On other fronts:

Despite this month's challenge, my writing seems to have taken a nosedive. But there was one exception. For the first time in what seems like forever, I revisited Katie Jo and Wade in imagination. I was thrilled.

The thing is that I am not happy with forcing a story that I'm not excited about. There are better things to do with my time, I think.

My daily walking has been going very well this week and I'm proud of myself.

I'm crossposting this peice that I wrote yesterday evening when I returned from my walk:

We were going to walk down by the river again. On our way down big snake road, I told my husband that just a few minutes earlier, when I was driving up the hill, I had seen two husky men walking down it. They were strangers. I'd never seen them before and considering their builds they must have been brothers, although older--maybe in their thirties. They were carrying sticks. Not wimpy little sticks, but good stout ones. When I saw them I was suspicious. I don't know what it was in particular about them, but they seemed angry to me. I told him that I didn't want to catch up with them. Of course, he wasn't the least bit worried. After ten minutes or so, they could have been long gone.

We unlocked the gate to the nursery and went down behind the barn, the way we usually do. From the bottom of the hill we swing either right or left and make a loop back around a group of trees. That, it seems, turns out to be approximately a mile. This time we headed left and up the narrow track along the fence to the property. Across a field we caught sight of a deer. She ran when we began to walk again.

We were most of the way to the soy bean field when I heard what sounded like men's voices in the distance. My husband's hearing isn't as good as mine. He suggested that someone at the rent house was talking loud. But I didn't think so. I would bet the rent house was a good third of mile away. I continued to listen and look and then I spotted the men. They were walking up the road from the rent house that we loop back on. What is weird is that they were carrying trash bags with something in them.

This land is private land. It belongs to my husband's employer and family. I continued to look. Dang, if I didn't wear a bright green sweatshirt this evening. I saw them see us. It is difficult to hide in a brown landscape wearing bright green.

It scared me because after they paused looking our way, they appeared to begin to come straight across towards us. I have an excellent imagination and it never ceases to function. I wasn't going to wait around for them so I started back toward the nursery. Rather than going all the way to the regular road that goes north of the barns, we headed up a steep track that comes out in back of the green houses. I made tracks up that hill! I haven't been that winded in a long time.

At the top of the hill I turned around and I could see that they were still looking at us. I'll let you know if anything comes of it--since I didn't have the guts to check them out. Had I had on a darker shade sweatshirt, I told my husband I would have stalked those men to see what they were up to.

Unfortunately, I came out a half a mile short of my goal for the day.