The Hows and Whys of Daniel

Two weeks ago, nearly to the minute, I made a decision.  A big, scary, and, honestly, ill-advised decision.  I was going to self-publish a silly little story I wrote last fall.  And I was going to do it by the end of the weekend.

There were at least two reasons for this big, stupid goal:

1. My family needed the positive cash flow, no matter how small.
2. I had something to prove.  To my husband, whose favorite greeting is, "You finish that book yet?" (Grr!).  And to myself, who rarely asks myself if a book is done because she knows how annoying that really is.

Let's get one thing straight: I'm not afraid to share my stories.  Against all common sense, I'll type the last words of a first draft and send it off to someone, anyone, who wants to read it.  That's not the way it's supposed to work, so other writers tell me, but it's the way I work.  The excitement of sharing and getting that early feedback from the poor shmoes who have to slog through my typos--well, it's what makes this writer thing feel more like a village and less like solitary confinement.  Not that I have anything against solitary confinement.

Two weeks ago, "Daniel the Draw-er" was literally half the story it is now.  Like, 6k words to its now-finished 13k.  I knew the story needed to be more substantial, size-wise, but I didn't know how to do it. Some friends who read through pointed out some plot issues, mainly having to do with resolution of the various conflicts in the story (Daniel's mom's desire for Daniel to make more friends, Daniel and his best friend Annie's argument, etc.) and how the timing was way off.  Story structure.  It's a thing, apparently.

I would save myself a lot of time if I just learned how to outline.  Know where I'm headed, what needs to happen, that kind of thing.  But nooooooo.  My imagination insists on working free of the constraints of detailed lists, especially when I'm operating as a nine-year-old boy with a magic pencil, where the sky is the limit.  They call someone who doesn't plan out their writing a "pantser", meaning they're flying by the seat of their pants (versus the more serious and responsible "plotter", a. k. a. People I Don't Really Get).  The fun part about zero planning is that every single thing I write is a surprise.  I make myself laugh a lot.  Sometimes my weirdness scares even me.  But, anyway...

For a week and a half I spent night and day working on the story, holed up in my writing room in the basement listening to Bon Iver on repeat and eating cinnamon Fire Jolly Ranchers (!!).  My friend Courtney sat across from me and dished out tough love ("draw a plot diagram," she said. I threw a tantrum like a two-year-old, no lie). I spent almost an entire day working at a Panera Bread.  Two of my doula babies were born.  We said good-bye, for now, to a beloved family friend.  Life happened.  A whole lot of life happened.

This story is important to me in a much different way than my others have been.  "Daniel" came to be when I participated in an online writing course called The Story Cartel.  Our assignment was to identify the audience we felt we were writing to and write a short story with them in mind.  I didn't want to write a short story to teenage girls and bored housewives (you know who you are.  I am one of you!), I wanted to write a book for my boys like Tolkien wrote his classic tales as bedtimes stories for his children.  Like Dav Pilkey without the constant references to bodily functions and underwear. So I turned to my eight-year-old and asked him a good name for a main character.  He picked Daniel.  Then I wrote on, with my son peeking over my shoulder and laughing at all the funny parts.  He soaked up every word, waiting for me to peck them out in my usual slow manner, until it was late and I had to send him to bed. This story is my nod to my boys--the introverted Daniel who doesn't mind having only one friend.  The boy who hates meatloaf but loves pizza.  The boy who fixates on capes (for us, it is hooded sweatshirts).  The endless sketches of made-up creatures.  That's all of them lumped up in one fantastic boy.  That's why.

And now the "how". There are many facets to self-publishing that most people don't fully consider beyond just writing a story. Here are a few major points:

Editing 

Like, thorough editing.  It's best to use someone who edits as their profession, but I didn't have that option (see Reason 1 above).  Instead, I recruited a handful of people to read through and make sure I caught typos, punctuation, that kind of thing.  Then I gave it another read-through right before uploading it to Amazon and CreateSpace.  I'm 100% positive I, and my troop of beta readers, still missed errors.  I take comfort in knowing that even New York Times' bestsellers still have errors undetected by the people paid to do so.

Formatting  

I write most of my novels using Google Drive because I insist on making my friend read along. Amazon and CreateSpace want authors to upload Microsoft Word files (or one of their other preferred file formats).  Most of that formatting process wasn't a huge deal because I've been training myself to be better about indents and all of that mind-numbing detail.  I did spend about three hours one night doing battle with Word 2011 about page numbers and section breaks while my family went to the school carnival.  Bummer.  Although I did hear, in great detail, about my eight-year-old's meltdown while waiting 45 minutes in line for a balloon animal.  So, I'm chalking it up as a win in my column, even though I wanted to hurl my Macbook more than once.

Cover

Not surprisingly, the cover of any book might be the most important thing ever.  I drew what I thought was a pretty cool cover, a cat with a pencil in his mouth.  The charcoal on a plain white page was pretty drab, so I flipped it into a negative and thought it was good to go.

Except it frightened kids and adults, alike, so I had to draw a second cover.

And then I had to bug my brother to do about a million things to it until it was ready to upload at both Amazon and CreateSpace.  Poor guy.  If it had been up to me, the thing would never have a cover.  Never, ever.

Marketing

I'm still in the middle of this, and it's all trial-and-error because I should have done things different, if not for the self-imposed time constraint.  Cover reveal?  Psssh.  Blog tour?  Ha!

BUT, you can buy a digital copy of Daniel the Draw-er here.
You can buy a paperback copy of Daniel directly from CreateSpace here. (In a few days the paperback option will be live on Amazon, just not yet).

Book reviews are very helpful, too.  Even if you didn't buy your copy from Amazon, you can leave a review here for future readers.
If you use the Goodreads app/website, you can leave a star rating or a review for Daniel there, as well.

Side note:  I am open to other methods of marketing, as I'm reaching the end of my friends and family and need to figure out other avenues of getting the book noticed.  If you think of anything, comment here or contact me the way you know how.

So there you have it--a little peek into my hyper-accelerated process for the debut of my novella, Daniel the Draw-er.  While it's certainly no War and Peace or Harry Potter or anything, I'm hoping it leads to bigger and better things in the future.  I'm hoping Daniel is my little bit of magic.  

Weak

Beating

My sneakers crunch against the sidewalk.  His back is to me and my heart launches into my throat when I see him.  He doesn't know me yet, not like he will.  I hold my breath as I run past, pretending it's not ripping its way from my lungs.  He must never know I'm weak.

And then I truly am weak and he is the one who knows it best.  Until everyone knows.

Breathing

In the dim glow my little one stirs next to me  Flat nose, pink lips, gold eyes.  He is the reflection of someone I cannot have and no longer want.   This life is a ruin I must wrench myself from and then build again with bloodied hands.  I will not dial the phone again only to reach the machine--his filter.  He must never remember I'm weak.

This life is not all about him, a person I barely knew even then.  He was a plot twist, a literary device.  But I am the protagonist of this story, the heroine.

The damsel in distress has left the building.

I will never be weak again.

2013: The Best of My Worst, The Worst of My Best

I'm in my pajamas on New Year's Eve.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course.  Say what you will, but pajamas make nearly almost everything better.  Even Wal-Mart.  Pretend you don't agree--I won't believe you.  

My stomach is protesting for the fourth day in a row.  I'm afraid to eat the salad with Italian dressing I'm craving knowing salad is never awesome the second time around, knowing I hold no interest in becoming a human Salad Shooter.

A pain throbs between my eye sockets and the base of my skull.  I've seen movies like this, where a person's head splits in two, revealing the sparking, beeping innards of the robot menace within.  I'm hoping there's a robot menace within, at least, because I have a busy weekend ahead and the human menace (me) doesn't want to deal with the holiday clean-up that this dumb virus has delayed.

It's probably dehydration.  Darn.

Two Advil and a lot of water later and the headache's not getting better, so I pull on my sleep mask while Mr. Ohboy watches Moonshiners.  Seriously, Moonshiners.  I can't get behind this show, even with a main character, a full-grown adult named Tickle.  No.  With the twangy lullaby of sweaty gentlemen wearing overalls and no t-shirts, I'm asleep by 8:30p.m.

An hour later and the unofficial neighborhood fireworks wake me up.  I proceed to text my friend Allison, who always seems to get the "Seriously?  Fireworks?" texts from me and I don't know why, other than to also stress her out because now she owns a horse who may or may not appreciate said fireworks.  We quickly established that my age bracket is sliding closer to that of a Medicare recipient than its rightful place of 35.  (The fireworks and random machine gun firing awoke me again just after midnight.  Happy New Year!  Huzzah!)

On New Year's Eve I like to write a blog post reflecting on the past year.  It's not happening tonight. The pressure of my pillows against my head and my back make me feel nauseated and sore.  I'm in a bad mood.  I'm uncomfortable from the tippy-top of my head to the ends of my toes.  I feel sorry for myself, which makes me cry.  Sad me is sad.

My guitar hangs from a peg on my bedroom wall.  I'm mediocre at so many things, but I especially struggle with the guitar.  While my youngest was still in the womb, I took lessons with a little old Irish guy at a local music shop that has since gone out of business.  In the hands of my teacher, my guitar sang like a heartbroken lover or a carefree dancer.  In my stuttering hands, my guitar hesitates and falters.  Practice makes things perfect, usually, but I haven't been able to bring myself to practice in a couple of years.  Last night, so lost for something to do, I pulled the guitar down and tuned it.  I thumbed through a few easy melodies, single notes, no chords.  As I pick away at a phrase, my baby boy, now four years old, walks in and watched me.

"What are you doing?"  He asked, sucking in his lower lip beneath his front teeth.

"Do you remember when I used to play guitar when you were in my tummy?"

"Yes."  He says.  I don't know if he really remembers, but I want to believe it's true.  That even my imperfection means something to him.  Even the best of my worst (or the worst of my best) tickles his memory of a time before.

I've managed a lot of good things in 2013.  I've written two novels and a short story, all of which I hope to edit and do something with in 2014.  I've randomly become a runner and completed my first race, a 10K (6.2 miles) in December.  All good things, but I feel guilty.  In pursuit of any of my goals I've been more withdrawn from friends and family and lately I've been feeling like I'm the reason why certain of my kids struggle in school or my house isn't very clean.  

At the moment, all that I accomplished in 2013 matters little to anyone else, even my family.  My kids don't care that I can run a mile in 11 minutes or that I'd like to try to run the equivalent of a half marathon in one outing before 2014 is through.  They don't care what happens to Claire or Liam, or if Lucy figures out why she's in Mitte.  They don't care if my horse gets ridden every couple of days or if there's manure in the pastures.  Maybe they will care someday, but right now I don't see it.

2013 was kind to me, but I want 2014 to be kind to my entire family.  For the blessings that surround me to surround them, as well.  I want the best of my worst and the worst of my best to mean more to everyone I love.  That's what I want for 2014, not just riding and publishing and miles.  

To mean.  To matter.  To make a difference.

