Oopsie: 30 Days of Truth, Days 5 & 6

Between the excitement of the SNOW!!1! (which, I am pretty sure, had all melted by noon) and a nice long nap I took with the baby this evening, I'm technically a day behind in this.  So I'll lump the next two days together.

Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.

Le Sigh.  Be published.  Me and everyone else, right?  I need to get my ass in gear and get back to my novel.  (Wow, you're writing one too?  Aren't we all...)  I actually have prepared the short story I mentioned at the beginning of this for submission, but OpenOffice is beating me about the head and shoulders in open defiance of my need to remove the header from only the front page.

So, yeah, 5 ties in to 1 quite nicely.

I actually had made some good progress in my  novel when I first started it in '08.  I had gotten probably about a third of the way into it, and idiotically abandoned it as bloated and going nowhere.  I have the notebook the bulk of the story is in around here somewhere...tomorrow's goal should be unearthing it and digging in again.  How stupid not to keep in mind Anne Lamott's advice on shitty first drafts.  (I was so irritated at being made to read Bird by Bird, but I really owe that professor a thank you note.)

There are lots of other things I want to do in life, but none loom near so large...

Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.

I think the answer to this is the same for every single parent who hasn't already done so:  I hope to never have to bury a child.

I have four daughters.  Each girl is a unique, special, beloved individual.  The thought of losing one of them panics me.  Chances are, none of them will change the earth.  But they have changed my Earth, and that makes them immeasurably important, at least in our little corner of the universe.

My brother has done this.  I don't know how he managed to so much as move.  I realized the other day that Marie looks almost exactly like Micaela.  It knocked me for a loop, and I am only her aunt.  Even being on the fringes of something like that is unspeakably horrible.  Peter, you know I love you...I hope to never, ever be able to understand what you went through.