Best-Laid Plans

Coco-pop drew a picture last week and presented it to me proudly. "Oh wow," says I, the proud mother, at loss for words. "It is so very. So very very!"

"See what it is?" she said, light shining from her eyes.

"It's. A! Um! Girl?" I threw a dart. The dart broke the lightbulbs in her eyes.

"It's a turtle," she said dully, and turned away.

"A GIRL turtle?" I said desperately, and just like that, boing! Lights back on.

"Yes," she said, pleased. "A girl turtle."



I have so much planned for my father's first yartzeit. I am putting together a book--not to be published, just for us--in which every one of my siblings writes a chapter. I told them it can be ten words or ten pages, and then I will edit it and put it together and my wonderful friend will make a cover and then I will find one of those online-y places to put it into book form and makes copies for everyone.

Then I am planning a paper cut. Not like the type you get on your fingers and then hear the sound of in happening over and over again, O clever and snickering Internet. The type that you frame. A paper cut of the lines that we found on the computer that my father wrote, for my mother to hang up over his old desk.

My sister and I will record, thousands of miles away from each other, (Internet, you is amazing! Mwah!) a song that she wrote for my father while he was dying, and then we will maybe set it to a slideshow of pictures of him.

And I am going in. For billion dollar tickets, for three days, I will leave the progeny with Outdoorsman and he will suffer care for them as I do. I am arranging play-dates for every afternoon, so he won't kill them can work/learn.

I am trying to understand my strong feelings about this, that I need it all to happen, that I need it to go smoothly, that I have a knot in my stomach when I think about that sibling who is dragging his feet with the writing, or the fact that I have not settled on a studio yet. you only have two more months! said my inner voice.


I know, I know, I answered it. I'll get there. There's lots of other things happening. Ima just came to visit for two weeks and I took her all over, and we just bought an apartment...


and you also need to lose ten more pounds! my inner voice added.

Ah. You showed your hand, Inner Voice.

I know you, now. It will be beautiful and wonderful and my waistline has nothing whatsoever to do with it. I will do my best with everything that I piled on my plate, but no one can ask for more then that.Least of all, myself.