Shards and parcels –

Woke up to snow. This was not a surprise—while we watched the BYU home game last night on Cam’s very large plasma TV, the field went from that lovely football green to a white wasteland. “We think it’s a first down,” the officials were saying. “If we can find the little white line on the field, we’ll know for sure.” Clash of the snowmen. Not your usually bright October day. Last time we couldn’t tell the teams from the snow was in about 1981—but that was November. I know. I took a picture of Ginna, and the UTEP game was on in the background. I am wondering now, however, if that was a black and white TV, which would cut down on color-recognition. As I look at that picture, I can actually tell the difference between the field and the players, too, which was not like the game last night.
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It’s become a ritual, watching the game at Cam and Lorri’s. We come, Lorri’s mom and sibs come—at least half the people there sit around the room staring into their laptops, while the rest of us yell and scream together and help out the commentators. Cam had these brilliant “season tickets” printed up for everybody in August with a handy-dandy listing of the games and times, which means I don’t get lost on the Cougar website anymore. Even Ginna is part of this; Cam pulls the game into his computer somehow and streams it to Kansas City over Skype. “Somebody better get that kid out of the booth,” Lorri said, half way through the game (the brutal truth is that The Mountain is not the slickest network on the block) ‘cause we were hearing a voluble small person in the background.

Turned out to be Max, in the end—we could hear Ginna and Kris on our end of the skype connection.

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I can’t write these things anymore. Somehow, when I was doing this in journal form, I felt more myself. Now, when I sit down to—what do I sit down to do, anyway? It’s like taking pictures—these things happen, things that hint or smack or reek of meaning—epiphanies or clever things, philosophy, observation, patterns or aberrations—and I want to record them in all their shades and flavors. It’s not unusual for life to intrude, so that all I’m left with is the impression of a dream. But beyond that, now, when I sit down to write things down, I go all self-conscious. Like, I don’t write in cute little packets. I’m scared to make things too long. I’m worried about not being funny. It’s like worrying that my kids won’t want to come and visit unless I’m entertaining enough to entice them.

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And that’s probably more than anybody wanted to know, right?

So, here are the highlights, as many as I can salvage from the last several weeks, of our lives—to be enlarged upon as life permits:

June: We are getting too old for this entrepreneurial thing. You work all your life, thinking that you’re building something, then the world changes and what have you got in the end? Then again, from what I hear, the corporate thing really isn’t any more secure – life has few safety nets. I checked on the possibility of finishing my Master’s Degree, as if that would make a difference in my fate. And, always wisely anticipating the chance of facing financial rack and ruin, we decide to spend thirty grand on an addition to the studio (horses and burning barns). We begin to break up the driveway and dig very deep holes. I buy many books and start learning how to do CSS so that I, too, can have a cool author website. Learning curve: good thing I’m used to mountains. I try to find an agent. Good thing I’m used to mountains.

July: Immediately, the phone begins to ring and Guy has no time to build anything. We have temporary fencing in the front to keep the dogs from playing chicken with the traffic. I make a friend of an agent I respect—which doesn’t mean she signs me.

August: Charlotte and I start writing a book together and I get a commitment from Raincoast Books, which means that I am NOT dead, and I get to work with Tonya again. Also, it is very hot, and chaotic, and nothing else happens.

September:
1. You’ve read about Death on the Mountain.
2. I fly to Dallas to see the folks.
3. I come home and try to remember where I left off. On the way to my yearly bout of hair-frying, I am almost killed by an out-of-control car (this may be pushing a point). We think about riding the mountain one more time, but can’t get it together.
4. A week later, Charlotte and I drive to Rexburg, Idaho, so I can be one of the Famous People at a children’s lit conference. On the way home, through the worst storm of the previous three months, we are almost killed twice (pushing a little less). All of the leaves on the mountain have fallen.
5. Two days later, we fly to Florida for a Disney World adventure. Heavy on the “adventure.”
6. Come home to do damage control after being gone half of the month of September—homebody bites the dust.
7. Half a week later, Ginna comes for a training thing. Or was it a week and a half?
8. The water breaks in the barn. Again. Deep holes must be dug.
October:
9. Charlotte and I are up to our eyebrows in the book.
10. It freezes at night, and the autumn apples turn mealy.
11. I feel guilty for the mess at the pasture—only so much time in one life-time, and I begin to resent the fact that barns and houses can’t take care of themselves, even for a MINUTE.
12. I buy clothes for the first time in fifteen years. Maybe twenty. Who knows?
13. The yard turns gorgeous colors, and it snows.
14. When I should have been writing about the yumi and the oni (a scene from our up-coming book – have I mentioned it?) I go instead to Costco, gathering food. While there, I am in one of those cheese and polish sausage cooler isles, when I look up and find that I am standing right between David McKell, my former (we’re talking 30 years or more ago) employer, son rescuer (motor cycles in the desert), daughter reconstructionist (pogo sticks in the garage) and dear friend and Dick Beeson, Scrooge (only about my Christmas party rules), curmudgeon and dear friend. It was like coming up snake-eyes.
15. Now I am finally writing—having forgotten all the scintillating details, brilliant insights and heart-rending truths.

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See what I mean?