Let me tell you about the good things happening right now.

Like this daffodil:

I love this daffodil. This was one of the first ones out of the ground at my house. I planted it two falls ago on the side of our garage.

Or this one:

Three falls ago. This is on our front walk up to our house.

Or these buds:

They’ll start to open before the end of the day. I planted these last fall. My kid helped – as much as a three year old can help. But he tried to dig the holes and handed me the bulbs and was Chief Dirt Stomper once everything was in the ground.

Or this magnolia tree:

This is the view out of my office window. I get to sit here today and watch the tree explode into fireworks of white and pink and loveliness. Spring is here, and it’s good to be alive to see it all.

Other things that are going well: My kid decided to clean up his act and we bought him a bike on Saturday. He and I spend afternoons riding up and down the sidewalks, braking at alleys so he can ring his bell (yes, we got him a bell), and looking both ways before we cross. It’s not so easy to ride slow enough to keep up with an almost four year old, but it’s just about sheer joy to ride with him – at least until he wipes out. Then, not so much.

There is probably nothing wrong with my heart. After some sort of undiagnosed cardiac event Friday morning, and 5 hours in the ER, having everyone and their dog stick electrodes all over my bare chest while I missed my chance to go pester cowboys, the myriad of tests they ran said nothing was wrong. That’s a good thing. No matter how much my week sucked, it still beat the hell out of open-heart surgery.

And I have totally awesome family and friends. My mom made it to the ER in 20 minutes, and the Lovely Zen-Master Becca was halfway out to her car in Chicago – keys in hand, no doubt – ready to come down and Zen me out in person. The Lovely Mary, Grammar Goddess, took time from work to drive me to the doctor’s office and the ER. I was not alone.

And even though I didn’t get to talk to any bull riders, I did get out of the hospital in time to make it to the bull riding, and I did make the acquaintance of the wife of a stock contractor (or bull owner, for those not in the know) who used to ride bulls. Terry was not only friendly, not only a font of useful information, but she got her husband to talk to me too, much more than he might have if I’d been on my own, especially since I had a heart monitor on that made me look like I’d joined the Borg or something.

And it’s okay that Gram really didn’t enjoy her nice 94th birthday meal because it was too expensive and the portions were too big. What’s important is that we got a guided tour of the Historic Garth Woodside Mansion (ranked fourth Bed and Breakfast in the nation) and she’s been bragging to all her friends about how thoughtful we were, even though all we heard about was how KFC has this mashed potato bowl for only $2.99 – and that includes a drink! She gets to look important to her friends – that was our birthday present to her. I’m glad she’s enjoying it.

And it’s okay that I didn’t final in the big national contest, because finaling is no guarantee of publication, and lots and lots of people get published without ever cracking the finals ceiling. No big deal.

And that leak in the basement? The one shooting water in at a rate of about a gallon every four minutes? Easily fixed by rerouting a downspout. Didn’t cost anything but the hour I spent scrambling to dry out the basement in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. Cheap!

My new glasses are cool. Trendy, but without being obnoxious. Creative without being weird. They look so natural on me that no one even noticed I was wearing them. And I’m confident that on the next attempt, the eyeglass ladies will get them adjusted so that they aren’t squeezing my head like a grape. Third time’s the charm!

And I’m still gainfully employed, even after a string of bad days and long nights lead me to shoot my mouth off to my boss yesterday and he way, way overreacted. He didn’t fire me for insubordination – in fact, he gave me a big new project to do. So that’s a good thing. He let me sweat about it for about six hours, but I still have a job. WOOO!

Yes, as you can see, things are on the up and up around here.

This has been my moment of Zen.

What does it take to ride a bull?

First, you need a bull. A big, agile, easily irritated bull. The meaner, the better. Bulls are fast approaching the level of race horses in terms of team ownership, breeding rights, and – this is the important part – selling price. Chicken on a Chain is one of the best around – and Larry the Cable Guy owns part of him! (And yes, the bull has his own MySpace page. I’m being out-marketed by a bovine!) If you don’t have a real, live, snot-blowing bull, make or rent your own. Worked for John Travolta!

You need supplies. Chaps aren’t required, but have you ever seen a bull rider without the cowboy badge of honor? You need a bull rope, which, as far as I can tell, does come with a built-in handle, and some rosin to go with it. You need a bell (or two) to give weight to the rope, so that it falls off when you do. You need a protective vest. Just about everyone wears one today. A helmet never hurts – unless your pride is extra sensitive and your head is not. In which case, just go with a cowboy hat. They work better for throwing after a ride, anyway.

You need a high pain tolerance, a higher adrenaline tolerance, and an insanely high risk tolerance, because you will – repeat, WILL – get hurt. There’s a reason Willy Nelson sings about “Mommas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys,” because no Momma wants to see her son get turned into beef burger in the ring.