Right Away, Great Captain!

I'm guilty of turning on an album and leaving it on repeat for days.  Months, even.  My husband hates this about me because he and I tend to have very opposite tastes in music (him:  Anything Country.  Me:  Florence + the Machine, which is totally a genre, by the way!).  Though it's not working at the moment, we had an iPod jack in our room where we could plug in our iPods or phones and play our music over speakers in the ceiling or on the porch.

At some point while Moe was sick, I turned on Right Away, Great Captain and left it on.  I remember walking away from  his still-warm but lifeless body on the grass and wandering back to the house wondering what could possibly be left without him.  The only thing to do was crawl into bed in the middle of a sunny day and cry.  Right Away, Great Captain crooned me to sleep on that horrible, beautiful day.  I let it play on in the days to follow because it held Moe and I together, this thread of mournful music.

Tonight I'm getting ready to say good-bye to one of my characters and I don't want to because it's like letting my boy slip through my fingers again.  My heart hurts and it feels right to play Right Away, Great Captain! again to pull myself back into the grief.  

It's no more than two lines into the first song before I can see him stumbling and feel his slick neck against my cheek.  The curl of dread tightens in my belly as I watch the vet check his pupils and slowed breathing over and over and over until he is satisfied and I know it's done.  I'm broken, with pieces that will never go back together quite right.

Sixteen months and it surprises me how sharp the pain still is and how little it takes to bring me back to that good-bye.  That is the power and wonder of art.

Oh.  How will I ever do this?

I Don't Want to Fight

The young couple doesn't see it coming, their convertible top down and wrapped up in the warmth of the day.  My family and I see it, though.

We're waiting in a line of cars at a stoplight when half a dozen guys pile out of a car ahead of us, and it's clear they're up to no good.  Some of the men have wrapped their knuckles with thick chains, and others clutch empty beer bottles by their necks.  They're stalking towards the cute couple who haven't noticed them yet, and my stomach twists with realization.

My son-in-law, Bert, jumps out of the car before we can stop him.  My daughter claws at his shirt and tries to scream some sense in to his brain, but it's no use.  Bert's always had a strong sense of justice.  Either that or he doesn't put much value on his own life.

The light changes and the convertible speeds off before the thugs reach them, but their group is still looking for a target and they set their sights on the most likely target:  Bert.  It happens in slow motion, but it still happens.  One of the guys smashes his bottle over Bert's head and blood trickles in his face.

I don't want to fight.  There's three times as many of them as there are of us.  I'm not much of a gambler, but those odds aren't good, even with a firecracker like Bert on your side.  Like it or not, though, I can't leave him out there alone.  They'll kill him.  With a backward glance at my wife, daughter, and young son, I bolt from the car and into the battle.  I still don't want to fight.

Two-to-one.  If we survive this, I might kill Bert myself.

I don't see the guy until he's clocked me in the side of the head and I'm sprawled on the ground.  He brings the pointed toes of his boots to my face and kicks me over and over, sending spikes of pain through my jaw and behind my eyelids.  It's not enough to him that I am on the ground, that I didn't want this fight.  It's obvious that he won't stop until he's made his point clear.  As far as I'm concerned, the point of his shoe has done quite enough talking.

Elise flies from the car and launches herself on the back of my attacker.  On her way out of the car, she grabbed the closest thing in reach, a can of oil, which she now uses to hammer away at his thick skull.  She stuns him long enough to give me a chance to stagger to my feet, but I can't stop him from wrenching her free and kicking her in the face with those horrible, awful boots.

I didn't want to fight.

We drive ourselves, licking our wounds, to General Hospital.  Bert needs stitches, and I'm not sure what Elise and I need.  A uniformed officer comes to arrest us for beating up a group of men, but his mouth and the charges drop when he surveys our assortment of injuries.  

A couple days later our friend Benny takes in Elise's cuts and bruises and asks us to name names.  "You'll never hear from those guys again," he vows.  I don't doubt Benny one bit, and I appreciate the gesture, but I don't tell him anything.

Our bruises haven't healed up before one of the smaller thugs struts into the store.  He's alone and looking for another fight.  The tips of Bert's ears flame as he orders him off the property.  I keep an eye on the man as he slinks away toward the restaurant next door.  A wave of rage courses through me and I think how easy it would be to get my revenge on just one man, the runt of the bunch.  With a shake of my head, I turn away from the window where I have a clear view of him glaring over at us.

I don't want to fight.

Rear View Mirror

I expect him to pass her by.

He doesn't, and I should have seen it comin'.  My older brother, Joe, never missed an opportunity to tease me.  Then again, he didn't pass up a chance to flirt with a pretty girl, either.

"Cut it out, Joe!"  I growl through gritted teeth.  Heat creeps up from my neck to my cheeks, and the sprinkling of freckles there fade into red.  There's only so far I can shimmy down in the Model A's bench seat to hide myself from her sight.  I'd like very much to slug my brother for his fooling.

"Hey, Toots!"  He calls out the open window to the dark-haired girl walking behind our car.  "Want a ride?"

She doesn't even give him the satisfaction of looking our direction, which, in a way, makes his grin broaden.  Instead, she trains her deep brown eyes on the gravel immediately before her own two feet.  We all know that even if she wanted to ride with a troublemaker like my brother or mortified me, she'd have to pass it by her daddy.  Besides, she's nearly reached her destination and doesn't need our kind of help, if you could call it that.

I steal a peek in the mirror and watch her curls bob in time with her determined march.  If I wasn't so mad at Joe, I'd thank him for giving me more time with her.  Not that we ever really spent time together.  My brothers and I watched her walk past our house on her way to her job at the golf course all the time.  They watched, maybe, but I salivated.   Someday I'd work up the nerve to ask her on a proper date, but today wasn't going to be that day, thanks to my obnoxious brother.

One Year

In the cool of the evening I spent a few moments loving on and wandering around with my mare, not asking her for more than either of us could give.  Today I needed to be sure she was happy being with me, not burdened by my presence.  I gave her extra scratches under her chin and on her forehead, and perhaps a few more treats than she needed.

I put aside my checklist of things to accomplish and took a deep breath, remembering when things were as simple as enjoying our time together.  Moe would have wanted that, I think--and a few extra treats.

Miss you so very much, Moe.  I cannot believe it's been one whole year without you.  Nothing about me has been the same without you here.

Waiting

As I led the pony to the mounting block, ready for our ride, my mother yelled from the back porch.  Her voice didn't carry, only the sharp tone of urgency.  Mom-voice.

"Can't hear you!"  I replied as I settled in the saddle and moved my fingers to their mirrored positions on each side of the reins.

"LIGHTNING!"  She tried again, louder.  "Lightning from the clouds to the ground!  We're going inside!"

Were there other kinds of lightning?  I wasn't sure.  My parents, Floridians at heart, couldn't shake the habit of going into hiding whenever a storm hit.  "The lightning can strike a mile on all sides of the storm," I remember Mom telling me during one winter in the South.  This is Michigan, though, and I'm pretty sure our storms are underachievers, like just about everything else here.  Except for the storms that involved Mr. Ohboy's grandpa, who was struck by lightning on two separate occasions as he sat in the same chair in the same house.  That was clearly bad luck--it had nothing to do with the ferocity of the storm or taking proper cover.  Or the fact that he was wearing his tinfoil hat.  (Totally kidding about the tinfoil hat, but it sounded good).

But back to tonight...

Above me the sky reflected back a clear robin-egg blue.  To either side, grey clouds pushed forward with a rumble.  The pony didn't fret like an animal about to be deep-fried by a stray bolt of electricity, but something told me it might be part of her diabolical plan to be rid of me forever.  As the wisps of clouds advanced, I sighed and dismounted.  We waited out the blast of wind in the aisle of the pole barn, which struck me as probably more dangerous than being out in the open, but made me seem more responsible to anyone paying attention.  I'm not widely viewed as responsible.  I blame that on being the baby of the family.  And on being irresponsible, but whatever.

Eventually the sun broke through the clouds, and I led the pony back to the arena.  Our ride went well (in case you cared), though I cut it short because more thunder warned of another storm inching our way.  Before I could finish cleaning up and securing the barn for the evening, the canopy of sky overhead darkened.

Because I had walked down to the barn, I walked home.  The pasture stretched before me, the breeze tickling the tips of the grass, and all I could think of was my vulnerability.  The blackness feathering above me like the wings of a dark angel reminded me of my mortality.

If I died on that very spot, pierced through by pure energy, would my life have meant something?

Yes?  No?  I don't know.

My 35th birthday was a few days back, and I joked that I wanted warning if this was the year of the mid-life crisis.  To be honest, though, I felt like I've been in a mid-life crisis for twenty years.  Nothing is as I thought it would turn out, and that's not a bad thing, necessarily.  My younger self didn't dream, something I've grown to accept as the dreams have continued to elude me.  All I ever wanted was to be a horse trainer, rock star, and hopelessly in love.

My marriage does not resemble a chick flick, and I wish that was different, but we do the best we can clinging to each other as we roll with the punches.  Parents who have been dealt the challenging hand of children with special needs can probably understand.  To those who can't understand what that means to a family, to a couple, to a person--I pray you never have to understand, personally, but that you will understand anyway because others need your compassion instead of judgement.  Somehow, through it all, we're still here.  I don't know why we've been so lucky that way.  And I do know that we love each other, though it's not like 'The Notebook'.

Ryan Gosling.  Mmm.  Oh, sorry...  But, for real.  Ryan Gosling.

I'm not a horse trainer like I always wanted, though I train my horses every day.  In a way, I guess that one's true, too.  Sometimes it feels so pointless, especially when I try my hardest and there's still so much I don't know how to do.  Or when I spend my life building a relationship with a horse only to have to say good-bye, and usually on such tragic terms.  Every loss is a blow I can't quite put into words.

I'm only a rock star when I'm driving down the highway and belting out impossible notes along with Florence + the Machine.  Seriously, I am not sure what that sounds like to people who drive next to me with their windows down.  So, yeah.  NOT a rock star.

Writing was always a dream, but something that felt so utterly out of reach I never put much thought to it.  In this age of self-publishing and vanity houses, it's completely attainable now.  If I died tonight, I wouldn't be published.  For all I know, my manuscript is buried in an inbox somewhere important, awaiting a double-click that may never come.  If I died tonight, I'd spend the rest of eternity wondering if I'd ever have been worthy of an audience.  

In the end, I obviously made it to my home without being targeted by my very own lightning bolt, but the night is not over.  There are countless other things in my life that feel stagnant, blanketed in dust, ignored.  I've been quiet here because there hasn't been much to say, and that's how the inside of my head feels, too.  Still.  Holding.  Waiting.

But for what?

For dreams.  For direction.  For someone to tell me I'm better at this whole life thing than I think I am.  Is this what growing older is like?  Questioning and analyzing how differently it has all gone down?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

I haven't blogged in weeks.  Maybe you noticed.  Maybe you didn't.  Maybe you never even knew I had a blog.  Maybe you never cared to know the random things that pass through my brain.  If you didn't care, then I guess you wouldn't be here reading this now, so nevermind that bit.

