Laurustina

This gift arrived last week – just in time for my birthday – and while you can’t fully appreciate its 3-D elements on the page, I suspect you can still imagine my delight.

[You can find more of June's art HERE.]

It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I just haven’t been wriing for you. Instead, it’s been weeks of contract work and revisions on the manuscript. Head down and eye on the prize. Some of the new work has been challenging, other bits are too silly for words. But my clients are great and at the moment, I can’t complain.

I took some time off yesterday however to luch with three Twitter friends. They’re my first real-life Tweeps and like nearly every one of my experiences with Bloggy Peeps, I had a lovely time. Despite my rice-burning panic and the usual dog hysteria (mostly Iggy, of course) these women were chill and instantly comfortable to be around. As a sweet reminder, Megan (imagine Miss Bliss with an Aussie accent) left me with this delicate opal pendant.

In other news, I’ll be looking for a handful of Beta-Readers this next month. Basically I need speedy readers with a critical eye to help me hone in on the bits that aren’t necessary or don’t work. I need to slash approximately 20,000 words by the end of April. If you’re interested and think you’re up for the task, let me know.

That’s it for now, but I promise to be back around soon with something more interesting to say.

This is Pig. Actually, his full name is Ignatius Banjous Trimagnaton which is of course ridiculous and therefore rarely invoked. Mostly he’s introduced as Iggy B. but when we’re irritated with him which happens all too often, he is simply Pig.

He’s a surprisingly elegant Italian Greyhound, favoring his graceful mother rather than his squatty, surly father. Over the last nine years, he’s gone from spoiled first puppy to cranky old man. He’s the reason that visitors cringe when ringing our doorbell. He’s well known as the one who steals pizza (and the occasional falsie) and pees on anything within two-feet from the floor.  What I mean to say is that he’s an ass, but he’s our ass and every once in a while he’s awfully freakin’ sweet.

My friend Jorge read the following poem from the Great Sufi Master Hafiz at Ashlie’s bedside on our last day with her. My dear friend Dan read it again, at her memorial. I take comfort in these words today as we mark the four-year anniversary of her death.

Today, I had the pleasure of lunching with my friend Jill (aka JadedJu). We met over the internet through bloggy friends a decade ago and then in person, a few months later. When I returned from our first lunchdate, on a Sunday in February of 2004, I reported back to our blog circle with the following story. Later, I found it re-posted on some random site with the title “BEST TRUE INTERNET MEET-UP STORY EVER”. The word TRUE made me laugh for quite some time, but it remains one of my favorite stories and so I’m bringing it back around.

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 Every time I meet one of my blog friends for the first time in person, there’s a bit of a blind date quality to it. How will I know him? What if she stands me up? What if they’ve brought a fistfull of friends to stand and point and laugh at me? So when I went to Pescadero to meet Jill last Sunday, I was a little edgy, not knowing what to expect.

I saw her as I approached Duartes, winding my way through the long line of Harleys that filled every parking space on the block. Leaning against a lamp post, she had a look about her that said she’d been waiting for me to arrive. Her bright green mohawk didn’t surprise me as much as the fact that she was nearly seven and a half feet tall.

“Are you . . . ?” I asked.

“And you?” she countered.

We nodded in unison and I followed her into the restaurant.

We’d already ordered and broken into the soft, steaming loaf of homemade bread when she said, oh so casually, “So you’re all packed?”

I stopped buttering.

“Packed?”

“Yeah, we haven’t got much time.”

“Time for . . . ?” I glanced around the restaurant as if some magical answer to her question was waiting on one of the rustic walls.

“Time to catch up with them. We’ve got to be in Oregon before morning. The show opens in Victoria on Tuesday.”

I put the bread back on the plate and pushed back from the table.

“The show?”

“You ARE the Lion Tamer, aren’t you?”

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