That’s right. I said son. In fact, those who ride bulls fit into a surprisingly narrow range of the population. I’d guess that over 80% of bull riders are white males between the ages of 16 and 35. A marketer’s dream come true! Most of the rest of that group is made up of Brazilians. Those dudes are just as insane as we are, and they had to cross the equator to prove it. There are (and always have been, frankly) black cowboys, currently the most notable being Mike Moore (representing the home state of Illinois with pride!). And, believe it or not, there are gay bull riders. In fact, there are so many, they have their own rodeo circuit – the International Gay Rodeo Association (which predates Brokeback Mountain by about thirty years). But when most people think bull riders, they think of red-blooded American white guys.

These aren’t the only people who ride bulls. Did you know that women ride bulls? It’s true! Turns out that this insanity is not just limited to the male sex!

Frankly, the more I learn about people, the more I realize that there are only two things that separate what men and women can do. 1. Men can, in general, fart on command. It’s not that women don’t fart (Please!), but to do it on command really does seem to be a guy thing. And 2. (and this is the big one) Women give birth to babies (Arnold Schwarzenegger is the notable exception). It was once thought that women also were the only ones who could raise babies, but if you hung out with my husband and kid for very long, you’d know firsthand this just isn’t true.

The rest? All just gender distinctions. Just as many women can lead nations or commit violent crimes as men can enjoy a really good Julia Roberts movie or chocolate (in any form).

Except in bull riding. Maybe it’s that whole ‘women and children’ first mentality – the women must be saved! To hell with the men!

But there are women who do this. And there are enough women that they actually have factions based on philosophical differences. Should women get to use both hands, or just one, like the men do? (If a man’s free hand touches either the bull or himself, he is disqualified.) Should women have to hit six seconds, or eight, like the men do? Should women get paid a few hundred bucks if they win, or should they get a few thousand, like the men do? Should they have their own separate competitions (which often take on a sideshow quality), or should they compete with the men? (I’ll give them this – I haven’t seen a picture of a woman riding yet where she wasn’t wearing a helmet.)

Two and a half weeks ago, I didn’t know any of this. None. I think I knew about the Gay Rodeo part, but that was from watching a King of the Hill episode.

Two and a half weeks ago, I didn’t have ‘the next book’ to write. I was finishing up the Warrior (comma) Lawyer book and farming it out to readers with no idea what was coming up next. I’m enjoying writing about the Lakota tribe of South Dakota, and thought I should keep doing that, but I didn’t have a story. So I told this to my lovely co-worker Mary, aka the Grammar Goddess who’s suffered through – er, I mean read – everything I’ve written.

And about five minutes later, she says, “You know, I’d kind of like to know what happens to June.”

June. A minor – and I mean MINOR – character who appeared in both the previous Lakota books as a young girl. We only ever see her around horses and cowboys.

So, what would June, a young Lakota Indian woman who spent all her free time (that we saw) with cows, cowboys, and horses be like when she grew up?

In less than ten minutes, I knew. June would ride bulls. And she would do it well.

The problem was, I know next to nothing about riding bulls. I’ve only been to one rodeo, about 10 years ago in Cody, Wyoming, memorable for my sister Leah making a suggestive comment that nearly incited a riot in the Mennonite women sitting in front of us and my mother (God love her) noticing that some cowboys were changing in broad daylight right next to the stand – and then video taping it for us.

So I’ve undertaken a study of bull riding, and women bull riders. The PCB circuit is actually coming to town today, so I’m going to spend my afternoon trying to crash the set up and glean as much as I can from real, live cowboys (I do love YouTube, but you can only get so much from 3 minutes of grainy footage with heavy metal blaring in the background!) I have also found some enthusiastic young women (I get to say that because I’m going to be 33 in 2 months, and most of these women aren’t of legal drinking age yet) who are all about riding bulls – professionally. The Women’s Roughstock Foundation is out there, lives on the line, to do something I wouldn’t do in a million, billion years.

And you know what? More power to them. I hope June and I can do them proud. Because, frankly, I don’t think I want to piss these women off. I’m pretty sure they can beat me up!

Next week, I’m going to get into bull-riding, I promise. But I need to get a little more figured out before then, so this week, we’re going to revisit the Land of the Legally Blind.

You know. The land I live in with my hubby.

As you may recall from this blog, my husband is legally blind.

I really don’t mind living in the Land of the Legally Blind. I happen to love the guy unconditionally, so it matters not to me that he’s not quite normal. (After all, I’m so far from normal . . .)

In the beginning, I did wonder. He could read (even Japanese!) he could watch movies, he could look at me. His eyes moved weird, a jerky side-to-side movement, but the only other sign was that he didn’t drive. That was it.

Everyone wanted to know how blind he was, but seriously, it only took a few dates for me to stop caring. That’s right. I didn’t care.

But I was the only person. Even after several months of dating, I was still getting The Questions: How blind is he? What’s wrong with him?

