Happiness is a choice that requires effort at times. (Aeschylus)

The cows are quiet. Too quiet. Deceptively quiet. I can almost hear the babies in their bellies sloshing around. I called Dana to see what her spidey sense said about calves (she has a sixth sense for babies on the way), but she thinks it’s all quiet. I feel bad for the people around me right now who aren’t farmers since all I can talk about is this calf or that calf, how this cow’s belly is sitting, or what kind of fluids that cow is excreting. It’s kind of nasty if you aren’t into the whole birthing thing.

I heard crows when I woke up this morning and did a little reading about them. Crows are considered the cleverest of birds. Since they are black but active in daytime, they are a reminder of magic and creation, even during the day. There are five species of crow, ravens included. They prefer open areas or woodsy regions and live in communities where they raise young cooperatively. They are highly vocal birds and will eat both omnivorously and almost anything. See: http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Corvus_brachyrhynchos.html for more info.

I finally got a breakthrough on the second Taylor book yesterday. YEY! I sat down with it and made myself do the work (thanks Strength) and here I am with a better outlook on life and a new scene floating around in my head. I spend a lot of time thinking about troublesome scenes before I actually sit down and write them. I have to have a sense of the general course of events, who will react how to whom and the general feel of the scene. Dinner with four new weres, a stoic boyfriend, a reviled skinwalker, a werewolf too naïve for his own good, and a very tolerant father who doesn’t ask too many questions any more ought to be interesting. I think this is the first time I’ve had this many distinct characters on-screen all at once. The total is 9, plus a dog and a dragon, so 11. Geez. At least Taylor isn’t calving yet. That would add a whole herd’s worth of difficulty, wouldn’t it?