While the mice are away...the writer will play

I am going to have the house to myself for 72 glorious hours, so I am racing around this morning trying to get all my chores and errands done; I want to free up every moment of that time to write! For me, this is the best vacation—having the rare solitude to work on my book, a middle grade novel that is my twisted spin on ghosts and haunted houses.

This is the book I've wanted to write since I was eleven, and my father gave me a copy of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. In my book, Spontaneous Combustion, I share this wondrous first paragraph of Jackson's novel.

“No live organism can continue for long to exist under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
 
I can only hope to write something this good, but that's my inspiration for the weekend.

That is, if my dog lets me. A gruesome growth appeared overnight on his face yesterday, looking like a hitherto-unknown species of ginormous tick, or a part of his brain extruding through his Newfish fur. Ugh! It doesn't seem to be causing him pain, and he's not acting sick, but still I'm worried. Of course the vet was closed, but with a huge sigh I made an appointment for today. There goes my writing sabbatical, I thought. I'm going to be nursing a 130-pound dog after cranial surgery instead.

But there's hope! As of this morning, the growth seems to be deflating like some kind of disgusting balloon. So maybe it was just a hematoma; poor Yukon might have gotten bitten by something, or scratched his face when he was nosing around the honeysuckle and getting stuck in my neighbor's bamboo plantation. I'm crossing my fingers that it will heal on his own, I can cancel the vet appointment, and Yukon can go back to being my Muse for my weekend of writing.

Wish us both luck!