At any rate, I've not had a lot to say.  A lot happened in April, but the words kept to themselves, mostly.

I lost a sweet horse, Mariah, to a heart-breaking decision I didn't want to have to make.  Her weight was good through the winter, but her joints just seemed to give way.  We spent the afternoon before the vet's visit brushing her and stuffing her full of the treats she loved so much...  After I had to chase her back to my property when she turned tail and ran through the neighbor's hay field.  That burst of spunk caused me to second-guess myself up until the moment she walked away from the barn for good.  Really, there wasn't anything to second-guess.  Even with her halting gait, she nearly bowled me over to go through the gate for the last time, never to return.  My step-dad says I'm reading too much into it--she was just a horse, after all--but I think she knew her time had come.  She was ready to be whole again in some other place.

Two days after we said good-bye to Mariah I began what I assumed would be the long process of horse-hunting and test-rides.  That day we looked at two ponies and bought the second one, a grey draft pony named Ellie.  She reminds me a lot of the pony I had when I was a kid, another horse I loved and lost.  Thank goodness I can think of that pony and smile.  The wounds are still a bit too fresh from losing my Moe and Mariah nine months from each other.  Back to Ellie, though--she is talented and quick, so I've been working at slowing her down and getting her back in shape for the kids to ride.  I've been riding a lot, for me, at over two hours a day in the saddle.  I'm one tired muchacha, most days.

My step-dad decided the tack room in our barn was in need of a major overhaul, so they began that project around the time they purchased the grey pony.  Now instead of dust, cobwebs, and mouse droppings, we have wood paneling, fluorescent lighting, and linoleum.  There are cross-ties for three horses instead of only one.  It's super-fancy.  You know, I've been riding for the past 30+ years in squalor so I don't know how to behave in nice places.  I might have to let the mice and birds into the tack room to relieve themselves, for old time's sake.

Yesterday my sister also bought a horse, a bay Tennessee Walker gelding.  His name WAS Henry, but he has been renamed "Romeo".  Despite my mare's (Trinity) best attempts to scare the bejeebies out of him with her crazy front legs and ear-splitting squeal, he is not very concerned with the goings-on of our barn.

The reintroduction of my family to the barn has been difficult.  For decades it has been my safe haven, the place I go to escape everything.  One by one, the horses are being replaced.  Board by board, [beautiful] improvements erase the little bits that remain of my memories of horses past.  The air is laced with the conversations of others instead of the whisper of the breeze.  It is all changing.  The changes are not all unpleasant, but, to me, they are all related--directly or indirectly--to losing a loved one.  I'm still grieving.  Not with the intensity I did when I lost Moe, but it's still there.  I'm crying for all of them.  There's little emotional leeway for much else.

Things have been happening in my non-horsey life, too.  A while ago I entered a contest attempting to attract the interest of a literary agent.  My submission didn't make it past the slushpile readers whose job it was to wade through all of the entries for the agents.  At the conclusion of the contest we were given a second chance to submit a Twitter pitch so the agents could see what they'd missed.  My Twitter pitch received requests from one agent and a brand new publishing company.  The agent ended up passing once she read my query and first several pages, but the publishing company requested my full manuscript two weeks ago.  Last night as Mr. Ohboy and I walked back from feeding the horses, I checked my e-mail and found a message from the publisher saying they were interested in signing me.

This afternoon I talked with the woman who runs the company, firing off questions and concerns and sharing our mutual disdain for "50 Shades of Grey" for over an hour.  The premise of the company is promising:  Treating writers with respect, fostering community amongst the authors in this house, allowing authors as much control as possible, and a lot of other things that made me feel comfortable about possibly letting this company help me bring my stories to the world.  The biggest problem?  They are so new their first round of acquisitions isn't set to publish for another month or so.  They are a total unknown.  On one hand, it's flattering to be considered for this fledgling company, getting in on the ground floor, so to speak.  On the other hand, I worry that once things get moving they will discover that their nice ideals and flexibility aren't making them money and all of those "pros" will disappear.  What if they don't survive?  What if they take my reputation with them?  I'm not sure if any of that makes any sense, but I've been processing it all day long.

The next step is to lay my eyeballs on their contract and figure out if it makes any sense to me.  It won't.  It's completely written in legal-ese.  I barely speak redneck-tinged English.

And then I think of this publisher, someone who doesn't know me from anyone, who personally read my manuscript and saw something of value in it, and in me.  Enough that she'd be willing to take a chance by bringing me in to be part of the building effort for her company.  It's scary and humbling, all at the same time.

I've not signed anything or given a commitment of any kind because all I've had is a nice phone conversation with a stranger.  Maybe I will wake up tomorrow and this will all be a weird dream, but tonight I will smile remembering her compliments.  I don't get enough of those, do you?

Also on the writing front--In April, I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo.  My hopes had been to add 30k words to a project I've been working on, a Young Adult thriller tentatively named "In the Middle".  With everything else going on, I managed about 10k.  This big "miss" did give me time to think about the plot a little, so look for more happening with that story in the near future.

What else?  Oh, I have a new nephew!  He's adorable and I need to visit him.  Other than that, I haven't had time for much else.  What about you?  Anything big happening where you are?

The Journey

She pressed her fingertips together, hesitating, with the demeanor of one who is far too familiar with delivering bad news to others, her eyes lowered to a haphazard stack of papers that may or may not have had anything to do with us.  My husband and I sat opposite her at her desk, hanging on her every word. When she spoke again, she spoke words that changed our lives forever. What did it mean that our son probably had a place on the spectrum? The “spectrum” sounded like an airy, whimsical place where all might be sunshine and daisies. The scream and shuffling from the other side of the office door confirmed that was not the case. Of course, she added quickly, she didn’t have the ability to diagnose him, but she had seen hundreds, nay, thousands of children just like ours, and he fit the description.

Are you okay, she asked quietly and genuinely, leaning forward to peer over the top of her eyeglasses. A lump had formed firmly in my throat, and my eyes had moistened instantaneously. The voice of the child psychologist we had seen several weeks ago echoed in my ears, promising us hectic years to come should we choose to pursue finding help. Hectic but rewarding, he had promised in not so many words.

I looked quickly to my husband, who smiled weakly and perhaps tried to utter a shaky response, I don’t know. I turned away from him to try to regain my composure. What this translated to was that I was becoming lost in self-despair imagining my next few years saturated in driving, endless appointments, and medical bills beyond my wildest dreams. This moment was born and bred for self pity, it couldn’t be helped.

---

I felt my eyes inadvertently widen as we entered the large, yellow room. Most of the floors and walls were covered with padding. There were pulleys and ropes anchored to the ceiling, resembling what I could only imagine a modern-day torture chamber may look like. Nearby a child flashed an awkward and toothless grin at me and said “hello”, prompted by a woman shuffling through a binder. He wore large headphones on his ears, fastened in place with a sweatband. His legs and arms were wrapped in ACE bandages, as if at any moment Richard Simmons might walk through that door and lead him through a rousing bit of “Sweatin’ to the Oldies”. I had officially entered a brand new world.

---

There it was again. I groaned inwardly, wishing I could just bury my head under a pillow and pretend that I didn’t hear it. A loud, rhythmic impact to his door, followed and covered and criss-crossed, and, please God, make it stop, by ear-splitting shrieks. Maybe I had been sleeping for half an hour, perhaps an hour—my eyes couldn’t focus on the clock even with the aid of the blue light from the baby’s nightlight. My husband was still at work, plugging away at what had to be another one of the twenty-hour days that were becoming all-too frequent in his line of work. So it’s my turn by default.

When I reach the door, it is still quaking and threatening to splinter in an undertone to the commotion behind. He is there, hovering behind the door, with surprisingly dry eyes despite the fact that a messy homicide possibly could have taken place with less noise and much less dramatics. Already I can see that his forehead is dark in the old familiar place. His eyebrows are furrowed as he whines and attempts to push past me with his shoulders into the hallway. I push him backward with a hand, and sit down in front of the door, asking him to please, please, please! lay down and go to sleep. He wails, and, because I am blocking the door, decides that the wall is a viable alternative.

He bangs his head on the wall, a sickening noise for anyone who has been privileged to hear it often enough to make it an hourly occurrence. Sometimes it was a somewhat sedate clunk against a vertical or horizontal surface, depending on if he had thrown himself to the floor in a tantrum. At other times, it was a frenetic, arm-flailing, eyes-closed, full-out run into the wall head-first. Either situation should never, ever happen. I have long since grown tired of explaining the perpetual bruise to strangers, who certainly must think secretly I am beating my child for his obvious lack of manners.

I choose to carry him to my room so he can lay by my side and rest. Which he does for approximately as long as it takes for his head to hit the pillow, then he immediately sits up in bed, revived. I fall into a restless sleep, subconsciously aware that he is pacing three sides of a table nearby, studying it with first one eye, then the next, all the while cooing in his own unique way, over and over. When I pry open my heavy eyes again, he is staring at me, his dark eyes glowing in the dim light cast by the nightlight. He has turned away from me and is doing an odd, repetitive jerking motion with his upper body, stooping forward a little, then snapping upright, all the while cooing and occasionally turning his head to focus on me. I am scared.

---

His haircut is cute and close-cropped, showing off the deepness of his eyes. We are sitting at a booth in the restaurant, fawning over him and discussing how his lack of hair really makes him appear so much older. He is looking out of the corner of his eye at something in his line of periphery. And then he keeps looking, turning his head in the opposite direction while still looking out the corner of his eye. We laugh because we don’t know it’s not funny. And then he does it the other way.

---

The room is dark, the large window providing the only light. The chairs try hard to be comfortable and accommodating, but I shift and yawn and wish I was curled up in bed instead. We stare at them as we might tropical fish in a large tank. Just like those fish, we are unable to do much to affect their movements, their motions, but we continue watching and waiting for a single moment in time when we might experience wonder.

He is beside me, playing with a container full of small plastic animals the therapist has given him to help pass the time. I try to tune him out, as it is difficult to hear conversation over him. He has given to laughing and coaching his brother through the glass as of late

I feel a light touch on my arm, and turn to look at him. He is holding a plastic gorilla on my arm and smiling slyly, those liquid eyes swimming in the light from the other room.
Huntie, what is that, he asks, looking to me to repeat the question so he may enlighten me.

What is that, I ask quietly, smiling at his playfulness as the gorilla remains on my arm until I ask the question.

It’s a monkey… on shoulder, he states plainly, surprising me because I didn’t know he knew the word “shoulder”.

---

A small crowd has gathered, and we willingly place him on display like a sideshow act, or maybe, just maybe, like parents do when their children do something adorable that the whole world needs to know about and bear witness to: A child learning to shake a diapered behind to a beat, taking a precarious step, some milestone… Something altogether more normal, more right, than what we are showcasing.

