#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream

A day framed with Wave, out of bed and into bed. I get to drive him to school. It takes 35 minutes in traffic. Which is great, because we are playing a game the whole way. As we get into the car I say, how would the school be run if Wave was in charge? We have many, many fun ideas. He is engaged with the question and the delight of imaginative leaps. He gets out the car happily, and into school happily. My daughter says this morning, “It’s like someone turned in a switch outside to autumn.” It’s very cool this morning. And sunny. After the drive, I take a walk, water a few plants, and take my swim. I have a lot to get done. I am a little impatient, and also a little overtired. But once I get to my desk I get a lot done. I have my Israeli group, and it’s very emotionally deep, as it so often is. And we all feel better after talking, after drawing, after sharing. I started a new Grandmother Writing workshop tonight, so I prepped for that. And it went very well, and even though I felt tired after dinner––I made spinach manicotti––it gave me energy to have all the grandmother ancestors in our Zoom space, and the lovely writing. I received my first decline of my manuscript today. Okay. Tonight I got an email from a writer who had a poem in an journal recently that has my art on the cover. He was writing to ask permission to use my image for a book cover he will have published soon. My image, he said, expresses so wonderfully what his book is about. So, that was a nice balance of rejection/approval. And I managed to tweak a couple of lines of my plan that were in notes I didn’t want to forget. I have set the date for a reading with Liz and Franci acting the grandmother an the granddaughter for later September. I finally got into bed, exhausted, ready to relax, and guess who came in to see about dinosaurs? And so began our negotiation: five minutes? No, that’s not long. Okay, ten minutes. And that’s my final offer! And so we fought quite loudly and happily with one trip to the dinosaur ER for some x-rays and mending, for thirteen minutes––but who’s counting?