Half-cocked

I leave for Eastend, SK and the Wallace Stegner House on Sunday and I'm feeling a bit half-cocked, like this week is a firearm that will probably go off but also somehow aim itself at my formerly-fetching ankles.

So I've blown off my shins but somehow, I'll be in Eastend Sunday night or early Monday morning.

After years of overpacking - both in terms of fripperies like sun hats and scarves to wend around my neck whilst hiking and appallingly necessary necessaries like books - I've decided to pack light this time.

Partly, that's because I know what I'll need. Stretches under the trees with my camera, a few Edison texts so that I may tread in facts like tannin-laced bogwater and then gratefully emerge, biographical detail studding my skin like sated leeches...

Where was I?

Oh yes: and then lots of time having at the notebook/reading/thinking.

I've a week all to myself at Stegner, just long enough to savour being alone and also to begin missing M + Aa and their grand chaos. And then when they turn up, three days a week of childcare so that I may still get work done.

I'm leaving M on father's day but rejoining him in time for our tenth anniversary, which is sort of fun. And hopefully Aa won't mind the daycare, her first quasi-institutional setting. But I heard they swim every day, so how bad can it be?

Since I picked up the habit of grass-swimming at Sage Hill, I think I might just try to find somewhere I can swim every day too.


In other news, I've been interview-mad of late: I'll be a featured alumna for the upcoming Sage Hill newsletter thing-y, rob mclennan sent me his 12 or 20 questions survey which I even answered (saints above!) for his blog, and Shawna Lemay asked me a few questions about blogging and the creative process for her jewel-box of a blog, Capacious Hold-all.

It should go without saying that I'm exceedingly grateful for the opportunities but it seems like all I do of late is try VERY hard not to sound flippant/dumb/strident in text.

* * *

Apparently, I'm meant to set up a reading in Eastend before my term there is done.

Since I'm going to be flexing my event-coordinating muscles, so honed at Aqua o'er the past year, I was contemplating trying to set something up on the swing home too.

But I think I might just look for moose by the side of the road and sing-song Aa all the way home instead.

Besides, there are rumblings that I might get to do another western mini-tour this fall in support of the lovely lovely Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999.

I'll let you know when the dates/times for any of these these firm up...

* * *

In other other news, I officially have an editor for Hump, in whose service I will expend my last spasm of still-in-town energy by sending her/him my manuscript tomorrow.

Having an editor is like having a secret boyfriend/girlfriend. You wonder if they're thinking of you (and your blessed infinite work), then hope they're not thinking of you (and your poor vulnerable work), then back again.

So I'm terrified and elated but she/he and I have what's left of the summer for a good mull on the thing before we start actively editing.

I think working with she/he is the part of the process I'm most looking forward to...I'm sure it'll feel like all the bones in my body are being manually shifted while it's happening, but I need to be stretched. The work needs to be stretched.

As B often says (okay, natters at me incessantly) when we're on walks: Extend! Extend!

(I'm sorry if I wasn't meant to keep his/her identity a secret! I never know which things are meant to be secret!)