It always takes me a few days to get used to the hour I just lost on Sunday and how the sun is going to be in a different spot at “7 a.m.” and I’m going to be surprised at what the light looks like at dinner time. I always have a month or two in the winter when getting out of bed in the morning is a challenge because I am energized by the sun. As it returns through January and February I wake up earlier in the day and far more easily. Then someone takes that early light and moves it. UGH!

I also realized that I made a mistake on the chasuble I’m working on. I spent a lot of time first looking at the mistake (the galloon is off by a 1/4 of an inch as it goes around a corner) and pretending it was okay, and then wondering if I could ask someone else what they thought.

The best mind experiment in the world is to imagine asking someone that kind of question. If you are honest enough with yourself you will find out immediately what you are hoping they will say. If you tell yourself you will have to ask someone else if X says it’s — either okay or not okay — then you know what you really think. You are just looking for enough outside authority to avoid believing and acting upon what you already know.

And eventually I said to myself, I don’t want to spend twenty years seeing that tiny mistake and hoping no-one else does. Even if I show it to others and they don’t see it, I do. RIP.IT.OUT. So that’s my job this afternoon.

At the same time, I’ve been working on my novel and realizing that I cannot call it The Science Fair Murder. This is a question of setting expectations, that will then be subverted. When you subvert people’s expectations they do not like you or your book. So even though my dream was to write a book called The Science Fair Murder, I have failed. This leaves me wondering what to call this thing of 82,000 words that I wrote.

Subverting Saint Cyrils Maybe. Experimenting with Laurel Martin (Sounds like Miss Frizzle.) Death Lurks at the Science Fair. (This one is a bit more like horror and I think will again create expectations that won’t be met.) I loved the title Hypothesis: Murder but that’s not the book I wrote. Saint Cyril’s Trojan Horse Well, not sure. Laurel’s Wreath. Even more unsure. No decisions today. Just a lot of thinking while I rip stitches. Some days seem to go backwards. C. S. Lewis said somewhere that if you’ve made a mistake, turning around is the ONLY way to make progress. Excelsior.