The tip of the Sharpie marker is suspended over nothingness, placed with the utmost care by chubby yet dexterous hands and the precision afforded by eagle eyes. Everyone’s attention is fixated entirely on him, and he seems to notice none of it as he works. He has moved on to place another marker on the edge of the desk, tip over the edge the very same amount as the one before, and the one before that, and the one before that.

A devious giggle escapes from someone who has decided to disrupt the process by moving the markers from position. It is meant to amuse us only, because the panic he is stricken with as he tries to make it right again, as he tries to reorder the chaos in his life, cannot and will not ever be amusing to him.

---

The voice on the other end falters, hesitating a little before she blurts out that she doesn’t know what that diagnosis means. When she tries to pronounce it, it sounds a little bit like sensory disintegration dysfunction, which I can only imagine would assuredly be a pity to behold. I let out a slow, even breath, trying to hide my agitation at this young girl—and, more distinctly, the company she works for. No, no, it’s sensory integration dysfunction, and would the diagnosis codes I have here help? She jots the codes down in my paperwork and promises we will hear back from someone soon.

And we do.

A big, fat packet of papers arrives in the mail several days later, congratulating us, announcing to the world that we have been accepted for coverage by their fabulous company. What a wise choice we made! How easy it was to get excited and skip over the smaller print that informs us we will pay more because I am obese and my husband has mysterious health issues. With no word or inkling of any apology for the inconvenience, they inform us that our child is not covered at all. Thank you, and have a very nice day.

As I speak with Customer Service, I ask them, with some measure of disbelief, what this means, even though I am a bright person who can read and interpret for herself what seems to be very straightforward. My mind is not grasping it all: How can a child who is in many ways so normal not be granted even the most basic of medical care?

I find I am not above begging and pleading, just a little bit, as I barrage the Customer Service agent with questions leaping out of a very distressed and positively aching place in my heart. So what you’re telling me is that even if I promised to never, ever submit a claim pertaining to do with his delays and subsequent therapy, he still would not be granted coverage? She assures me what I’m saying is her company’s stance, and we part ways.

I’m not sure how long I cried, tired and angry and hurt and frustrated. Not only am I upset for my child, I am upset for what the thousands of families who are presented with this situation every day. The insurance company in essence, says my child is a liability, a loss, someone in whom it is not fiscally advantageous for them to invest. They are grabbing my son’s shoulders, spinning him about-face, and pushing him out the open door, only to slam it in his bewildered face. It is your problem, they mumble from the other side of the door. We wish we could help now, really we do, but maybe you should return when he is an adult and what we could have helped you change as a child cannot be reversed. The struggles he will face in school are not our concern—isn’t that what the school system is for, after all?

No, and no, and NO! It cannot be!

I curse the insurance company. I curse money. I curse my husband for leaving employment where the health coverage was not at all perfect but was one of a small handful of companies that did pay a percentage eventually. I curse myself for not knowing that I was going to have such difficulties procuring new insurance. Suddenly, the move from a job that assured us that Daddy was just a paycheck and quite possibly a figment of our imaginations felt like a huge failure in our strategy to live happily ever after.

---

My face glows red, and I start feeling condescending, inconvenienced eyes focusing, one by one, upon me, upon him. He is beside me, tossing and turning, screaming and screeching, occasionally surprising or hurting me by grazing my face with a limb. My bag of tricks is empty, torn to pieces, stomped into dust, and he is still making a scene worthy of an Oscar. Thank heavens no one has had the gall to walk up to us and make a snide comment, for there would be no stopping my tears.

I am tired, but no one ever asks if I am tired. Naptime for the children is the closest thing to liquid gold I have, yet it does not come often enough or coincide nearly enough to give me the time to recharge my batteries. When all seems well and children are resting, I find that, all too often, I must wake them up to pick up my eldest from school. Or perhaps children from the neighborhood come over to play and cause such a commotion that sleeping children arise too soon. There is little question in my mind that I am known as the grumpy lady on our street, and as much as I wish it weren’t so, I have little control over my emotions to be anyone different. I am tired of being compared to others in my family who are also struggling. I am tired of being told that God only gives us as much as we can handle. I am tired of being told that with great privilege there comes great responsibility.

All I want at this very moment is a sedate breakfast with my mother. I have stopped hoping that maybe he will eat this time.

The waitress brings us a children’s menu, the kind printed on a disposable placemat, and a small pack of crayons. He should be the age where coloring sparks some interest, but the effort to hold the crayon at all, no less with an effective grasp, is difficult and he has stopped attempting it long ago. Instead, he yells, eyes focused on the crayons, which I am thankful for. Often his cries are not accompanied by cues that let someone know what he wants, leaving that person to play a frantic game of Is this what you want? until he stops his tantrum.

The crayons are unwrapped and placed before him, where he grabs them quickly and begins his work. With the poise and precision of a surgeon, he places the first crayon on the table. It stands, now, balancing on the flat end, pointed end up like a colored picket fence. His hands move carefully away as to not ruin his masterpiece, fingers splayed outwards as he makes his cautious retreat. This calculated process plays over and over as crayon number two, crayon number three, and crayon number four all find their places in line.

My mother grabs another pack of crayons as he is working, and places them in front of him. He continues in relative silence, save for the ever-present coo that means he is ordering his world and trying to forget he is part of ours. With all eight crayons in formation, he is eyeing them with more wonder than pride. I am not sure whether I should be scared or amused or something else altogether, but I manage to squeak out a teary, weak giggle.

I’ve never seen anything like that, my mother says breathlessly.

---

Several years have passed since the difficult start of our journey.  You are still the same boy you always were, tender-hearted and passionate.  Though your body is beginning to stretch and change, you still watch and absorb all around you with those liquid brown eyes the size of dinner plates.  Nothing melts your heart quicker than a baby.  You're a horse whisperer in search of a horse to listen.  As much as it pains me, literally, you are especially gifted at building amazing things out of Legos--if only your talent extended to picking them up when you were finished.  Most of the time, your best friends are your brothers, but you hold a special bond with a sweet little classmate who has loved you from the very start.  

Besides the gift of having you as my son, besides learning how to float along in life when circumstances threatened to drag me under, you reignited my spark.  With all of the struggles we went through, I had to write to make sense of everything.  Writing reminded me of where we began, and gave me hope that our story would grow into something so much better.  Words still aren't your thing.  But I like to think you gave most of your words to me so I would have more.

Thank you for being my sweet bean.  If I could go back, I would take away all the hard, all the sad, all the obstacles that you will face day after day.  All of that I would gladly lift from you and place upon myself, if only I could.... but I would never change you.  I love you.

Shiny Wheels

That winter, I became a snowbird.  More than anything, I didn't want to be a snowbird.  None of my friends were snowbirds, and I envied them.  Their evenings were full of high-school basketball games, parties, and pointless flirting.  Life wintering in Florida meant Bingo nights in the clubhouse surrounded by shrinking, silver people, watching school on the VCR,  and  making long-distance friends on an infant Internet because social media wasn't a thing yet.  Paradise surrounded me, and I couldn't appreciate it.  I felt alone, because I was alone.  My parents didn't count as real people.  Psssh!  Of course they didn't.

The Internet led me to Matt, a boy who lived in Ft. Myers, forty-five minutes away.  Sight unseen, we struck up an odd friendship, and began talking on the telephone for hours at a time.  After a couple weeks of daily phone calls, we decided to take our relationship to the next level.  Yes, it was finally time to meet in person.

My mother, whose sense of paranoia surpassed "To Catch a Predator"'s Chris Hansen, felt certain that this boy was a 40-year-old serial rapist targeting his next victim.  Eventually, I exhausted her in the way that only a whiny teenage girl can, and she reluctantly allowed this meeting to happen.  Our two rules were that we could only meet somewhere public and that we would remain within sight of a parent at all times.  There would be no stalking or abduction on Mama's watch, nosir!

Matt and I--parents chaperoning, of course--planned to drive to town for a noontime lunch at Cheeburger on Saturday, giving me enough time to take a morning riding lesson and get cleaned up.  At 2 p.m., he called from a pay phone outside the Burger King at our interstate exit.  The boy was two hours late, an unpardonable offense according to my growling stomach.  Strike 1.

"Sorry,"  he shrugged.  "I was washing my wheels."

I've never considered myself to be God's gift to the male species, ever.  However, I know that I am more valuable than shiny wheels.  Most girls are.

We made our way to Cheeburger, where Matt scanned the menu for a while before finally deciding on the 1/2-pound cheeseburger, fries, and a salad.

"But put the dressing on the side," he instructed the waitress.  "I'm on a diet."

My friend Matt was not a small guy, by any definition of the word.  I called shenanigans on his attempt to appear health-conscious.

When the bill came at the end of our meal, he silently allowed my step-dad to pay for his share.  I wondered if he remembered bragging to me about the fifty bucks his mom had given him for the day's gas and food.  Strike 2.

Our next stop was King Richard's, a medieval-themed arcade and miniature golf center.  We'd barely stepped inside the doors when my mother asked if I wanted to go with her to the restroom.

Yes, boys.  Sometimes when we travel in packs to the bathroom, it's because we are talking about you.  We really aren't afraid of something happening to us like a monster waiting to gobble us up if we go in there alone.

"Do you want us to leave you alone with Matt while we're here?"  She asked as the bathroom door swung closed behind us.

I shook my head so violently I nearly gave myself whiplash.  Truth be told, I hoped he would be gone by the time we walked back out to the lobby.  If only we weren't his ride back to his truck.

"Okay."  She smiled.

Only, that's not how it worked.

Somehow I ended up by myself with Matt, playing a round of miniature golf while my parents disappeared.  I imagine they were hiding around the corner, laughing at how visibly uncomfortable I was in Matt's presence.  They probably figured making me squirm would discourage me from trying to meet any more of my cyber friends.

As we slowly made our way around the range, Matt turned to me and whined, "They're being so unfair to me by not letting us be alone."  After my skin stopped crawling, I silently thanked my paranoid mother for all of her rules.  Strike 3, Matt, just because I could.... and because it was about time for you to strike out and head back to the dugout.

Soon after, we dropped Matt off at Burger King, where his shiny truck waited to   carry him home.  My parents made an excuse about other plans they'd made--a lie we made come true because they're both honest people.

I let out a sigh of relief as we drove away from where he stood, open-mouthed, next to his impeccable vehicle.

Advice To My Younger Self

Write the letter, if you must.  All 30 pages of it.  Pour the words from your heart like water from a pitcher.  Get it all out--every last drop--until you've said all you need to say.  Then destroy it.  I don't care how the letter meets its end.  Fire.  Paper shredder.  Teething puppy.  Computer trash can.  Whatever.

Don't you dare send that letter.  If you have a novella of angst and emotion pent up inside, sharing it all with that person isn't likely to change a thing.  It will, however, come back to haunt you like the gamble you took when scarfing down that grey-looking burrito from the gas station that one time.