So I finally broke down and asked him one day. “I don’t care, but everyone wants to know how blind you are.”

He laughed at me and explained that his eyes are fine, but the muscles that are supposed to hold the eyeballs still don’t work. He can’t focus on things. That’s it. He was born that way, and that’s all he’s ever known. It’s got a fancy name I can’t pronounce. Nystagmus.

“Okay,” I said. I think I smooched him after that.

Well, this ended the conversation for most people. I was happy; and if I was happy with a kind of blind guy, then that was good enough for just about everyone.

Everyone but my Gram. God love the woman, she decided she did not like him because of the chances that our children would be genetically defective were so much higher. It was funny, in that irritating as all get out kind of way. So he made sure to send her a lovely Christmas card, a Valentine’s card, and I think even wrote her another letter, trying to make nice.

Can you see why I married him?

It did work. By the time they finally met after five months of dating, he’d won her over. She’s one of his biggest fans these days.

So this blindness has impacted our lives in a variety of ways, some of them quite good, some of them less so. There are some major areas where being married to the blind impacts my daily life.

We have one car. One driver on the insurance. One tank to fill with gas. No doubt this will change in about 13 years when the kid hits 16, but right now, we save a ton of money on automobiles. This does occasionally provide moments of frustrating humor, like when we went to buy our Prius two years ago. My hubby used to sell appliances at Sears for a time, and he loves a good battle, er – I mean, negotiation. He knows all the tricks, all the mind games, and really enjoys beating salespeople at their own game. We are a good team in this respect, because he plays all sympathetic to the sales people’s plights of managerial woe or whatever, and I make an excellent bad cop. The salespeople usually ignore me because I’m a woman, brushing off the statements of fact Jason makes, such as, “This is her car,” until we get all vicious on them. I mean, we bought a Prius with gas at $2.97 – we weren’t in the best negotiating position to begin with, and we still got a ton of free accessories (valued at about $500, actual production price, $45.97) and some free oil changes. We made the finance guy so mad he actually slammed the door as he stomped out of the room. We giggled and got our rate anyway. And no matter how many times he says, “It’s her car,” they still get all confused when he WON’T take it for a test drive, and even more confused when he WON’T list himself as a driver. It’s fun!

So it’s cheaper to be married to a blind guy. But the downside is, it’s my car. And I am always the driver. I am solely responsible for getting our kid to and from daycare, and about 93% of the time getting Jason to and from work. Now, I do not mind this most of the time. We live in a small enough town that I never spend more than about 45 minutes total in the car, even though daycare and his work are on complete opposite parts of town. The commute is gentle and easy. Minimal horn honking, almost non-existent road rage. Nice.

But there are a few situations where I really, really wish I wasn’t the responsible driver.

A nice dinner out with my hubby. I would love to be able to have a glass of wine with a good meal and not have to worry about driving drunk. But I can’t. One glass makes me plenty tipsy, so I drink water with my steak.

Road trips. After about an hour and a half, I get bored driving. Sometimes this is good, because I think up novels. But sometimes, my butt falls asleep and I’m tired and I just want to take a nap, like the guy snoring in the seat next to me. Not going to happen.

When I get sick. Lawsy, it sucks enough to have a violent flu, but to have a violent flu and STILL have to go get the kid from daycare sucks more than you might think. Luckily, Jason gets along with his coworkers enough that he has been able to get rides home, but still. Getting to daycare has nearly killed me on more than one occasion.

And finally, job interviews. I have interviewed for jobs where the office stays open until six. Daycare closes at 5:30. I have had to pass on well-paying jobs that I might have liked because I am the driver. I am always the driver.

This spills over into other parts. People who don’t know us well are always a little suspicious of why I HAVE to go pick him up. After we got the Prius, we had one guy we talk to maybe once a year say, “Well, what’s he gonna drive? He won’t like being behind the wheel of a car like that. How about a Mustang? Now THAT’S a manly car!”

So we have to suffer the fools a little more than others might.

When I was pregnant, the medical establishment did worry about our baby being genetically defective. We got specialized test and expensive ultrasounds. My baby had more flashlights shined into his eyes than I could count in my sleep-deprived state. We kept a close eye (HAR!) on him as he grew. He’s had his eyes checked more than most three year olds. And you know what? He’s fine.

When it comes to entertainment, let me tell you, if you are married to a legally blind guy, you will never get to pick where you sit in the movie theater. You will almost always be eight rows off the front, right in the center. I’ve gotten stiff necks that way, but it’s okay. He rubs them for me.

He also uses this blind thing as a justification for purchasing Large Electronics. As in, Big-Ass TVs. And our living room is organized around making sure he has the best view, about five feet from the screen. So I sit off to the side, watching at a kind of sharp angle. That’s okay, though. I’m usually writing or playing Freecell anyway.

