Do you want your marshmallow now, now, now!? Or will you wait and receive TWO marshmallows? I especially relate to the child who pets his marshmallow like it’s a small bird. Then he kisses it. Then he waits.

She is slowing.  Every movement is contemplated well ahead of its execution.  There are perhaps only a small number of steps remaining, so each one is measured and weighed for its importance.  The body rises from the floor only when the food bowl is fully prepared and heading to Scarlett’s feeding place.  We walk together, she and I, carefully.  Slowly.

There is still a wag in her tail.  But now she stands for only three events:  A small bowl of food laced with pain pills and vitamins, a short sunbath outside, or the occasional visitor to greet.  Her hips are too painful with arthritis to accommodate any more activity than that.  Walks are out of the question.  A game of fetch occupies perhaps only a memory to be dreamed of.  Playtime with Wilson is mostly out of the question, although she still loves a rousing game of bone wars now and then.

Yes.  Scarlett is slowing more each day.  We don’t know when she will ask for that final ride to the vet, or if she even will.  The vet’s office has always been a source of concern for Scarlett.  But as long as she can still manage to walk to her spot on the grass, Scarlett will continue to be showered with the same love and care that she has always given us.

I call these the gentle days.

I hold Scarlett’s dear face in my hands and we talk.  We murmur softly to each other.  We smile.  I’ve promised her that I’ll hold her all the way when the time comes.  I tell her it’s okay to leave us if she needs to and it’s equally okay to stay if she wants.

In spite of — or perhaps more accurately, because of — the spreading gray on her muzzle, her halting gait, her deliberate far-away gaze, the gorgeous Miss Scarlett has never seemed more beautiful.

If I were one of those winsome darlings who could flash a couple of dimples and a face-full of charm, I’d have made it by now.  By now I’d have a folder with a signed agent contract tucked neatly inside.  I’d have a big fat book contract, thoroughly vetted by my intellectual property attorney, and a fistful of dollars to launch a coast-to-coast media blitz and book signing tour.  I’d have people.  At the very least, I’d have one people.

But, alas!  Here I am — still home in my summer writing costume of last year’s tank top and ratty shorts, still desperately hoping for that one blinding lightening strike to fall onto my lap.  Yet still, there’s nothing but cloudless skies, empty folders waiting for contracts, a pathetic wardrobe … and no people.

It could have something to do with my miserable and paltry querying techniques.  No.  Really.  It could be that it doesn’t matter about the stunning lack of dry lightening — or my “people” — or the endless brown heat that squeezes itself around Phoenix for six months of the year.

It could be that I’m just a querying goober who took NO for an answer way too readily.

Last week I had a wonderful conversation with my favorite writing guru, Anne Mini (see www.annemini.com for an extensive treatise on the art of querying), who casually mentioned that one must query if one wants to publish.  Astounding!  Smack-me-in-the-head with the truth, astounding.  Anne’s blog is replete with boundless examples, illustrations, admonitions and encouragement, all perfectly categorized and all free just because she wants writers to succeed in what has become a difficult publishing environment for all but the biggest names.  The trick is to read her blog, incorporate her suggestions … and then DO it all gladly.

It’s one thing to write from home in my jammies.  It’s quite another to place that business hat atop my pointy little head and actually cooperate with the misery referred to as the “publishing process.”  Having a few amazing books hidden in the deep catacombs of a writer’s filing cabinet is an act worthy of only a crazy despot.  Real writers write — then they query until there’s no one left to ask — and then they start from the top of the list once more and query again and again and again.  In my case, perhaps I’m just hoping for some frazzled agent to say yes just to shut me up.  If you happen to be one of those wildly overworked agents, just picture me politely waving “hi” and asking for just a moment of your time.

Of course, what I’m looking for is what every writer wants — a moment of impossible grace.  Yes.  Certainly, someone to say, YES.  Someone to say that what I’ve written is worthy and respectful and filled with truth.  How fun it is to imagine giving my own Sally Field acceptance speech of, “You like me.  You really LIKE me.”  How lovely to think of my manuscript’s timely entrance into the world, wrapped in a flowing gown of words, creating its own lightening sparks to engage, invigorate and sustain its readers.

Perhaps it’s every underpublished writer’s dream to be immersed in that ephemeral and watery substance that could be called “grace.”