Keep a journal, a diary, a blog instead, but be prepared to cringe when you look back.  You're constantly growing and changing as a person, gathering life experience and wisdom by the arm-loads.  What you fiercely believe now will probably be only a speck of what you hold to be true 10 or 20 years from now....  Don't be a bit surprised if you don't even recognize the person you used to be a decade or two down the road.

The world is so different now then it was when I was younger and figuring everything out.  I thank God that I was not born to this generation, where every racing, uncensored thought can be shared instantly.  I didn't need the extra help, finding my way in the most awkward way possible.  My younger family members are traveling these well-worn paths.  They are falling fast and hard in love and lashing out for offenses they won't remember when the sun rises tomorrow.  They are baring their souls on page and screen, words that can't be returned or wiped clean.

It's tough, this growing up.  It's hard to look back and know where you would have chosen differently.  It's even worse to have a liftetime witness.

Burn the letter.  You are more incredible--today, yesterday, 10 years ago--than you will ever know.  You don't need the letter to convince him, promise.

It Strikes Again.

My husband has the flu.  Again.  It's like the third time this winter.

It just hit me that this is his way of getting a day to lie around in bed.  Thirteen years, and it's finally sunk in.  Sure, he'll argue that he would much rather not get sick, but I know the truth.  He's a baby.

When I had the flu nastiness a couple weeks ago, he left me for 10 hours to work.  Working is good, don't get me wrong.  But working on the weekend while four kids are home from school and wreaking havoc while the little lady--me!--is burrowed under layers of blankets trying to ward off the chills... Not so good.  The shining moment of that particular day was having to fight the nausea and dizziness to walk down to the barn to take care of the animals because he forgot to on his way out...  Not my favorite.  And you better believe I am keeping score!  ;-)  

We have a long history of dramatic flu here.  The most vivid was the flu bug of July 2009.  Some guy (who will remain nameless) was up and down all night, illin', and then proceeded to nap in bed the entire next day.  Meanwhile, it was actually THE due date of our fourth Ohboy.  In the middle of early labor contractions, I ran to the grocery store to buy someone else Gatorade, popsicles, and chicken noodle soup, then spent the rest of the day taking care of the kids.  As contractions picked up in the afternoon, I took the boys to the pool to distract all of us.  At 6 p.m., with the clammy husband still lying in state in our bed, I marched in our room and demand he get up and pull himself together.  Our baby was coming, and soon.

It was childbirth.  By default, I won.  His arguments were irrelevant.  There was no way on God's green earth that I was having a baby--in the birth tub in our room or on our bed--with him lying useless under the covers.  If nothing else, by forcing him to sit upright with a cramping, nauseated stomach, I was teaching him empathy.  I'm not above feeling almost happy that he had to go through that with me.  That's right, I'm kind of cruel like that.

Or the flu we all had when Ohboy #3 was a newborn.  My husband left the room in favor of sleeping on the couch.  He thought he was being considerate, but what that really amounted to was my having to get up to change and feed the baby by myself smooshed in between mad dashes to the the restroom.  Yep, still keeping score.

So tonight, as my husband is curled up next to me sleeping it off and I gather up  some extra oomph to get dressed to take care of the animals, I am notching one more point on my side.  We'll never, ever be even, but at least now I know without a doubt that this man--strong as he is--is still a marshmallow..... or a really good actor.

Rest well, Mr. Ohboy, for you will pay tomorrow.  Muahahaha!

Falling In Love

I feel bad for those of you who don't fall in love every day.

Maybe I'm a sap, deep down inside.  It's always been this way.  Sometimes it is embarrassing, but usually I think it's one of my better traits.  As cynical and sarcastic as I might seem, people do matter to me.  Odds are, you're one of the people who matter.  And I hope that, even just a little, I have mattered to you.

~ Putting on gloves to make sure my best friend's baby doesn't fall on the floor.
~ Is it Mardi Gras?
~ Benchpressing three women and still not hitting the spot, except when it comes to pocket-dialing 9-1-1.
~ Can I get you a glass of water?
~ Peach tea--I don't drink tea, but you can try to convert me!--and, please, punch me in the stomach as soon as that contraction ends.
~ That was not a firm, warm hug.  What a load of....
~  Uhhhh, are you anywhere near a hospital?
~ I'm sorry, Jen.  You're just not strong enough.  Go get him from the lobby.  [reuniting a banished husband with a mom who needed every ounce of his strength.  To date, one of the most beautiful and exhausting experiences I've ever had]
~You're doing wonderfully.  Say hello to my lactation consultant friend.
~ Here, honey.  I just Googled this labor position.
~ Come sit down next to me... and... it's okay your water broke.  These weren't my good Crocs.
~ Blissful immediate skin-to-skin bonding instead of hours of isolation [true for several of my families].  Happy sigh!  My work here is done.
~ You've never met this woman before?  Nope.  Nice to meet you.  Did you want the vitamin K shot?
~ This is the spreadsheet I want you to fill out.  Do you have a finance degree, by any chance?  No?  Well....  Good luck.
~ The epitome of the perfect Bradley method family.  I wish I had a magic wand.
~ A family that became like my own.  Sorry about your sweater.
~ Kids, you're up just in time to meet your new brother.
~ Let your body move in whatever way it needs to.
~ I'm sorry I ate all of your hummus and you can see my sister's bra.  I made you this cute hat(?).... scarf.
~ The Jewish community places high value on sarcasm.  [Now I understand why I function so well within the Jewish community.]
~ Now that I've found you, I may never leave. Stupid GPS.
~ Sweet Virginia, and an even-sweeter family.
~ Happy anniversary to you.  It's not often I get invited to a romantic dinner for five.
~ Baby Moe.  Oh....  Baby Moe.
~ I recognize the toddler in the visitor lounge.  That can't be good....
~ Sifting a baby right out.  Mimosas and chocolate chip pancakes for all!
~ Advocating so well for yourself that you nearly shoot the eyebrows off of your Ghandi-like midwife.
~ Like a Boss.
~ Eating Snickerdoodle bars with your husband even though you are fasting.  I'm glad you are my friend and will forgive me when all is said and done.  <3
~ They keep telling me my baby is smart, and yet she wants to stay breech.  Is she smart or isn't she?  (It turns out, she was smart and so were they).  Oversharers = my peeps.
~Fist-bump between pushes.... and ice cream and chocolate sauce solves everything.

~ You were never broken.  (And I greatly appreciate anyone who giggles at a good "balls" joke.)

~ Seven diapers in one hour is no joke.

~ You did Fantasti*con.... and I'm not just saying that to be creepy.  :-)

There are more moments than time and words to share, but I add to this rich mosaic one piece at a time.  It may be nonsense or silly to you, but to me, it is the reason I do what I do.  It is why I return the e-mails, make the calls, drive the miles, sip the lattes, and wedge myself into impossible pretzels in the corner of that birthing room.  Because I meet and fall in love with hopeful people all the time.

Looking Over My Shoulder

2012.  I wish I could say with any sort of conviction that I'm ready to see you go.  The truth is, I'm not.  A new year brings yet another milestone that puts distance between me and a best friend lost.  Yes, milestones work in reverse....  Instead of triumphing in growing and becoming, I am painfully aware of the minutes as they tick away and disintegrate what we once had.  The holidays are a time to spend with loved ones, a time to remember loved ones departed.  I can tell you, for me, it's true.  There is an odd comfort in missing him, in remembering and letting the tears come.  The sadness means a part of him is still here.  Maybe when he crosses my mind, it is because he is thinking of me.  I realize perhaps that's a ridiculous notion, but I cling to it anyway.

Hand-in-hand with the passing of my dear horse, this has also been the year of perseverance.  For so long I thought I would never have the opportunity to have a passion other than horses, something that I could pour myself into and possibly support my family... eventually.  We should all be so lucky--to find that thing we love to do so much we would do it for free.  Last year I realized I wanted to write something, just to see if I had it in me.  As the words found their way to the page, a long-dormant part of me awakened.  Purpose.  Life.

And then I lost Moe, and, for a while, my purpose, too.

For so many weeks--months, even--following his passing, I stared at my laptop, fingers frozen in place.  It would take me an entire day to form a few sentences, and even those lacked the spark of joy.  Still, I pressed on, knowing there was no choice.  I kept at it until I completed my second draft in October, took a week off, and dove back in to my next installment. There was no other choice.  I could never be happy with this story left in limbo, one more thing to mourn.

2012 has been a year of dramatic change in my life and in myself.  I've not figured out how to spin it all positively, because some things simply do not have  a silver lining.  But I am still here, and I'm glad you are, too.

May 2013 be a year of restoration and blessing for us all.  I think most of us could use that.

Empty Stall

He's captive in this little box, tangled among all the little things that made me me.  Dew on the morning grass, wings to fly, easy laughter, innocence.  Where he has gone, my joy has followed.  Each day, I struggle to keep the lid shut tight, to hold too fiercely to something that has long since slipped away.  It's all changing--the light, the season, even me.  How can there be a spot of my heart that's left to split?

***

Tonight I fed the horses in the dark.  They were quiet, not hungry and frenzied as they usually are around dinnertime.  I found out that was because they'd already eaten dinner, so the hay I'd thrown out was a bonus feeding.  The sweet aroma of pine drifted to me, and I turned to see my mom had thrown some shavings in one of the stalls for the horses to enjoy.  The stall we'd kept locked since July 10th had been opened, an open invitation for the mares to come in and explore the straw bedding within.  That stall, that very straw was the last place my sweet boy laid his head before we put him down.  He groaned and stretched and closed his eyes almost happily, even though he was in unspeakable pain.  Even though minutes later he would stand, with my help, and be led from the barn for the very last time.

I never intended it to be a shrine to Moe.  It was a waste of straw to be used in the summer for my pasture-kept ladies.  I locked it up with a zip-tie that day, and there it's sat for all this time.  And, yet, a shrine is exactly what it became, in the end.  It was his stall, even though my horses don't have assigned stalls.  Every evening he would rush in there with a gruff nicker while I worked on scooping out his Equine Senior, so anxious to eat he would impatiently come back out of the stall and follow too closely behind me to make sure I was coming.  He'd been losing teeth in those last years, and gumming his dinner took forever, but I wish he was still here.... I'd let him take five times as long if he was just here again.  Soon, the straw will need to be removed, soiled and useless.  One more reminder he was here, that it all happened, will break down and disappear forever.

Tonight that open, empty stall peeled back the corner of the scab.  I know the wound will never fully heal, but I had hopes that, over time, it would become easier.  This is not easier.

Farewell

I'm freshly-back from the last installment of the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn Part 2.  And I've got to say, I'm so conflicted.  Because so many have not yet seen the movie yet, I am not going to comment on specifics other than:  (a) why do I have to pick a "Team"?  I'm not that picky, and pretty much everyone on the cast is gorgeous; and (b) it was fan-flipping-tastic.  Now for a few random thoughts in no particular order....