But that’s about it. He wears glasses because he’s nearsighted, just like I am. I can’t remember the last time I noticed his eyes moving funny. It’s a non-event to me.

I’m actually glad he’s blind. Before we met, he hadn’t exactly been successful in the dating department, and I’m sure that his eyes put off a lot of women, just like they did my Gram. By all rights, a guy as handsome, nice, funny, and successful as he is should have been snapped up before he hit 24, but because of the blind thing, all the other women he ever knew passed.

Their loss.

You know the cliched joke? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you?

My level of paranoia walks the line between ‘healthy respect of my surroundings’ and ‘seek mental help.’ Part of this is due to my childhood. I grew up in a valley, with no neighbors visible on any side. Deer in the back yard, squirrels with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, and lots and lots and lots of trees. The kind of place where, if one chose to skinny dip at three in the afternoon, that was perfectly okay because no one would ever, ever see you. (Not that anyone ever did. I’m just saying.)

But this woodsy isolation had a dark side. I don’t remember the exact time we were first burgled, but I remember the second time. We came home from Gram’s house (Dad was fishing) and started to unpack. We were half-done when Mom noticed that the front door jam was busted. And we panicked and, to quote Grover the Monster, “ran like furry bunny rabbits.” This was before cell phones (like they would have worked in the country anyway) so we raced to the neighbor’s house and called the police.

The general consensus was that the burglars were still in the house when we came home, because there were a whole lot of tools and jewels (hey, a rhyme!) left upstairs when the police did a security check. That’s right. We were in the house with robbers, and didn’t even know it (although you can bet they did).

After that, Mom started hiding the jewelery that had survived two robberies. I’m not going to tell you where, either, because that’s where I hide some of mine. But she lost most of her family heirloom pieces. It still hurts if she thinks about it too much.

After that, we got more vigilant. By this time, I was old enough to hang out by myself after school. I kept a knife on my belt at all times when I was alone, because even though we lived in the middle of nowhere, clearly people still knew where we were.

My sophomore year, it got worse. Mom picked me up from play practice one day, three weeks before Christmas and a few days before Dad’s birthday, in furious tears. We’d been robbed – again – but this time was the worst.

They took her grandfather clock. That her father had given her. It had survived two burglaries and a fire, only to be carted out by some idiots doing their Christmas shopping.

That’s right. I said Christmas shopping. All our carefully wrapped presents – gone. All Dad’s birthday presents, gone. The grandfather clock, gone.

But these weren’t your average idiots, oh no. They took weird things, odd things. They took my sister’s New Kids On The Block big button from the top of her dresser. A few toys were gone, and a lot of my cheap sterling silver rings and things walked off.

This was a family affair. These robbers brought their kids in and did their Christmas shopping in our house. Who the hell else would take a NKOTB button but leave the collectibles that were worth hundreds of dollars? The bastards even took groceries, leaving the fridge door open.

Well, as you can imagine, that was the final straw. Mom got a security system installed the next day. A local guy – the national companies didn’t go out as far as we lived, but still. It was LOUD. You could hear that thing across the valley and back.

Ironically, it didn’t help. The only people who set it off were us kids, having locked ourselves out of the house and being forced to engage in a little breaking and entering of our own. A few years later, when I was in college, all of Dad’s fishing equipment (and let me tell you, that is saying something) walked off, and we aren’t even sure when it happened, because it was all in the barn, and the barn isn’t alarmed. At least they left the boat, I guess.

But it’s been a good ten years since intruders have made off with Mom’s peace of mind. Maybe it helped that they retired and are around the house more, or maybe the slime of the world moved on to bigger fish, or maybe they just figured we didn’t have anything left to steal. In any case, things have been quiet.

Until two nights ago, when it went off at 3:30. Scared the holy bejeesus out of the both of them, but it turns out that it was just a mouse that nibbled through the wiring. Nothing – but still enough to make my mom jumpy for the next week. They’ve already upgraded to the more vigilant monitoring package, and I think Dad actually cleaned the gun, just in case he has to break that bad boy back out.

And me? I live in a nice town now, with neighbors on every side (except for the people who winter in Alaska – this is their retirement home. I’ve only seen them once.) This is the kind of town where people not only leave their doors unlocked all day and night, but sometimes leave them open, with nothing but a screen to keep out bad guys. The neighbors are nice people who look out for us, and we look out for them. My alley neighbor told me at a Christmas party that he’s had to shut our garage door a few times because he saw it was open and he just knew it shouldn’t be. I’ve called people with keys when I’ve noticed windows open in the middle of January. It’s not a formal neighborhood watch, but still, that support system is there. We have a lot of contractors going in and out, and I’ve had neighbors call just to make sure they were supposed to be there.

But.

