...FOR HUNTING SEASON
There's a photograph of my husband Jim, on our honeymoon in Arizona, holding a wooden plaque with these words eloquently inscribed on it. Yes, it was our honeymoon. Did I know what I was getting myself into? Uh huh. I was warned. I did it anyway.
After all, I'm a writer. Very soon, I'll be an author. Can you think of a more solitary occupation? We writers NEED to be left alone for a month (okay, so it's more like three) every fall to finish up those year-long novel projects. And guess what? Having a husband who hunts works for me. CRAPPY NEW YEAR will be published in December. MOURNING DOVE is 4/5 completed. That means I have only that pesky denouement left to write.
BUT... Okay, you knew this was coming: the downside. I feel I've been almost single-handedly been caring for our children WHILE ALSO trying to write. I have been running the errands, making the phone calls, planning the visits, taking the children to their appointments, playing cabbie, AND trying to get CRAPPY launched with some semblance of a plan...and while finally seeing Gracie beyond the confines of her not-so-happy home in MOURNING DOVE>.
Sometimes my brain surgeon forgets there's more to life than brain surgery and hunting...but September, October, and November are not the best months to remind him. A trip to our camp this weekend is not for fun, as I had anticipated, but an opportunity for Jim to pick up the moose he shot from the butcher and get the dock and boat out of the water. It's easy for him to forget - between trips to the tree stand in the back forty and jaunts to the taxidermist - that his wife has a bandaged foot from last week's surgery and could use a little couch time with her loving husband right about now. Besides, she won't be much help pulling a dock out of the water in tomorrow's forecasted snow and slush.
As long as I don't get writers block, this hunting season is nothing more than an opportunity. I just need to be reminded of that every now and then.
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