I hate endings.  I want to grow old with these familiar friends.  Eventually Rob Pattinson will lose all of his hair and Taylor Lautner will pack on 80 pounds, so maybe it's better to remember them this way.  Still, I couldn't help feeling sad when the end credits rolled and the official good-byes (at least for now) were said.

When I'm feeling particularly low, I flip on New Moon, the second film in the saga.  I refer to it as my "comfort movie".  Some people have comfort food (okay, I have that, too) or a hideaway.  Me, I've got a somewhat-cheesy, totally depressing, co-dependent movie.  This goes back to a pivotal winter when this movie happened to be in the theaters.  Everything seemed to be changing, and the movie was so melancholy that it just fit.  I saw it eight times in the theater.  Maybe that's pathetic, but I am still here to tell the tale, and I am only a teensy bit more cynical about life in general.  So, well done, New Moon.

More than anything, it makes me long for a piece of what these literary series have done, and done so well:  Knitting together a community of dreamers.  When we are moved to dream, to imagine, we remember that we are surrounded by wonder.  Life is full of infinite possibilities, our own plot to advance and thicken.  I pray that someday I will stumble across the characters who will inspire others to create, to laugh, and to love.

Farewell, Twilight.  You weren't perfect, by any stretch of the word, but you reminded me that I still have stories left to tell.  I'm forever grateful.

He Is

He is...

Spindly legs.

They say he will learn to put each one in proper place as he grows.

They were wrong.



He is...

A velvet nose.

He is sniffing, touching, testing, mouthing all the world has to offer.

And even some things it does not.



He is...

The perfect heart

Child-like, forgiving, trusting, loyal to the final flicker of life.

And loyal even yet.


****

I have been looking at baby pictures of some friends and recent clients.  I am led to flip back through some of my older Facebook photos, where little Ohboy's age could be counted in weeks and months rather than years.  His smile is the same in those photos, only now it is deepened with words and experience.

It makes me wonder about my Moe-Moe.  I've never seen him as a foal, but I imagine him much the same:  Gangly and awkward, hungry and inquisitive.  The idea of my beloved guy as a beloved little guy brings happy tears to my eyes.  What a character I know he was.  These things seldom change, even with age.

Miss you, as always, Moe.  Where you are, a big piece of my heart has followed.

I've Been Everywhere, Man

Day 1 – Saturday, September 8, 2012

My husband set his phone alarm for 4 p.m. instead of a.m., so we were forced to jump into action when my step-dad called to check if we were awake at 4:15 a.m.  We left the house at about 4:45 a.m., only 15 minutes behind schedule.

We were able to sit by one another on the plane, and I leaned on my husband most of the time, sleeping.

We landed in Vegas at about 8:15 a.m.  Once we got our rental car, a grey Toyota Camry, we drove down the strip and ended up at the Stratosphere.  I wanted the boys to go to the top and see the view, as well as ride some rides, but tickets to the top were $18/person.  Yikes.  Instead, we opted for the buffet there.  I got three plates and a piece of chocolate cake, which blew the teenager's mind.  I explained to him that the first time I went to Vegas I was pregnant with his now three-year-old brother and had morning sickness, so I wasn’t very hungry then.  I needed to make up for that lost time. 

We decided to drive to the Bellagio to see how cool the inside was.  The Conservatory was full of flowers and hot air balloons, a bridge, and a carousel.  Then we left Vegas.  Sad face!

The Hoover Dam was 45 minutes away, and we walked to the midpoint to look at that.  It was 104 degrees out--super-hot!  I changed my shirt in the car in the parking lot, ninja-like, after having changed from jeans into shorts in the bathroom.  Much cooler. 

Early on, the teenager discovered he is really not a fan of heights, which is ironic, since half of the things we have planned to see during this trip revolve around extreme heights.  We also thought the girl who took our money for admission looked a lot like Velma from Scooby-Doo.  Jinkies.

From the Hoover Dam, we headed to the Grand Canyon.  A room had been reserved for us at the historic El Tovar hotel, which is right on the southern rim of the canyon.  We hiked for a little bit, then went to eat dinner at the Bright Angel restaurant, which was just down the path to the west.  The sun set as we were finishing up dinner, but, as it turns out, it wasn’t as pretty as any of us imagined it would be.

After dinner, we took the boy back to the room to let him relax, and the husband and I went to the piano bar of our hotel and got dessert (chocolate-mocha mouse in a chocolate taco with some weird green fruit/mint sauce for embellishment).  Our waiter was trying to do too many things at a time, and it took us FOREVER to get our food, bill, and etc., but finally we left our money with the girl at the bar and went back to the room.  On our way, we saw our waiter rushing down the hall, apparently fresh from delivering room service.  I bet he was frustrated, thinking we’d skipped out on our bill.

I did T-Tapp BWO+, then fell asleep reading a Kindle book.  An extremely busy day 1.

Day 2 – Sunday, September 9, 2012

I woke up around 6:20 a.m.  The husband had been up for an hour, waiting on a ledge on the south rim of the Grand Canyon for the sun to show itself.  While he and the teenager took turns showering, I put on my new trail running shoes and headed off to the east from where we were staying at the El Tovar hotel.  I’m not sure how far I ran…. I thought it was Grandeur Point at first, but I can’t find that on a map.  Maybe Yaki Point?  I estimate it was 1.5 miles to where I decided to turn back, making it a 3-mile trip that I, a non-runner, attempted at an elevation of over 6,000 feet.  No wonder I was panting like a dog, which I would try to disguise whenever I passed another tourist.  Not that any of them were running, but I still felt like I needed to pretend like I was a finely-tuned machine.

I wandered out to the ledge at whatever the point was where I turned back, and looked over the edge.  Quickly, I stepped back and returned to the path, thinking that with all of my running and the altitude that I could easily become dizzy and fall to my death, which would be such a silly and horrible way to go.

Part of the path wound inches from nothingness, just a small stone border.  Amazing and awful, all at the same time.

After getting cleaned up and checking out, we drove into town (Tusayan) to get fuel and breakfast.  Extra value meals were $8 at McDonalds and fuel was over $4.50 a gallon.  It’s expensive out here.

GPS told us to head back through the Grand Canyon National Park to head toward Bryce Canyon, so we did, pulling off a few times at overlooks and the Indian Watchtower.  I had been eyeing a book chronicling all of the deaths that had taken place in the Canyon throughout recorded history [Over the Edge:  Death in the Grand Canyon], despite the boys telling me that it was a sick/wrong thing to be interested in.  When they finally admitted that they would probably both read the book, as well, I gave in and bought it.  For the next four hours I read (and read aloud) all of the craziness that had occurred over the years.  When we arrived at Bryce Canyon, I was, needless to say, extremely paranoid of the guys stepping close to the edge. 

On our way to Bryce Canyon, we stopped for lunch in Kanab at this odd BBQ place that had all kinds of props for you to take photos with in the courtyard directly outside the restaurant.  The cook looked like Tommy Chong.  After our meal and exploring the courtyard, we went in the gift shop and looked around—the boys played a target shooting game they had in one of the side rooms.  Such a fun, weird place.

In Bryce Canyon, we stayed at Bryce Canyon Pines, which didn’t look like a whole lot from the outside, but they turned out to be very homey.  They upgraded us to a big room, though, which had three bedrooms, a kitchenette, two bathrooms, and a living room.  Not what I expected at all!  The teenager was thrilled to have his own room, which is the only time it would happen all trip long.

We went to Bryce Canyon for a little while, as I said earlier, just before sunset.  We hiked a trail down from Sunrise Point (elevation of about 8000 feet) down to where a trail was to lead us to a section called the Queen’s Gardens.  Supposedly it was only a .8-mile hike, but I’m pretty sure they were lying.  Climbing back up was pretty rough (especially after my 3-mile run this morning) and I felt dizzy.  Maybe I wasn’t cut out for hiking the mountains.

From there, we drove over to Sunset Point.  A rock formation jutted out (Inspiration Point??), and the husband climbed out to the edge for a dramatic photo.  I had to go out there with him, all the while talking to a lady sitting nearby about the Death in the Grand Canyon book I’d been reading.  Ironic.

We ate dinner at the restaurant directly under our room.  They had funny books to read while we waited, and their food was reasonable, considering everything out here is so expensive.

We are tired now, even though it is technically only 9 p.m.  Early end of day 2.

Day 3 – September 10, 2012

We woke up early in Bryce Canyon and tried to go do some laundry and get some coffee but the deadbolt on our door wouldn’t open.  When maintenance finally opened the door for us, we walked to the office to figure out where the laundry was (turns out it was down the road and to the left, in a Chevron station).  It was colder, 50, so we decided river rafting was probably not the best idea.  High temps of 63 and a guarantee to get wet sounded unbearably chilly.

We hit the road, bound for Salt Lake City, UT.  Somewhere on the road, the boy said he felt like he needed to throw up, and he did…. In a paper gift bag from something he purchased at the Grand Canyon.  We kept yelling at him to get out of the car, not to vomit in the rental car and incur more fees.  They made it a point of telling us we would be charged more if we left litter in the car, so I’m pretty sure that applies to vomit, as well.  Once he was done yakking on the side of the road, he tossed the bag out on the roadside, against our better judgment.  I’d like to see anyone convict us…..  Oddly enough, there wasn’t a trash can on the side of the road at that particular mountain pass.

We waded through an awful gauntlet of construction to grab a quick breakfast at a Burger King/gas station in Beaver, UT.  There was a jar next to the cash register that had those Livestrong-type bracelets screaming “I <3 Beaver”.  I wanted to buy one, but I didn’t.  I know, I’m classy. 

When I went to sign my receipt, the clerk handed me a pen with a flower taped to the end. 

“I like your pen.”  I commented.

“Yeah,”  She smiled.  “We do that so no one steals our pens.”

“I guess that if you see a trucker with a flower pen, you’ve caught him red-handed.”  I agreed. 

As we approached Salt Lake City, storms were apparent over the lake.  It seemed like our plans to swim might be hindered.  As we didn’t know where exactly to go to swim in the Salt Lake, anyway, we made our way to a Target to buy some towels and other things we realized we’d need.  This Target also had a Starbucks, which is something we hadn’t seen since leaving Las Vegas Saturday afternoon. 

A Google search led me to a site where people were recommending Antelope Island as the place to go if you wanted to swim in the Salt Lake.  As we paid admission and drove across the bridge, the lightning bolts struck the open water in front of us.  Super.  Even so, we saw people swimming and walking leisurely from the water toward the parking lot.

We stopped at the Visitor Center to try to buy ourselves some time.  It was raining, and as soon I opened the car door, the wind ripped it from my hands and threatened to blow all of our papers and trash out into the air.  The boys ran to the building, and I tried, but my feet were slipping and sliding around in my wet flip-flops.  Which was worse?  Falling flat on my face in the parking lot or electrocution? 

In a media room at the Visitor Center, we watched a movie about the island.  After the movie finished, the sun had magically and momentarily appeared, though another storm loomed on the other side of the island.  In a hurry, we drove down the hill to the beach and changed into our bathing suits before that next storm had a chance to reach us. 