I sit in my office and watch the sidewalks on the days I’m home. Anyone doing something out of the ordinary gets my adrenaline pumping. I bolt the doors when I’m home alone. And one errant ‘thump’ after I’ve turned out my light at night will have me up, doing a perimeter check. My husband thinks I’m paranoid. But I do it anyway. You know why?

The neighbor who shuts our garage door? Someone broke into his house at 4 in the morning last October and took off with his computers. There were a string of home invasions out in ‘the suburbs’ (as much as the suburbs are in a town of 50,000) last year that really rattled people. (They caught the kid – and it was a neighborhood kid. He’s doing time.)

My doors stay bolted. My escape plans are formed. I know exactly what I would use to defend myself in any given room. I can’t even watch movies like that Taken because it gets my overactive imagination ramped up. The commercials made me nervous! Did you ever see that movie with Bruce Willis – Unbreakable? Where the bad guy just walks into a house, kills the dad, locks up the daughters, and assaults the wife? Sweet Jesus, I had nightmares for weeks. WEEKS! And it wasn’t even that great of a movie!

A cliche is really just a true statement repeated so often that it becomes, well, cliche. It doesn’t really matter to me that some people think I’m on the almond side of nutty, as long as the joke’s not on me.

I intend to have the last laugh.

We have an old house. 1892, possibly through 1895. Our house has what house people like to call “good bones.” They don’t make foundations like this any more, and they sure as heck don’t do butternut wood trim on every possible surface like this any more.

I love my house.

But it is old, and has gone through a lot of owners. Every owner is going to do things their way, and things that seemed like a good idea in 1964 may not still be a good idea today.

Case in point: What I did for Valentine’s Day this year. (No, I didn’t ruin it this year!)The stairwell to our basement is dark and narrow – difficult to navigate on its own, but throw in the crap that tends to accumulate, and it’s a health hazard. When we bought the house, there was a newish piece of white fiberboard forming the left wall, and small shelves on the right.

But the thing that I kept thinking about was that there seemed to be an unaccounted for foot of space between that fiberboard and the wall of the kitchen. Dead space.

I had grand fantasies about uncovering a hidden treasure. Or at least gaining some shelf space, but, you know, when you’re chasing a toddler around, ripping off walls isn’t something you can just knock out in an afternoon.

When we upgraded our kitchen, we knocked a hole through the kitchen side of the dead space and discovered – wait for it – dead space. No treasures, unless you count peeling wall paper from the late 1940s a real find (it was pretty!) This confirmed our suspicions that this had been a part of the kitchen at one time, but had been closed off at some point between 1950 and 1982 (which is when our cabinets were dated from).

Six months later, we ripped off the fiberboards, went, “Hmmm,” and tore out a bunch of really old, really dusty plaster and lathe. (For those who don’t speak ‘old house,’ plaster and lathe is what walls used to be made of before drywall. Solid, but a pain in the tuckus to remove. Wear a mask and goggles). The effort tired us out so much that we just threw stuff onto the floor of the reclaimed space and shut the door.

For a year and a half.

But January is OVER, and in my house, that suddenly means I’ve gotten a husband back again. And since the man has been sitting at a desk for essentially four solid months, he’s itching to do something – anything – manly.

So this is what we did on Valentine’s Day (after I gave him vodka, he gave me a two pound brick of Havarti cheese, the toddler gave us both chocolate, and we gave him Fraggle Rock DVDs. Valentine’s Day, Sam’s Club Style.)

This is progress! Sure, there’s still no overhead light, but he’s got the wiring in place to hook one up. Sure, there’s still a huge hole in the floor where we decided to rip out the laundry chute that went from the second floor to the basement (since the laundry is no longer in the basement) that had been built to withstand nuclear war, but look! DRYWALL!! We have two sides of drywall up!!!

This is what we did our Valentine’s weekend. Saturday he and I tag-teamed the last of the destruction. I am the Queen of Destruction – if you need something destroyed, I’m your woman. The kid takes after me here. It was fun – esp. the parts where I got to be right on almost everything – as in, “I really think we’re going to need the recip saw for that,” and twenty minutes later, he says, “well, I think I’m going to have to go get the recip saw.” Sunday he wired and I (futilely) cleaned up the dust coating everything (got the kid to help with that – he’s quite good at that anal stuff when he’s in the right mood).

By Tuesday night, drywall! It is entirely possible that, after living in this house for 3 1/2 years, we are finally going to reclaim the dead space and have a pantry right off the kitchen at some point in the next two weeks.

I love this house!!!

You know what commercial I hate? Somehow, Just For Men Haircare plunked down enough cash to get Walt “Clyde” Fraiser and Keith Hernandez to forgo their pride and sit in a hockey style booth at a bar. This setting apparently gives them the right to be as catty as women who’ve tipped back a few too many Cosmos, because they are sitting there, pretending to be watching some sporting event called “One Night Stand Goal!” And some guy who waltzed right over from the Bowflex commercial, pausing only long enough to have his hair spray-painted white, is turned down by the most shallow of all barflies, because his hair makes him old.

