The New Heroine

I'm sick and single-parenting. My darling husband is repelling canyons in southern Utah and I'm here with the critters nursing an amazingly bad cold. He'll be gone for a total of 11 days and the photo of the woman screaming and running through the wheat fields that will be posted upon his return?, that'll be me! No, it's not so bad. My kids are troopers and have been very kind to me when they can understand what I'm saying through my mucus-laced speech. We've been leaving home at 8:00 am and returning around 7:00 pm and having Ramen and strawberries for dinner with Boston Baked Beans for dessert. It'll probably be one of their favorite memories of growing up!

I was perusing O Magazine the other day and came upon this:

Seriously? Is this life so hectic that we can't find moments of solitude? And whose fault is that anyway? If I need alone-time, I tell the family that if one more person disturbs me I'll be sending the offenders to the orphanage and there won't be grape jello for dessert. That pretty much does the trick. I mean really, heroin? I might crave it more if it were, say, chocolate or laundry that folds itself. Plus I'm totally afraid of needles.

Missing my guy, so I did a little layout of him fishing last summer. The journaling is from one of our favorite songs by Greg Brown. It pretty much sums him up; he just wants to catch some fish. The rest is just details.

By the way, on our journey home from Claire's school musical on Tuesday night, I picked up a nail on our gravel road and my tire was spitting air at us when we arrived home. Needless to say, it went flat very quickly and had to be changed. This is where a husband really comes in handy. I've never changed a tire in my life; it's dirty and oily and so very hard to get those lug nuts loosened. But there I was at 6:00 am the next morning, jacking up my car in Mark's coveralls and high on cold medicine because hey, I really had no choice. My friend John at Les Schwab commended me on my excellent work and told me that a lot of guys just call for them to come out because they don't want to put their spare on. With that under my belt, I'm thinking of getting that log-splitter this weekend. But I would definitely want to replace the Keystone Light with a bottle of Merlot!