The sand near the top of the beach was soft, then it became littered with sharp, flat pieces of rock that really hurt to walk on…. Then the sand packed down a bit, so it was easier to walk.  The beach was littered with brine flies and smelled.  The boy and I waded into the water (the husband didn’t, he only had shorts on) for quite a ways and decided just to lay down to see if we floated since the lake seemed very shallow and we didn’t want to have to run back to the car if it started lightning again.  The water was cold, but I immersed myself to my shoulders.  I floated without trying.  The boy tried, but he didn’t have any success, calling the Great Salt Lake a “sham”.  He also said he wasn’t fat enough to float.  Jerk.

I showered in a pay-shower (the first one I opened had a bunch of beetles crawling around in it.  Gross!), then walked out to find that the rental car was nowhere to be found.  Hardeharhar.  Annoyed, I sat down at a picnic bench overlooking the beach and waited for the pranksters to arrive with my deodorant and hair gel.

From Salt Lake, we traveled to Logan, UT, just so the teenager could say he’d visited his town.  We ate at Chick-Fil-A for dinner.  I’d never been to one before.  It was alright, not something I’d drive to another state for, though.

We drove and drove and drove until the husband was tired of driving.  We drove through mountains and lots of nothingness and open range.  We came to a section of road where cows were on either side of us and we had to go slowly through the middle of the herd.  I prayed that the cows wouldn’t dent the rental car, since I’d declined the optional insurance.  At one bend of road, the husband spotted a dark shape off to the right.  It was a moose, just grazing.  We tried to take photos of it, but it was just too dark.

The town of Alpine, WY, was where we decided to find a motel.  The first place we stopped, The Bull Moose Lodge, looked cool…. And empty…. But the guy at the bar inside growled “look at the sign!”  which said “No Vacancy”.  We ended up passing the last place in town, a motel called The Flying Saddle Resort.  Got a nice room for $138.  Glad we didn’t have to sleep in the car.

I did T-Tapp BWO+ and read a little bit before bed while the boys snored.  End of Day 3.

Day 4 – September 11, 2012

The husband woke up early to do laundry, and I got up with him so we could go get breakfast and try to make a plan (ha!) for the day.  We walked over to the restaurant at the Flying Saddle Resort, which had a nice breakfast buffet.  When the boy was done showering, he met us there.  While we ate, the waitress came over and struck up conversation, asking where we were from, etc.  The older couple at the table behind me overheard that we were from Michigan, and told us that they were from Alpena, in for a bike race a few weeks ago that had extended into a three-week vacation, and that they had a buddy around us who lived on a road that started with “Rose”.  We talked to them for a while, and then went back to check the laundry, which wasn’t dry.  The husband had to be creative to find extra quarters for another dry cycle—he, habitually, hadn’t checked the lint trap before starting the dryer the first time.

After clothes were dry, we set off from Alpine and headed towards Jackson Hole, and, ultimately Yellowstone.  We didn’t stop in Jackson Hole, just drove through, but the boys thought it looked like an interesting place, so maybe we’ll head back there tomorrow.  On our way towards our hotel, there was a herd of bison on the left shoulder of the road, hugged up to a wooden fence.  People had parked on both sides of the road to take photos and get closer, and the bison were not looking happy about it.  I saw a couple bison running or heading in the general direction of PEOPLE.  Welcome to Yellowstone.

There was a lot of road construction through town and the stretch between the Jackson Lodge and our cabin at the Flagg Ranch, making it a slow go. 

We finally made it to Flagg Ranch and went in to get info on the float tour and horseback riding.  All tours left from the Jackson Lodge, and we booked our float tour for the next day at 4:30 p.m., and horseback riding for Thursday morning at 8:00 a.m. 

It was too early to check in, so we headed into Yellowstone and made the drive to see Old Faithful.  Now, it’s been a while since I’ve been to Yellowstone, but I don’t remember having to drive so much to get to all of that stuff.  They said 17 miles to Old Faithful, but what I really think they meant was 117 miles.  The boy was complaining half the time about no bars for his iPod/phone….  Seriously considered throwing him to the bears a couple times there, if only there'd been bears around.

We made it to Old Faithful, finally, and I’d forgotten what most of the buildings looked like.  We’d missed the last eruption by 20 minutes, but another was expected at around 3:14 p.m.  We headed into the Old Faithful Cafeteria to get some lunch while we waited.  There was a table by the window so we could watch just in case it happened while we were still eating.  After lunch, we headed out to get a front-row seat and waited for Old Faithful to show up right on time, 3:14 p.m.  After that, we walked around that area, going to see some of the other neighboring geysers and odd things that are why I remember Yellowstone.   I noticed the boardwalks felt rickety.   We grabbed cappuccinos and chocolate chip cookies from a café outside the cafeteria and drove around to a few more areas.

The husband, after having inhaled fumes from all of these sulfuric attractions, looked at me and said, “I’m allergic to Sulfa, this probably isn’t the best idea.”  I tried to assure him that Sulfa and sulfur were not really the same thing, and he was likely not going to die.

We decided, after stopping to see the Paint Pots, to head back to the hotel and rest.  As it turns out, our room was a cabin (346) with two queen beds, no t.v., and no Internet.  I didn’t care about any of that because I haven’t been trying to connect to the Internet, just writing this journal everyday.  When I’m not writing just this little bit, I am reading a book on my Kindle until I pass out.  I’m tired, I don’t know about them!

The husband and I took a walk down to the river, behind our cabins.  I was hoping to see some wildlife, since all we saw in the park was a few fat crows.  Some other walkers pointed out a mule deer eating just at the tree-line and let us use their binoculars, but, other than that and a squirrel, nada.

We had dinner at the restaurant inside the lodge, then, and when we came back outside it was dark.  Very dark.  And cold.  I don’t think I packed warm enough clothes, so I might have to buy something before we do our float trip/horse ride. 

End of day 4.

Day 5 – September 12, 2012

We woke up and drove into Jackson Hole.  The wildfires that had been burning on the other side of the mountain were still smoking and helicopters were dumping water or chemicals via bucket all day.

We had a brunch (of sorts) at a place called The Teton Steakhouse.  It wasn’t very good (at least, not the salad bar), but it filled the empty spot.  Then we walked around to all of the tourist-y shops and bought some things for ourselves and for the boys at home.  I was jonesing for Starbucks, and we found the first one we’d come across in days inside an Albertson’s (grocery store) on the southern side of town.  Knowing we’d have a very far trip to get from here to Seattle, I also had the husband stop in K-mart so I could pick up some card games to play in the car.  We'd bought a Farkel dice game in one of the t-shirt shops, too.

Our “Wild & Scenic Float Trip” was slated for 4:30 p.m., and with the construction that ran off and on through town until we reached the entrance to Grand Teton National Park, we knew we’d need to leave town by 3 p.m. to make it back to the Jackson Lodge in time.   We made a detour at a museum on the side of a hill dedicated to natural art.  We didn’t have time to make it work paying the $12 admission, but we enjoyed the art in the lobby and parking lot, and bought a few things in the museum shop.  The boys found me a couple ghost story books about Yellowstone and Wyoming so I could read them out loud as we drove.

From Jackson Lodge, we loaded a big van towing our raft with three other couples (an older couple near us from London; a younger, more brash couple from Illinois; and an older couple from Arkansas.  We drove down to Deadman's Bar, and our float tour ended up at Moose Landing (the beginning of the park). 

Our raft guide was Jake, who was probably around my age or younger, with crazy suntan lines on his face from the sunglasses he wore during his tours.  The boys volunteered me to be the person who made sure Jake hit all of the safety points during our pre-float talk, so I had to initial things on a clipboard. 

On our trip, we saw probably six or seven bald eagles (flying and in the trees), an osprey, two beavers, ducks, Canadian geese, and a female moose grazing near the shore.  We passed a huge group of fly fishermen (and women) near the end of our trip, all waded into the sub-50-degree water with bare legs.  Brr!   The guide wondered if it was a Patagonia [outdoor gear supplier] funded event.

Our bus drove back to Jackson Lodge, then we drove back to Flagg Ranch, which seemed like it took forever and ever.  We then ate dinner at the lodge restaurant and the boy and I came back and got ready for bed while the husband did laundry so I could have clean underwear.  He’s a good guy.  It was super-dark out there.

End of day 5.

Day 6 – September 14, 2012

We woke up between 5 and 5:30 a.m. to check out of the Flagg Ranch and drive down to Jackson Lodge for our 8 a.m. horseback riding.  It was 21 degrees out, and we weren’t really prepared for that.  I bought a big brown sweatshirt in Jackson Hole yesterday to try to prepare for the mountain temps, but it was still chilly.  Road construction hadn’t begun for the day, so we managed to arrive at Jackson Lodge about 45 minutes earlier than we anticipated, enough time for us to eat at the breakfast buffet. 

The buffet itself was annoying because all of the workers (including waffle station girl and maybe omlette station girl) were standing around talking to each other instead of bringing us our bill, checking to see if we wanted something besides water to drink, etc.  But whatever, it was breakfast.

At 15 minutes to 8, we drove over to the corral and met the guides and horses.  They assigned a chestnut (quarter pony?) with a flaxen mane named Kenny G to the teenager, who they called Jogan and Hogan because someone had misspelled his name when making our reservation.  I had a bay mare named Molly Brown who liked to be up with the leader, so we were first in line behind her.  The husband was on a golden brown and cream paint gelding named Hunter, who was a massive horse.  Also in our group was the couple from London who we’d been with on the float trip the night before. 

Throughout  the ride, the wrangler kept turning and hanging off the side of the saddle to yell stories--like the one about how Signal Mountain got its name--to our group.  It looked painful, and with all the yelling, it wasn’t really shocking that we didn’t sneak up on anything but hikers on our ride.  It was still fun, and the trail, for the most part, seemed more tame than I recall from my last long ride on our local trail….

After our ride we got to feed the horses endless treats.  They sent the horses into a corral and the horses would turn and walk into a chute where we could get to them and hand them the treats.  Of course, they were all stretching their necks to reach us, and my horse, Molly, was threatening to kick Kenny G if he crowded her any closer.  

We returned to the lodge to get some coffee from the coffee bar, which took forever because the steamer was broken, but finally it worked.

From Jackson Lodge, we decided to drive back into Yellowstone to kill some time before our dinner plans.  We stopped by the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which was cool.  The husband also found me a few books on “Death in Yellowstone” and Search and Rescue missions.  We drove up a little further to the edge of Yellowstone Lake so the teenager could do his envelope for the day, then turned back to Jackson Hole.

I had made reservations for us at the Bar J Wrangler Chuckwagon in Wilson, just a few minutes outside of Jackson Hole.  We weren’t going to go there because we were going to head to Seattle instead, but Mom kind of talked me into making extra time for it.

Once we located the chuckwagon, we drove back into Jackson Hole to get a few things from the grocery store, then headed back for dinner.  The boy was trying to escape the entire time, but once the show started and he realized it was funny, not just singing, he became a quick fan.  He even stated that he wanted to bring his kids back there someday.