And Walt (or is it “Clyde?” I never can tell) and Keith go, “Rejected! No play for Mr. Gray!”

I hate this commercial. Like women don’t get enough of this crap; now marketers are doing the same thing to men, and making women look like we have all the depth of a puddle.

And sadly, Walt (Clyde?) and Keith have been in my head for days now. Ever since I got the email.

The Email. From The Agent.

Rejected!

Yup. The Agent is going to pass. And I quote:

“Thank you very much for letting me see your work. Unfortunately the project does not seem right for me, and I am sorry I cannot offer to serve as your agent.

You write well and I usually find Western settings appealing, but the characters are just not working for me.

I do wish you all the best on finding more suitable representation, and thank you again.”

Now, this is depressing. Perhaps the Noseless Cowboy isn’t as entrancing as I thought; perhaps the things that make sense in my head don’t actually make sense to anyone else. This sort of thing could quickly spiral out of control until I’ve managed to convince myself that I’m just wasting my time and money on the pipe dream of publication.

But this little drama occurred while I was what I like to call “dog-sick.” As in, sicker than a dog. Remember last week, when my Mom and Gram and I spent the day shopping? Well, Mom came back up and hung out with us the rest of the weekend.

Bad Idea. Mom doesn’t have the natural Kid-Germ Tolerance that those of us who spend all our free time with toddlers do, and she got sick. Very (damn) sick. And then she shared. She feels lousy about that, and I can’t blame her, but it wasn’t like she did it on purpose.

So I’ve been sick. Not as sick as Mom was (no one could be that sick) but still, it’s been a workout to keep both eyes open AND my head upright for a few days.

Ergo, I’ve been too damn tired to be depressed. Oh, sure, I sniveled a little, but I felt like poo, I had no idea when my hubby was going to be able to get home, and I was, as Clyde (Walt?) and Keith kept saying, “Rejected!”

But being dog-sick also let me get a little distance. And distance, for me, equals perspective. And perspective equals Becca.

Everyone should have someone like Becca, if not the actual Becca, in their life. One of my oldest, dearest friends, Becca is the Zen-Master of Perspective. She radiates such measured calmness that it actually freaks a lot of people out – which is what initially drew me to her.

Becca has given me immense perspective as she is the living embodiment of “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff.” Very handy for someone like me, for whom tizzies are second nature. The woman has talked me down more times than I can count, on everything from grad school rejections (oof, more rejections!) to the fact that a psycho relative of mine who shall remain nameless lest she sue me wore her mother-of-the-bride dress to my wedding, despite the fact that she’s not my mother (one of my few wedding freak-out moments).

Becca’s perspective is now (almost) second nature. So instead of dwelling on the fact that the agent passed on the book, I’m forcing myself to look on the positive. The agent said I write well. And since she requested the full, my query letters are getting better. The characters aren’t working for her; they may work better for someone else. And I never really thought of this book as a Western, because that conjures up spaghetti westerns and Silvardo and Indians who are two dimensional at best, proving once again that I don’t write stuff that is easily categorized.

This isn’t the end of the line. Just another pit stop on the journey.

But now what? I think I still have two agents out of the initial six I queried who haven’t responded. Do I query this book some more? Try to query the Lily and Bobby books (Don’t Hold It Against Her and The Best They Could)? My instinct is to bury my head into the Warrior, Lawyer book (no, I don’t have a better title yet) and finish it – it’s almost done anyway – and query the same agent for that. She might like Nick and Rissa better. Or not.

I don’t know. Unfortunately, this journey did not come with a built-in road map. Just a sound track with sports stars of yore shouting “Rejected!” on a constant loop.

Man, I HATE that commercial.

I’m IT!

A while back, my friend Lucy ‘tagged’ me. And being me, I had no idea what that meant, and was busy doing all sorts of holiday related, air-craft carrier wrapping. But apparently, being ‘tagged’ means that you have to post seven random things about yourself, like Lucy did here.

Well, the holidays are over, it’s the middle of January and about -6 outside today, and I don’t think most people want to listen to me debate the pros and cons of writing shopping scenes in the new novel. So, only a month and a half behind schedule (which is about when I finally get to my thank-you notes), I present seven random things about myself. I apologize to everyone.

1. I do not like coffee. Or beer. I drink a lot of tea – on days like today, up to seven cups. My hubby once wondered how on earth I could have made it through a bachelor’s and a master’s degree without drinking coffee. I subscribe to this weird theory that I should actually LIKE the stuff I’m consuming, and both coffee and beer taste disgusting. Hence why I was the sober walker back during those heady undergraduate days.

