The good news: My hubby comes home today! On a plane.
The bad news: It is snowing.
The good news: His first plane has landed and he is in Atlanta.
The bad news: It is snowing in Maine and his second plane is delayed.
The good news: It is only delayed 45 minutes.
The bad news: The snow isn’t stopping and it might be more.
Ack! Why is it snowing? It is March 28th. Almost April? Answer: This is Maine. Again, ack!
Thank you all for your kind thoughts. I checked in with the doc today and Sam may be improving with the med cocktail they are giving him. We’ll know more tomorrow. Last night I got a full night’s sleep. The first one in a long time without cleaning up or taking Sam for many night walks. I imagine him at the vet talking to the other dogs:
“The house is crazy without the Alpha dog (my husband). The puppies are loud and rambunctious and the bitch keeps yelling at me and the pups. I’m just happy to get a break from the stress. It was giving me diarrea!”
Hope to get real hugs at the conference in two weeks. Who’s coming?
My dog is dying from the inside out. He must be. Sam is 12 years old, and for the past two months he’s had diarrhea. Now he seems unable to control his bowels. Just this weekend he’s had a few inside accidents and the clean up has been no easy task. The most recent clean-up just complete, I’m spent. This is the same two months that I’ve been single parenting because my husband, Chris is in Memphis with the Navy. The same two months leading up to the New England SCBWI conference that I’m helping to coordinate. The same time, of course, that our newish van is overheating stranding me and my kids during a March snowstorm and me forgetting to charge my cell phone. (Okay, we weren’t stranded, but walking miles with a 6 and 8 year old in a snow storm is no fun.)
I wish I was one of those women, those writers who could come up with some witty entry that makes everyone laugh at my anguish. But right now I just need a hug. I’m so exhausted and I’m ready to send Sam to the great dog house in the sky. The only problem is that there has been no diagnosis. No parasite I can get rid of, no food issue I can remedy. (Rice, tried that. Boiled chicken, that too. Changing food, yup.) Can you put your dog to sleep for pooping in the house? Granted, it reeks and is a watery mess (TMI sorry) but doesn’t there need to be something else wrong?
I don’t know. I’m reaching the end of my ethical rope. I’m bringing him to the vet tomorrow– today and boarding him there. I need a break.
A huge thank you to Kelly Fineman whose rant is both dead-on and inspiring. Therefore, I am posting in honor of Women’s History Month (which began with International Women’s Day (also ignored in this country when others in Europe got a day off…) Below, please find a few of my favorite books that have to do with girls and women who had historical and political vision and the authors and illustrators who have artistic vision.
From Kathry Lasky and David Caltrow:
She’s Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head!
(Illustrated by David Catrow)
Harriet Hemenway and her cousin Minna Hall are very proper Boston ladies, but they find the latest nineteenth-century fashion in women’s hats appalling. All over town, fashionable ladies are parading around with dead birds perched upon their heads! So Minna and Harriet gather together the most prominent people in the area to form a club to protect the birds—the Audubon Society. Eventually they garner enough nationwide attention to initiate the passage of important bird protection acts.
Also two books by Shana Corey:
Katie Casey is in a league of her own: “She preferred sliding to sewing, batting to baking, and home runs to homecoming.” Unfortunately, baseball is not considered ladylike in 1942. But when the male professional baseball players are called away to war, Katie has her chance to step up to the plate.
and 
Amelia Bloomer is not a proper lady. She thinks proper ladies of the 19th century are silly. They’re not allowed to vote, not supposed to work, and all that fuss about clothes! Ridiculously wide hoop skirts, yards and yards of hot petticoats, and cruelly tight corsets supported by whalebone or steel made women faint at the drop of the hat: “What was proper about that?” So Amelia, being so very improper, sets out to revolutionize the world for women.
(Images and jacket copy swiped from Amazon.com but go to your local independent bookstore to buy these, or shine up that Library card and check them out.)
Sorry I’m not more creative as it is 1 am and I just felt that this needed to be posted. Not as eloquent as Kelly’s rant but there it is. I’m sorry I’ve been so absent but the conference is two weeks away and I’m on week 7 out of 8 for single parenting.
Dear Friends,
There are few times in politics when we are privileged to witness a speech that is so thoughtful, so honest, so grounded in reality that it becomes a turning point for our country’s history. Words that you have to memorize in social studies or government class that come from dead men such as Lincoln or FDR or John or Robert Kennedy. The speech given by Senator Obama is one of these. The problem with these speeches is that they take a great deal of time to craft, and a great deal of time to deliver. The problem with these speeches is that they take a great deal of time to listen to. This means that we have to stop the frenetic pace of the day, of giving to and nurturing children, of working and driving, and picking up the house and picking up the broken pieces of our lives to listen. To stop and dismiss the 30 second sound bite for the 30 minute speech. Please. No matter who you are or where you are on the political spectrum… Stop. Listen. Enjoy. We haven’t heard this level of discourse from an elected leader in the past eight years (or longer). When your grandchildren have to memorize sections of this speech, you can say you heard it when it first happened.
Anna
Laura Hamor posted about trying to quiet the world in order to hear your muse entitled Creative Space. I’m having a really hard time doing this recently. Thoughts of money, relocation and jobs fill my thoughts. I’m trying to (in a Zen way) allow these thoughts to come and then go but I’m bad at that. Instead I hang on to them, turning them into projects. Relocation? Surf the net for maps and chamber of commerce sites for various places to go. Jobs? Browse Career Builders, Colleges I’d like to work at, and even B & B’s that are for sale. Money? Obsess. Now that I have an agent, will he be able to sell my work? I couldn’t sell it. I need a day job. So I am sitting at the computer without producing much. However, my writing partner is expecting the next chapter of my current WIP on Thursday so at least that lights a fire under my bum. Maybe my muse is the muse of fire. Hmmm… fire, heat, warmth… that’s it, my creative space is somewhere warmer. No wonder I can’t get anything done.
Fun in the snow on Saturday. But the current ice storm forecast has me down.
Creative Chaos 