I know many who’ll even change from their jammies in order to properly receive even a small dollop of grace during these dry-lightening days.

We are long-term.  We are new.  We hug with the intensity of a crackling fire.  We keep secrets forever, we are flint sparking stone.  We are girlfriends.

We’ve been girlfriends for two days, for forty years, or just since this morning in the check-out line.  Yes.  We are girlfriends.  We make no judgments.  We ask nothing of each other.  We are simply girlfriends.

We’ve learned to help each other out, lift each other up and give each other space.  We talk into the night and delight in listening to the beat and cadence of another female’s voice.  We judge softly, laugh loudly, ingest heartily the rhythm of what it is to be female — to be girlfriends.

Tomorrow I leave the lingering summer heat of Phoenix to spend four days in Arizona’s cool White Mountains with four other women.  These are decades-long girlfriends from high school; I’m only recently reconnecting after many years away.  It seems not to matter whether we’ve spent our lives in the same place … or whether we scattered like migrating birds to other parts of the country.   Even in absence, we’re not far away.  We’ve kept tabs on one another and held each other in regard through all our years.

We.  Are.  Girlfriends.

We are each different.  This small four-day gathering is a microcosm representative of our larger group.  Our hostess (a mother, grandmother and horse lover extraordinaire),  is as delightful and gracious as a woman can be.  Two of this little group work outside the home, one (that would be me) works at home in her jammies and one is working harder than all of us put together as she recovers from recent and urgent breast cancer treatment.

We appear as different as night from day, yet so long ago, during four years of studies and boys and slumber parties and teenage angst, we were somehow knitted together into a group of a hundred or so girlfriends.  We were cheerleaders and scholars, shy and gregarious.  We were advantaged and poor, gifted and plain.  But whatever our individual talents and personalities, we discovered the power of girls helping other girls.  We learned that smiling “hi” to everyone in the hallway between classes contained a power sufficient to get us through that next hour of Latin or math or science.

We learned about history while forming our own history.  And we did it all without gossiping or fighting or tearful encounters.  We simply had fun.  We spent our Friday nights at high school games and danced in our stocking feet in the gym under crepe paper streamers.  Saturday nights we rode around in cars and ate hamburgers and milkshakes.  Boyfriends were fine, but girlfriends were the glue that kept us upright.  Some of our group have gone on to accomplish amazing things.  Some became gifted mothers and homemakers, some contributed outside the home with major firsts and striking accomplishments.  Some have led quiet, simple lives while others found great fortune.  For however our lives turned out, there was always one underlying influence that kept us somehow safe from flying apart whenever things took a difficult tack — We.  Are.  Girlfriends.

Oh, and we still have slumber parties.

A couple weeks ago, Wilson interviewed at our local Barnes & Noble bookstore to work in the children’s book area as a “Tail Waggin’ Tutor.”  His job was to snooze on the floor while children crawled over him and poked at his nose.  Actually, the children were supposed to read to Wilson.  The theory is that kids are less self-conscious reading to a dog than they are sounding out words in front of their giggling peers.  It makes wonderful sense for children to practice reading to a non-judgmental dog.  It’s proven to be a highly productive and effective way to relax the kids and give them a sense of success.

The kids were great.

Wilson loved them like he would love cavorting with little bunnies.  Snoozing was far from his mind and, for me, sitting on the floor with a young, happy-go-lucky dog for two hours rendered me incapable of walking for hours afterward.  After our stint, I was the one who was exhausted.  Wilson had a blast!  I left a dishrag.  Wilson thought the experience was a lovely two-hour frolic.  Clearly, I was the flunky.

So yesterday, I spoke with a lovely woman from Phoenix’s Hospice of the Valley to offer Wilson’s services as a hospice therapy dog.  Friday, we have an interview.  Perhaps I’ll have a chair on which to sit, rather than the floor.  Wilson loves adults — especially the ladies.  He LOVES the ladies.  He also likes to comfort people.  One day I had a friend over who was having a hard time.  As she sat on my couch, crying great heaving tears, Wilson put his head on her lap like he had a solution for her problems.  Just pet my head and you’ll be all better, he seemed to say.  Go ahead.  Give it a try.  Pet me, pet me.