2. I’m what you might call an extroverted introvert. Which means that, in general, I don’t like being around people. This is reflected by my general lack of friends. (Don’t get me wrong. The ones I do manage to make, I keep.) But, when situations like the recent three holiday parties in four weekends arise, I put on my game face and channel … my father. Yes, the man who has been labeled ‘gregarious’ (by the Christian Science Monitor, no less!) suddenly starts cracking jokes out of my mouth. Granted, my jokes are never as funny as his are, but for relatively short bursts, especially with a glass of wine in hand, I can be sociable. And then I have to go home and not talk to anyone for three days.

3. I’m the oldest. True, my situation is a little different because my sisters are twins, but I’m still the oldest. And I’m a textbook oldest. When I read about birth order studies, I fit the profile perfectly. Responsible? Check. Adult-pleaser? Check. Follows the rules? Usually. Bossy know-it-all? I’d be lying if I said that weren’t true. And even though my sisters are twins, they also fit the middle and youngest child patterns perfectly. Turns out, eight minutes can make a world of difference.

4. I love daffodils. More than any other flower, daffodils do it for me. When I was a little girl, my mom and I even had a secret word for them, probably based on my inability to pronounce ‘daffodil.’ I called them dolly-flods, and still do. (Which I’ve never typed before. It looks really silly, but it’s true!) I probably put close to a thousand in the ground at our old house in Chicago, and have easily passed that here. And I have grand plans to put a few more thousand under our magnolia tree at some point, but that takes time, money, and a lot of Ben-Gay. I also regularly talk to my plants. It’s not unusual to hear me yelling at my daffodils and crocuses when they pop their heads out in the middle of February. “NOT YET!” I yell at them. “IT’S TOO SOON! GO BACK IN THE GROUND!” Needless to say, I have very tolerant, amused neighbors. My hubby is used to it by now.

5. I’ve made peace with washing dishes. In grad school, when I only had a bar sink, I detested washing dishes to the point that things would be growing in that sink and I was eating my dinner off a napkin. I always felt better when they were done, because I do like neat and clean, but I just hated standing in that dark little kitchen/bath combo and washing the damn things. Now, though, I have a nice window that looks out onto a garden I planted last year and two trees with assorted wildlife that frolics in them. In the summer, I open the windows and listen to my son build sandbox worlds and the birds sing. I’ve come to accept that, as a woman, washing dishes is a direct connection with how my ancestors back to the beginning of time have cared for their families. I wash because I care. And I don’t like stuff growing in my sink.

6. I have a strange woman’s picture hanging in my office. My lovely co-worker and friend Mary frequents auctions, and I had been looking for old-fashioned picture frames for my stairwell o’ family pictures. So Mary found a nice oval one – that came with a picture of a young woman’s head and bare shoulders. The date says 1936, Bway NY, but no name. She’s not a real looker – her teeth tend towards bucking, her nose is a little large – but she’s got a sweet smile and a vintage haircut. Rather than chuck this picture that someone spent a lot of money on in the middle of the Great Depression, I decided to keep her and name her Agnes. She looks like an Agnes to me. She’s taped to my filing cabinet. A head shot of my kid is now in the frame in the stairwell.

7. I hate getting haircuts. Back in high school, I got one haircut a year – three inches off the bottom. It was long, beautiful light brown hair that reached 3/4 of the way down my back. And I could do things with it – braids were my speciality. All my metalhead friends were intensely jealous of my hair. But the problem was that, while the hair itself was lovely, it didn’t look good on me. I have a wide face that’s not traditionally beautiful (one of the reasons I like Agnes so much!) , and all that hair weighing down on it didn’t help. In general, shorter hair brings balance to my face. But that requires getting it cut, and then styling it. I love my stylist, Dawn, because she understands I’m barely going to make the minimum effort on behalf of beauty, but still, I only make it in to see her about every three months. In fact, I’m now officially growing it out because I don’t want to get it cut right now.

Did you make it to the end? It wasn’t so bad, was it? At least it was only seven random things. Trust me, I’m random enough that I could go on all day. But I can’t – speaking of random, I have to write scenes of shopping at the Mount Rushmore gift store.

STAY WARM!

Seriously, I’m a little confused. If I didn’t have that nifty little calendar feature on my computer to tell me that today is Thursday, I’d have no idea. I think it’s Tuesday.

The toddler spent the first part of the week throwing up. I spent the first part of the week doing laundry. And for two days, the rest of the time, we spent wedged into my chair watching every Pixar movie EVER MADE. (Except for Wall*E, because Santa forgot that one. Oh well.)

After careful analysis, I have expertly concluded that Dory the Fish is funnier than Mike from Monsters, Inc. But just barely. Rex the Dinosaur is a close third.

So, I’ve got a kid crammed against one hip, and three-legged wiener dog draped over my lap, and my computer precariously balanced on the arm of the chair, and I spent almost two days typing with one hand, because I already know Finding Nemo by heart. Nothing like pecking out soul-revealing conversations between two characters who have nothing in common but being carbon-based life forms and being stuck in the same car on a road trip while simultaneously comforting a toddler that fish are indeed friends, not food.

