edits, just as soon as we’ve finished breakfast and released the main pack and let them run free.
Editing goes well today: four solid pages bringing the project up to a fifth done. Excellent. The best part of it is that the story is getting to be so much better.

In order to get this assumption of things going well, across, I’ll need to give a short sum up of the story, I suppose.
So, this story is titled: Saving Nina, and it is part of a series called: No Escape from Rising Sun.

It involves five remaining children of the Rising Sun sect’s child army that was disbanded twelve years prior to the beginning of these stories. These kid-soldiers were “rescued” from the sect and then later used for the government’s own nefarious purposes.

Which brings us to “Saving Nina”. Nina Hernandez is one of these former child soldiers and after the secret government branch, which had forced her to work for them since she was a teenager, was dissolved, she disappeared without a trace.

Our main hero, Special agent Rory O’Donnell, finds her being held captive in a mental hospital of ill repute and he…well; he saves her, of course. Thus the title. Hah.
Now, this all sounds very simple and dry, but here’s the cincher; due to the treatment at the hospital, Nina has chemically induced multiple personality disorder, which creates a wonderful premises for misunderstandings, whacky characters and of course lots of frustration for the male protagonist intent on “healing” her.

Suffice it to say that through our present edits the characters are becoming more pronounced, witty and sharp, and that is what is making the project so enjoyable.
It is quite funny, but while we’re working on dialogue we will sometimes burst out laughing for no other reason that we can imagine each character (Nina’s suffering MPD, remember?) acting so very differently and yet predictable in a weird kind of way.

Oh my, I’m going to need to find some test readers just to see if reading it as an “outsider” will provoke the same responses. If I…well, we did our job well a reader should be able to guess which personality surfaces from the way Nina acts and talks alone. Ah well, we’ll see how it goes. I might have to start contacting some friends to see if they’ve got time to spare. Hah.

But where was I, before I got so horribly distracted? Ah yes, the day:
So, once we finish with our daily session of edits, we put our computers away and head for lower part of the property to continue with the garden project.

For several hours we plunge into the jungle. Admittedly things are starting to become decidedly easier. The paths are passable now at least.
But today’s main task is clearing away the cut-down pear tree that is still perched over two terraces, held up by a huge tangle of thorny branches of the dead bougainvillea.

While little brother and sister start tackling weeds and debris two terraces down from me, I hack my way through the thorns, slowly cutting a path through the mix and getting scraped around, through and under my clothes in the process. Hah.
Piece by piece the entire mess is cleared and dragged away, while big brother and I continue to hack and saw until at long last the terrace is empty, showing off the wonderfully straight patch of our mountainous property.

I’m quite relieved to have this particular chore seen through, especially since by the end of it, every inch of me was beginning to whine at the prospect of yet another scratch. After smoking a quick cigarette I move down the terrace to clear away vines from the massive Eucalyptus growing there.

Though grandpa usually comes down to check on our progress, he isn’t today. His pet Sisco, an old shepherd that has been his companion for more than twelve years, has been ailing for months now and grandpa finally decided that he didn’t want to put the dog through the ordeal of fighting for life that had lost so much of its quality already.

So he left to take the old timer to the vet and had him put down. Though a farmer most of his life, familiar with the loss of life stock and the like, he admitted that he found this one of the hardest things he had to do.
It is so sad, especially in light of my own recent loss of Yadzia, but we have come to expect that deaths of pets come in threes over the years.

It is no surprise either, considering the fact that most of our dogs were rescued from local animal shelters in groups. Many of our dogs are advancing to old age and undoubtedly we’ll be facing this ordeal many times to come in the next year or two. It is inevitable, no matter how unfair it is. I just wish that some of the older ones just went in their sleep, rather than us needing to take them from their having to the hospital.

All right, I better get back to the day before I really start maudlin and depress myself fully.

Gardening:
Reeds have died and fallen in a messy jumble, providing the vines with leverage for growth. They need to be removed and dragged away while steadily more plants are unearthed from the tangle of vines and dead plants.
During the process we discover a young pear tree…we had no idea it was there…that cheers us considerably especially after the loss of the big one.

Hidden behind high papyrus plants, a messy hibiscus and even more vines, we hadn’t even noticed it until now. It’s at least eight feet high and in full bloom. Within the cleared patches more tiny pear trees slowly are revealed and even one sprig of what appears to be a young carob. Wonderful.

At long last, after having freed and trimmed the hibiscus bush in full, the day has come to an end and we head back to the house where mom has prepared dinner for us. Rice and cauliflower baked in curcuma and mustard seeds. The latter is definitely one of our favorites but bland rice really needs something extra so I offer to make a quick curry sauce on a basis of coconut milk.

Dinner is ready to be served in less than thirty minutes and gets rapidly devoured while the pack is eating their own meal all around us.
After dinner I decide to do some more mending and get my Jeans, to repair the waistband of which the threads have broken after several years of wear.

It is an easy task, and a relaxing one as we watch a very exciting episode of “Criminal Minds”. Since none of us really enjoy “Numbers”, the show that comes up next, I get up to tackle today’s laundry before big brother and I set up our computers for another bout of editing.

Regretfully the laundry takes too long, so we get distracted by the show “The Evidence” before we finally resume work. Since we’re both pretty exhausted by that time, we only manage about half a page before midnight, at which time I declare the day over and take my dogs up to the cabin for the night.

I chat with grandpa for a bit while my dogs have their evening snack inside (big brother joins us) and then, chilled by the night, head on inside to finish the last tasks of the day.

I might not know exactly what tomorrow holds in store, but I’m sure it’ll be busy again. Hah.