Now, instead of darling bunnies reading to him while my body goes numb for two hours, we’ll see if being a member of the Hospice pet therapy team is perhaps well-suited to Wilson’s young personality and my old aching bones.  We’ll see.  Besides, my poor balding head — you all remember my little balding head that I whine about on a regular basis — well, I’d be afraid it might scare the little ones if my hat were to accidentally come detached from my head.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself to justify the comfort of a chair for me and a nice lap for Wilson to beg for some nice pets and maybe — oh, maybe — a cookie or two at the end.

Wish us luck!

It seems we’re in those dog days of summer when very little happens.  Over the past few days, I’ve started and stopped, posted and deleted at least three different blogs.  Failures … all of them!  Now here I am again at a blank screen.  I prefer this place.  A blank screen is comfortable.  There are no bothersome words to clutter up the joint.  My syntax is perfect; my punctuation is flawless.  With nothing to say, I could give the appearance of blissfulness.  Like floating on water.  Peaceful.  A summer flower in full bloom.

There are no mistakes when there are no words.

I could go this way easily, but remaining wordless might be more than my heart could handle.  After all, words got me here in the first place.  Breathing out, one sentence at a time, is how I manage to live from one day to the next.

There are glorious mistakes in the things I write.  Every word is a teachable moment.  Do I mean to say, these august days (as in the month), or do I mean to say, these august days (as in glorious)?  Honestly, I don’t know what I mean to say until the words move down my arms and through my fingers.  Poor Dan is often rendered apoplectic by the cavalier offerings I present to the writing world.  I don’t outline.  Never plan.  Plot structure?  What’s that?  Motivation?  My characters will let me know why they do what they do.  Often, I’m more surprised by what they do than anyone.

So, here’s where it gets tricky.  About this time each year … when the sun in Phoenix is relentless and I’m not sure I can take one more moment of this sand-filled, unforgiving desert … I slow down.  Like the brown-edged hibiscus in my yard, spinning out their final moments, I slow to a writing crawl.

Then, it rains.

Lovely, fat drops of rain just in time to revive the desert and keep it alive and thriving for another day.  I’m refreshed for one more moment.  My laptop hums under my fingers.  One red hibuscus decides to stand tall and I sit up in my chair.  I can do no less than that struggling plant.

I started this post with the statement that not much happens in these dog days of summer.  I lied.  Plenty happens.  Doctors pronounce verdicts over their patients.  Words continue to form in a writer’s mind.  Mistakes happen and then are corrected … mostly.  Written or not, words continue to spin.

And … hibiscus flowers stay one more day.

If I were a paper doll, I’d be terrified of fire.  And water.  I’d be okay with fingers bending my elbows and knees, but I wouldn’t like being crumpled up in someone’s fist.  I’d want to be kept safe from chewing dogs, but a child’s smile would delight me.  I would be ridiculously slender.  In the winter, I’d want to be dressed in coats and hats and have little fur-topped snowboots tabbed around my feet.  In the summer, I’d like a nice sundress and sunhat and I could be barefoot if it’s too hard to cut out the little paper sandals.  That would be okay.

Oh, and I’d like a Dan paper doll to kiss and hug until sparks flew from our hearts.  He could wear a golf outfit and hold a nice paper putter and we’d pretend he just drained a 20-footer to win the U.S. Paper Open and I would rush out on the eighteenth green with a smile and a bouquet of rainbow-colored flowers tabbed onto my arms.

And there would be no fire or water or teeth or crumpling.

Yeah, I’d like that — I’d like that much better than these past few crazy daisy days where we’ve done nothing but run like mad with no time for writing or resting … or sparking.  First, there was that little thing about Dan’s sleep apnea. A few posts ago, I might have mentioned that he spent the night at a sleep study clinic where he was found to have about 35 episodes an hour where he doesn’t breathe.  So, being the mathematical genius I am, I figured out that 35 times an hour times, oh say, 8 hours a night = 280 times a night when my dearheart isn’t BREATHING. That’s 280 times a night when his brain startles him awake (and me, by extension, I might add), screaming at him, HEY, I NEED A LITTLE AIR UP HERE.  There’s not been much sleep in the old Bloggybirdery with all that startling and screaming going on.

