One Week--And I Don't Mean the Barenaked Ladies Song

Huckleberry coffee (with Italian Sweet Cream creamer--of course) in the Alaska skyline mug. There is a poetic symmetry there that hums for me this morning. I'll say one thing for the book project--it's kept me too busy to miss fall in Montana! And today begins the countdown of the last week on the manuscript. There are no more time increments--other than days, hours and minutes... and aren't they scary!--into which to break my remaining work. (It's unfortunate when the correct grammatical construction sounds awkward. *sigh*)

As can be gleaned from the preceding almost-paragraph, my mind flits and flies in all different directions simultaneously these days--much more so than usual. I highly disrecommend writing a non-linear book for anyone with the slightest bit of ADD as the activity will just exacerbate the condition excruciatingly.

Today was supposed to be the day when I started organizing all of my my musings and dictations into a coherent manuscript. I was supposed to have all the techniques and projects finished and documented. Instead, I have about half a dozen of them in various states of doneness and a brain full of marbles. But, since whining about it never got anything done, I am going to ruck my big girl panties up, and Get On With It! Off to play with glass clay...

Nine Days, Eight Chickens

Huckleberry coffee in the Chicago skyline mug, the hum of the studio fans and the traffic outside for my morning music. Today is the first of the single-digit days in the countdown to the deadline for the completion of my manuscript. I am exhausted. My mother (my scribe) is exhausted. Dee (the book minion and one of the studio elves) is exhausted. Exhaustion is rampant. And yet, I, at least, am also exhilarated. Barring unforeseen catastrophe, and with all requisite knocking on wood, I will finish on time. I have 191 pages of text out of 240, and we have been cranking out 6-12 pages a day for the past week or so.

But hubris is ever the nemesis. I no sooner wrote the above paragraph than I discovered Baxter had been left in the backyard. With the chickens. And then there were eight. We mourn Willow, and I dread telling Jessie when she gets home. It took time, a shovel and a pick-ax--and I still didn't get very deep--but Willow is laid to rest in the bamboo with a very large rock over her grave. And wasn't I the one who was contemplating eating our girls at some point when they grew old? Guess that's right out when I am this undone by the end of one. And Baxter. Now that he's killed one, he can never be let out into the yard with them again. I'll need to find time this weekend to fix the front yard gates so they both close easily and he can be let out there.


Now I need to gather myself back together and get on with work. Oh this is hard.