We’re home, but still deciding how we feel about that.  For the most part I’m thrilled.  It was a fantastic adventure and wonderful visit to see family, but if it had gone on much longer I would have melted into a puddle of sludge.

Bloody sludge.

I swear we signed up for the non-violent vacation, but before we’d come home I had blood stains on a favorite t-shirt (thanks to a thirsty rose bush and a late night tp job), our daughter had smeared blood on one of her new shirts, and bled on several other family members as well, and I just discovered that one of my toenails was ripped backwards and has been bleeding in my shoe while I wasn’t looking.

Small wounds, I know, but we can’t all feed the vampires.  Some of us are more mosquito-sized donaters.

Of course there was plenty of sweat while we tramped around on the wonderful and weird cliffs of Colorado National Monument, ran all over Utah keeping up with the family and setting off fireworks, and hiked up to see the petroglyphs at Dinosaur National Monument.  But the sweat I’m referring to here is of a special kind.  The kind that beads a writer’s lip and drips from the written page as the writer wrings yet another edit out of their manuscript.

In other words, I’m yet again editing 13 Demon Days.  The first pages (and I only refer to them by that banal name because no swear words would do them justice) are getting extra attention and may soon be ditched for even newerest new first pages.  Yay for them.

I may get up some other pics from the trip, at least on FB, but I can’t resist a couple shots of the gargoyles we visited on the way home.  Thank goodness we had this church to look forward to–the thought of gargoyles waiting for me on the return trip sustained me through the long drive across Kansas and then back again.  Unfortunately I didn’t quite dare scale the building adjacent to the church, so these are ground-level pics and you may have to squint to make out the gargoyles.

   

Don’t worry if you have trouble making out his features.  The gargoyles are made of metal, not stone, and not the kind to come flying through the night to haunt your sleep or overturn the world.  But, if they do, be sure to let me know so I can come quick and see.  I suspect these fellows just may wing their way into a future book, and I’d love to get some pics should they take flight.