We left there at about 9:45 p.m. and headed toward Seattle, hoping to get some miles in before stopping for the night.  That idea didn’t last long because there was a bunch of 10% grades that made the miles slow, and driving in the dark with all of the wildlife isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  We drove through a town called Victor, ID (tiny town, but the first we’d seen, really).  We were about out of town and I spotted something that appeared to be hotel-like off to the right.  It turned out to be the Cowboy Roadhouse Lodge, which the clerk said was the last hotel for quite a while.  She rented us their last room, which felt nearly new and ran only about $90. 

We were all exhausted from the early start, and fell asleep quickly.  End of day 6.

Day 7 – September 14, 2012

Today we drove from Victor, ID, to Ritzville, WA.  I drove for about 50 miles on relatively flat land until we stopped at a rest stop and the husband hopped back in the driver’s seat.  The boy and I played card games and Farkel for a lot of the trip.   I read out loud to the husband some of the Yellowstone ghost stories from the book I’d bought, crying when I read the story about the grizzly bear, Wahb, who had roamed Yellowstone.  Sad bear.

There are apparently a lot of fires happening in western Montana, which we drove through, and the smoke was so thick it was difficult to see the mountains or much of anything.

Around Missoula, MT, we took a little detour over to Cabela’s and bought a few things (multi-tools for me & the husband and a hydration pack I can wear during my trail rides).

We stopped for the night in Ritzville, WA, and ate at what we thought was a Perkins, but had been renamed the Ritz Roadhouse or something.  There were a couple hotels at the exit, and the husband chose the Best Western because it was next to a Starbucks.  Blessed, blessed Starbucks.

It is much warmer here than it was in Wyoming, thankfully.

The time changes are really messing with us.  It’s only 9 p.m. here, I guess.  I don’t really know.  Regardless, I’m in my pajamas and ready to sleep.  End of day 7.

Day 8 – September 15, 2012

We left Ritzville, WA a little bit after 8 p.m., stopping by the Starbucks next door for a bit of caffeinated goodness we’d been missing for the past week.  The nephew called while we were driving, trying to figure out when we’d be arriving at their house in Everett, WA.  We had about a 3-hour-and-45-minute drive in front of us, which turned into more like a 4-hour-and-15-minute drive when the GPS took us 30 minutes too far north because it couldn’t find our street.  My niece, who is quite with child, was supposed to work at her job as a dispatcher for the local district, but she was excited to see us and called in to work for an itchy placenta.  Bonus points for her.

We finally arrived after 12:30 p.m., and sat around their kitchen table catching up while the baby napped.  After she woke up, we went to eat a late lunch at Blazing Onion Burgers, then headed into downtown Seattle.  We parked a couple blocks from Pike Place Market (for right about $30 for two hours of parking), but we got there just about the time that most of the vendors at the market were packing up their wares (we did get to see them toss some fish around, though).  After that, we walked over to the Great Wheel, the Ferris wheel on the pier.  The baby had never been on a ride of any kind and did really well.

A running joke between all of us was that my niece and nephew were developing awesome immune systems because the baby kept dropping her pacifier and they would pick it up (one time with my niece's bare foot, on the pier), shrug, and pop it in their mouth before handing it back to the baby.  My nephew would end up dropping a Starbucks salted caramel cake pop on the ground at the Armory (like a food court), think about it for a minute, then pop it in his mouth.  Dirty birdies.

My niece pointed out the blatant drug use happening in the park down near the water.  Indeed, the air reeked of weed and a couple druggies were shooting up in broad daylight.  Later, when we were walking back to the parking lot, we passed a group of men cowered in a doorway, looking around suspiciously, obviously in the middle of some shady activity.  Homeless people were urinating on the piles of garbage stacked at the edge of our parking lot.  Some stretches of sidewalk reeked of urine.  Grrrross. 

My nephew, niece, and the baby headed back home, taking the teenager back with them so we could have some time to explore the city ourselves.  The husband and I walked around after grabbing another cup of coffee from Starbucks, but we decided that we weren’t really comfortable in the city, so after about an hour we headed back to the house.  We were tired and went to bed.  End of day 8.

Day 9 – September 16, 2012

My niece made us a breakfast of French toast and bacon, and we sat around the table in their front room catching up on family news.  There was little syrup, so my nephew had to run out for some.

We headed over to my niece’s mom & dad’s house, as they were going to babysit the baby while we went to dinner at the Space Needle.  We had a few hours before our reservations, so we grabbed a quick lunch of McDonalds (blech!) before we headed downtown.  It was a toss-up between the Underground Tour and the EMP, but, in the end, we decided to go to the EMP (Experience Music Project), which was basically a Rock ‘n Roll museum with a section dedicated to Sci-Fi and Horror, as well.  They had a great big section dedicated to Nirvana, which I enjoyed most of all.  There was also a huge room with a giant screen where they played various music videos or concert clips.  There was a music lab room where you could experiment with keyboards, drums, turntables, etc., which was pretty cool, too. 

After EMP, we walked outside where there was a little fair going on.  They had a zip line ride, so the husband, myself, the teenager, and my nephew zip lined across the parking lot. 

We went inside a nearby building called The Armory, which had a food court.  Of course, there was a Starbucks, and we got  more coffee.  It was here that my nephew dropped his cake pop and tested the limits of the five-second rule.  There was an arcade/video game museum in there, too, where the teenager played some classic Nintendo/N64/Super Nintendo games while we were drinking our coffee.

From there, we were going to go through the Chihuly (blown glass) exhibit, but it wasn’t free and our reservations were within 30 minutes, so we just walked through the gift shop.

We ate dinner in the Space Needle.  The timing was perfect (6:30 p.m.), so we were able to see the view during the day, sunset, dusk, and dark.  The food was crazy expensive, but it was a great experience.  The teenager enjoyed seeing the notes come around to us on the windows from other people around the restaurant.  After we ate, we went up to the Observation Deck and got some photos (and some photo-bombed photos, thanks to the boy) before my niece had to leave to go into work for a couple of hours.

We picked up the baby from my niece’s parents and headed home.  My nephew turned on “The Other Guys” and I, of course, drifted in and out of sleep the whole time. 

End of Day 9.

Day 10 – September 17, 2012

The boy kept leaving his pocketknife out when he’d been asked not to by my nephew.  He had to do 21 push-ups to get it back from my nephew.

Our breakfast plans were to eat at the Maltby Café, I think it what it’s called.  My niece and nephew raved at how amazing their breakfast food was, and, based on how busy they were, it obviously was a popular place.  The three of us had various omelets, but my nephew had some kind of pancakes with berries and cream, which was very good despite being against my rule (no fruit in dessert-like foods).  I talked my nephew into a side of bacon, too, which was ah-ma-zing.  My niece was supposed to have an OB appointment that would have made it impossible for her to eat breakfast with us, but she was able to cancel her appointment and re-join us for her French toast. 

We brought the boy, my niece, and the baby back to the house.  The husband, my nephew, and I took the dogs to the park to play in the water.  I had to return a call from a potential doula client wile we were there, but then I sat down on the bank and watched the dogs play fetch and chase ducks.  While we were there, a lady with a dog came over the hill and asked “Are your dogs nice?”  My nephew assured her they were, and when his dogs ran over towards her dog, her dog turned tail and ran away.  Kind of funny.  She never returned, so hopefully she found her dog.

Then we went back home because my nephew needed to get ready for family pictures.  We packed up our extra clothing and souvenirs, and the husband boxed it up and shipped it for a mere $80.  Whatever.

We left my nephew, niece, their baby, and the dogs at around 4:30 p.m. and headed towards Mt. Rainier after an oh-so-filling dinner at Burger King.  Traffic was rough, being rush-hour, and the sun set before we made it to the mountain tonight.  We ended up stopping at the Nisqually Lodge in Ashford, WA, just outside the national park, so we can visit the mountain in the morning before we head down toward Portland to catch our flight home.   The crusty gentleman at the counter gave the husband keys to lock and unlock the lobby doors if he needed to go out to the car to keep critters from roaming the hotel.

The boys were happy.  There was good wifi and they were able to watch the series premiere of “Revolution” while stretched out on their beds.

End of Day 10.

Day 11 (and some of 12) – September 18 (and 19), 2012

The hotel had a tiny continental breakfast (bagels, danishes, fruit, coffee, and hot chocolate), but it’s the first that we’ve seen in many hotels.  I was also surprised that it was painted baby blue, as it had just looked like a wooden building when we pulled in last night.  

After packing up and cleaning up, we drove into Mt. Rainier National Park.  This, maybe, was my favorite park of all because it was so green, thick with huge, fragrant pine trees that would trickle down to the rocky beds of the rivers not yet full from coming run-off.  The light would filter through the trees as our car negotiated the terrain.  It all looked very much like scenery straight out of the Twilight Saga, though the teenager was irritated that THAT is what I saw when I looked out the window.  In truth, though, the books were mostly based in northwest Washington, so we weren’t that far off.

We drove through the park, stopping here and there to take pictures of the waterfalls and the summit off in the distance.  We eventually ended up in Paradise, where we walked up the path a little ways to see what the Chinook helicopter that was flying around was doing.  It turns out they were moving boulders from one area of the mountain to another using the helicopter.  I stopped in the ParadiseInn to use the restroom and browse the gift shop, and found a few things there to buy, including a book by a female climbing ranger that satisfied my “Death in the National Parks” theme I’ve had going all trip long.  (The book is “Pickets and Dead Men” by Bree Loewen).

It was time to make our way to Portland for our return flight back to reality.

On our way down, I thought we might be able to see Mount St. Helens, but unfortunately it was too smoky or we were just too far off.  Boo.

We boarded our plane headed to Vegas just fine.  But then we waited.  And waited.  The pilot told us that they were waiting for something to reboot.  When it didn’t reboot, we had to return back to the gate to try it again.  When it still didn’t reboot, they had to have someone replace the part.  We took off two hours late.  Half of my fellow passengers had been drinking prior to boarding and, at this point, were loud and obnoxious.  I was annoyed by all of them and just wanted to be alone.

Our planed landed at McCarran at 10:25, five minutes before our connecting flight was supposed to take off.  We stepped  off the plane and into a sea of people waiting.  The boarding passes said we were leaving from the gate we had just walked out of from our Portland flight, so the husband walked up to the counter and asked where we were supposed to go.  The agent at the counter told us our flight had been delayed until 2:15 a.m., rather than 10:30 p.m.  Uuuugh.

You would think a layover in Vegas would be fun, but the only thing open after 11 was a Burger King, which didn’t sound very good at all.  We took turns wandering the terminals and laying down along the hallways until we were able to board, about 1:30 a.m.

We landed in Detroit about four hours later, approximately 8:45 a.m. EST.

I can’t believe our Wild West adventure is over, after so much talking and planning.  More reflection--and pictures--later, but for now, this is way too much.