There was a fun break in the proceedings, when contractors actually showed up and began using a bobcat to dig out frozen earth and frame up brand new, only three months behind schedule, concrete steps.

Is there anything better, for a 3 1/2 year old boy, than staying home, eating blue Popsicles (doctor approved, thank you!) and watching a bobcat work less than two feet from you? If there is, it’s watching movies in your jammies all day.

Sadly, the contractors have not reappeared, which means that I have no functional steps. Just a form with gravel in it. And a bobcat in my backyard.

What was that resolution I made? Something about Patience? I gotta get me some of that.

As you can see, things have been a little nutty around here recently. We still haven’t gotten our acts fully back together from the holiday crazies. But that’s okay, because the book I’m working on (while I wait – PATIENTLY – to hear from the agent) IS actually coming together.

Have you laughed at the title yet? Here, let me tell you, and you can laugh with me:

Warrior, Lawyer

It’s even better when you say it like this, in a deep movie trailer voice: “Warrior (comma) Lawyer.” The comma is very important to making this a really lame title.

But my Web Honcho, aka Craig, was putting stuff up on the site, and I wanted something up there. And that’s what my brain came up with, on short notice.

Doesn’t bode well, does it? At least it’s funny.

But beyond the awful title, the book is coming together. The Warrior (comma) Lawyer in question is Nick Longhair. Nick barely merited a passing mention in the last book (that the agent is reading in full), as being sent to Harvard Law so that Jacob the Noseless Cowboy would have a top-notch lawyer. But I got to thinking one day, what would it be like to be a Lakota Indian at Harvard Law? The short answer is, it kind of sucks. The long answer is at 298 pages (in five weeks – stupid possessing muse!). I was calling it Lakota Legally Blond, but I figured Reese Witherspoon would beat me up, and she looks like she fights dirty.

So, if anyone else has any other title suggestions – real or hilarious, I’m all eyes. In fact, I dare you to come up with something worse that Warrior (comma) Lawyer.

I Triple Dog Dare You! (Sorry. Still a little nutty around here!)

It’s noon on the first day of the year. I’m fighting a sinus infection, not helped by having to get up with a recalcitrant toddler at 4:37 this morning, a mere 3 1/2 hours after we all finally tucked it in. He did go back to sleep until 8. I got that going for me.

So what I’m saying is, Happy New Year!

But I hope you’re not expecting greatness today, because I ain’t got it.

I got a picture of an aircraft carrier. THE aircraft carrier:

Yup. Now it didn’t go quite as I predicted – he actually thought it was really neat and flew planes around for the better part of the day. Plus, his Mimi got him another plane, so planes have been swooping around and crashing into my tush for a week now. It was cool enough that he didn’t remember that Santa didn’t give him bike for a few days.

See that one plane? The one that looks like it’s got a dinner plate on the back? It’s moments like this that my hubby amazes me. He’s a pretty atypical guy – I was recently spackling, sanding, priming, and painting a wall while he washed the dishes – but he still has the capacity to surprise me. Like when the toddler busts out the plane with the dinner plate on it and the hubby patiently explains, “Oh, now that’s an AWACS plane, probably from 1966.”

HUH?

Is this a guy thing? Like when we’d pass a boat of a vintage car on the highway, and my dad would say, “Now that’s a ’57 Chevy, because they changed the fins from the ’56 by three inches.” And, as the car full of confused women (Mom and my sisters) thought, what the heck?, he added, “I liked the ’58 better. Of course, they fazed the fins out . . .” he could go on for hours like this.

And my hubby – who makes the best damn chocolate chip cookies in the world – knows them all. All five of our new planes and helicopters. And this knowledge has been passed on to the 3 year old. Although he doesn’t pronounce AWACS quite right. But he’s got it.

Anyway.

So you got any resolutions? I resolve to be more patient, like when I wait to hear from editors and agents and Oprah’s assistant (just kidding!) or when the toddler pushes my buttons or when contractors don’t show or when I shatter a crown the day before New Year’s Eve and no dentist is in the office until Monday. Patience. Gonna get me some.

I also make my standard resolutions, the ones I make every single year. Better posture (don’t laugh, I’ve made this resolution for going on fifteen years now). Healthier eating. Be a better friend. Be a better wife and mother and daughter.

You know. The standard shift.

I wish I could make resolutions for my toddler – more pleases and thank yous, less whining, more sleeping through the night, picking up toys without being asked – but I know that’s a pipe dream. Plus, it’s bad for my karma.

So I make them for myself. More pleases and thank yous. Get some more sleep. Whine less. Try to keep my dining room table from becoming the dumping ground for the house.

All I can do is hope I keep them, and hope that it rubs off on my little guy.

I wish you all the best for 2009!