Several days ago, a kind Respiratory Therapist fitted Dan with a CPAP mask thingy that straps around his head and blows a constant stream of air into his face all night.  How’s that for a sweet fix?  Picture having a hard plastic mask around your mouth and nose, held in place with straps around your head like that alien face hugger thing in the one movie I still refuse to watch again because it scared the daylights out of me.  Dan says the blowing air makes it easy as pie to breathe in, but, he adds, expiration against the wind in his face feels like trying to spit in a tornado — it just spins around and ends up back in his face.  The breathing in part is good, but there’s not much sleep that occurs if every breath out is a battle.

Now, with poor Dan fighting all night with a hissing foreign object strapped to his head, I’m suddenly having dreams of Sigourney Weaver and wondering if I should get a cat and change my name to Ripley.  His Respiratory Therapist insists he’ll get used to the mask very soon.  “You’ll get the best sleep you’ve ever had,” she said.  Riiiight.  Since the Day of the New Machine, we’ve both been like dishrags draped across the couch all day.  We don’t even bother to change channels on the TV because pressing a remote seems too much effort.  If we don’t like the program, it’s a great reason to take another nap before dark brings another night’s battle with that Alien Face Hugger.  I’ve decided to call it June because I had an Aunt June who stayed with us when I was a high schooler and she was all mean and slobbery like that terrifying alien thing from that movie I’ll never watch again and now I have to go to bed every night singing, “You are my lucky star.”

Yesterday, I bought Dan flowers to cheer him up — daisies dyed in rainbow colors of orange and purple and blue and green.  Crazy Daisies, they’re called.  I love them and they did well to brighten our spirits.  My only hope is that once Dan gets used to his CPAP machine and we’re sleeping again through the night … we don’t have some wacky sequel to this particular movie because as I recall, Ripley is totally bald in Alien II … and we all know how I feel about my recent hair saga.  But then again, if I were a paper doll, I could just have paper hair in all lengths and colors to tab onto my little bald paper head.

Tomorrow, if all goes well and I have the energy, I’ll write about the fine art of turning wood on a lathe, the Chinese herbalist who isn’t Chinese and Wilson’s first day as a Therapy Dog.

Women.  We glide and slide and bump and birth.  We’re petals of pink easily torn apart, yet when torn, we turn strong as iron.  We fight to keep what little we have only to give it all away.  We drive like maniacs and love like crazy.  Once we love you, you’ll be loved forever — even when we make you go away — although we’ll hold you until our arms break from the weight of your nonsense.

These are truths, solid as the earth, rolling liquid like the sea.

My friend and I talked about the strange mettle of women this past week.  We’ve known each other for years and in spite of now and then lengthy absences, we never miss a beat.  We pick up our sentences in the very spot where we last left off.  This time I was visiting.  She was my gracious hostess.  We live now in separate states, but only an hour an a half away by plane … or a nanosecond apart by email or phone.

As always, our conversations over the four and a half days of my visit sparked like flint on stone, every word, each progressive thought, igniting a new and bright fire by which to light our way across this thing called womanhood.  We talked husbands and children and politics and religion — deeply exploring each subject and how we’ve been shaped by every topic that came to mind.  For the oddities of life that we so dearly share, we laughed until our hearts split open; we know so well the regions of each other’s lives.  For those things that baffle us, we simply shook our heads and clicked our tongues behind our teeth.  This is what women do.  We laugh and heave and click and dream.

When it was time for me to leave, it was like I was only running to the store.  I’ll be right back, my gesture of a wave said.  Maybe she’ll come here next.  Or perhaps we’ll only follow each other’s thoughts and movements on FaceBook … or by email or phone.  It makes no difference.

She is as much a part of me as is my arm.

We’ll find each other again … we’ll pick up our conversation where it last left off … not a beat will be missed. We’ll find each other again — for this is how women are.

It’s monsoon time in the desert.  We’ve actually been in “monsoon season” for a few weeks, but last evening was the first evidence of it in my area.  Fundamentally, monsoon is linked more to a shift in winds than precipitation, as evidenced by shrieking dust storms followed by three fat drops of rain.  In fact, the name “monsoon” is derived from the Arabic word “mausim” which means “season” or “wind-shift”.

The Arizona Monsoon is a well-defined meteorological event (technically called a meteorological “singularity”) that occurs during the summer throughout the southwest portion of North America. During the winter time, the primary wind flow in Arizona is from the west or northwest—from California and Nevada. As we move into the summer, the winds shift to a southerly or southeasterly direction. Moisture streams northward from the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. This shift produces a radical change in moisture conditions statewide.

