hard work

I sent all the info the agent requested last week; it turned into something out of a Marx Brothers movie, with everything going wrong.
My partner's computer system went down in his office, so we couldn't print from that. I kept exhausting myself, going over the first 100 pages with a fine-toothed comb (I'm a horrible typist at best), and composing a chapter outline. Finally, we went out to the UPS station near the San Jose airport, to overnight it. It was so hard to let the package go--my manuscript sitting in a big plastic bin along with all the other mail. It's out of my hands now, and I did the very best I could.

I asked for a sign from my Nonni, the prinicipal character in the book, after I sent the material to the agent--basically, I asked if this agent was the right one for the book and if these people would offer me representation. Just after I asked for that, I passed by Mr. Goody's, an antique store in Santa Cruz. In the window was almost an entire set of Franciscan Ware Desert Rose, my mother's dish pattern, something I write about often in the book. I immediately ran in and, even though I couldn't really afford it, I bought a small platter, which figures largely in one of the chapters.

Feeling badly a few days later, I again asked Nonni for a sign, and the next day, there was a set of Franciscan Ware in the window behind the Desert Rose pattern--only this was Nonni's Apple pattern (I have a very few of Nonni's real dishes in this pattern). I love her so much--I do believe that our loved ones really do listen and help us from the world beyond this.

On a different note, we have been enduring a spate of robberies in our neighborhood, the last one just a few doors down from me. I've decided to back up my book on a floppy every day and also my "agent folder," with all my query stuff. I am hoping to help start a neighborhood watch, too.

Well, off to the Office to write, and to the garden to work. I've trained morning glories up some old, twisted branches, and when they went up the branches, the vines made these cool, Nightmare Before Christmas, strange shapes! Now they are covered with buds.
These small things make me happy.