Reasons to be cheerful

• What was I saying here about the horribleness of Chapter Five? Hard to believe it's now locked into shape, and is just going through its final check today before I print it out and add it to the pile of chapters Paul is reading for me.
• He is currently in the kitchen, cooking up a storm for dinner tonight.
• I spent a whole hour in the gym this morning - something I could never have imagined a month ago.
• Joel and three of his friends are spending the day together. They have played the piano a bit, had fish and chips for lunch while watching the West Wing, and have now headed out: two blond heads, two dark; four leggy bodies in four black coats.
  

So life feels good today. I'm going to clean up my desk to make chasing up the final footnotes easier, listen to Beethoven's Fifth, and keep an eye on the Hawthorn-Essendon game as I work. I'm also going to go back and re-read the question and comments over at Purring Prophecy, which are full of sage advice about letting go of book manuscripts and sending them off into the outside world. Today, the Garter book feels as if it wants to race out the door without its shoes on (and I haven't even started the last chapter), but that's better than it feeling it wants to curl up in the desk drawer with the cat, as it sometimes does...