Such a change, together with daytime heating, is the key to the Arizona monsoon. This wind shift is the result of two meteorological changes:

• The movement northward from winter to summer of the huge upper air subtropical high pressure cells, specifically the so-called Bermuda High (H).
• In addition, the intense heating of the desert creates rising air and surface low pressure (called a thermal low) in the Mohave (L).

These two features combine to create strong southerly flow over Arizona. The southerly winds push moisture north-ward from Mexico, although the exact source region for the moisture of the Arizona monsoon is unknown.

Now that you’ve had your meteorological lesson for the day, let me just tell you that a monsoon storm blows like crazy — usually in the evening just after you’ve lit the barbeque for those two-inch thick steaks that have been marinating all day, a lovely wine is waiting to be poured, the salad is high and healthy with good salady things and you’ve just set the patio table.  Yep.  That’s the moment when a wall of dust slams through your back yard, upending table and chairs and tipping your beautiful salad and wine all over the place.

Yep.

That’s what monsoon is all about.

Which is exactly why I’m taking a morning flight tomorrow, rather than the more convenient evening flight.  Those pesky monsoon storms normally come in the late afternoon or evening.  Flying in and out of Phoenix is bumpy at best with its thermals and updrafts or downdrafts or sidedrafts or whichever way those drafts come.  It’s always bumpy over Phoenix.  But flying through a storm would force me to drink heavily while strapped into a tiny seat in an upright and locked position.  To avoid that whole messy scene altogether, I just fly in the calm of the morning.  It’s nice.  No nervous laughter in the cabin.  People calmly sipping their morning coffee.  Business people with laptops, readying themselves for their business stuff.  People reading serenely, picking out items from the Sky Mall.  Kids playing nicely in their seats.

I’ll be gone just a few days.  Out Friday and back on Tuesday.  I’m traveling light, so I’ll most likely not take my laptop — unless I decide there’s room and I don’t mind the extra weight — I never know what I’ll do until the last moment.  In the meantime, be well and stay safe.

When I return, our next lesson will be about crickets and why my kitchen is covered in butcher paper and blue painter’s tape.

Sad news regarding one of my favorite living authors.  I’ve never done this before, but today I reprint an article from the Belfast Telegraph, in full, because I don’t know how to either add to or take away from the amazing life and work of Frank McCourt:

Angela’s Ashes author Frank McCourt ‘may have weeks to live’

By Grainne Cunningham
Tuesday, 14 July 2009

Author of the bestseller Angela’s Ashes Frank McCourt, who is battling the deadly skin cancer melanoma, is gravely ill and may have only weeks to live.

The Pulitzer Prize winner, who is due to celebrate his 79th birthday next month, was transferred to a hospice at the weekend.

According to the writer’s brother Malachy McCourt, who spoke publicly about his brother’s illness in May, the cancer was then in remission following a course of chemotherapy.

Describing his brother as “a hearty fellow” who had survived worse, Mr McCourt, an actor and author, denied several media reports that his brother was on his deathbed.

After receiving treatment at the world-famous Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital in New York, the writer was declared well enough to return home to Connecticut.

However, a friend said yesterday that Mr McCourt’s condition has deteriorated dramatically since then and that he is seriously ill.

It is understood he became unwell while on a cruise in the Pacific and was transferred to a hospital in Tahiti.

The Brooklyn-born former schoolteacher shot to fame relatively late in life with the publication of ‘Angela’s Ashes’ in 1996, when he was 56 years of age.

The memoir tells the tale of his impoverished childhood in Limerick after his alcoholic father Malachy and his mother Angela moved back there when he was just four years old. The book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1997.

His second book, ‘’Tis’, picked up the story of his life where Angela’s Ashes left off, with his arrival in America at age 19.

His 2005 memoir, ‘Teacher Man’, chronicled his 27-year career in the New York City school system.

Both books were instant bestsellers.

For 30 years, Mr McCourt taught in New York City high schools, having earned a degree at New York University.

He recently made his first venture into children’s books with “Angela and the Baby Jesus,” based on an incident from the childhood of his mother Angela.  In an interview at the end of 2007 he said that he was in the middle of writing his first novel, and was also planning a book for teenagers.