Farther from you every day...

The night before last, I had this awful sense of foreboding... I couldn't tell if it was a black mood coming on or what. This morning, I woke up and realized that it was my Auntie Flo coming for a visit! Yeehaw! The only good bit about this is that I will have this all out of the way before May when I have to be sitting in cold, busy stalls at tradefairs, shivering my bottom off!

Or perhaps the sense of foreboding was about my novel. I realized this morning that I have been finished this book for about a year now (I remember I had just finished writing it when I got hired at the restaurant), and I still haven't gotten it published - heck, I haven't finished editing it, even! I am still working through it but at this point, I am not sure I am doing the story any good. It might do to just let it be after I finish reading through it and start trying to get it published. I may approach Harlequin, even though I really didn't want to do that at all. I want Avon to publish it more than anything, but beggars can't be choosers, I hear. That is, if it is even good enough to be published.

This self loathing is nothing new. I have been feeling it on and off for the last six months or so. The writer's group really helps - I bring them a couple of pages and get positive feedback and it bolsters my confidence for a week or two. I just hate to think that I have wasted TWO YEARS of my life writing this book that is never going to do anything for ME. I did the story the courtesy of writing it down and it can't even bloody well get published?! Pishaw is what I say!

I had gone into a reading mode because I honestly thought that would help the self loathing. I slashed and burned my way through three books (of varying quality, all romances), and I'm still not sure how I feel on the other end of that. Usually, reading helps me to get excited about my story and my characters and it did for a brief period of time during which I was too busy to get back to my writing. I think I am so close to it now, I can't see the forest for the trees anymore.

I just have to push through another hundred pages or so and then I am home free - the book can do what it wants with itself. It's just really hating on me right now. It's like every time I open my laptop, it is pushing me away, telling me to leave it alone, and I'm getting resentful. "Maybe you're not good enough for me to be wasting my time on, anyways, book, if you're going to be that way!"

Yes, I am getting crazy.

Last night, we had a truckload of hay arrive just as the rain started really pouring down - it had been misty and drizzly all day but the downpour really started just as I saw the headlights of the diesel swing down our driveway. It was nearly dark and we were scrambling to get the night chores finished up (or started, as it were!)... out of square hay and waiting for this load of roundbales which we would have to move with the tractor.

I love the rain when I am inside the barn. The comforting, consistent patter of rain on the tin roof reminds me of my childhood. It is something that has never changed during my entire life, while many other aspects of our farm have. No longer do we have soft, fuzzy foal muzzles every spring. No longer do we spend hot days under trees trying to catch some shade at a show. No longer do we have pigs or calves or chickens or foxes. The nature of our business on the farm has changed, but rain on the tin roof has remained the same, thankfully.

I was soaked by the time dad had tried to wade into the pasture but gotten stuck and dropped his bale, then came back for another to push to the barn so we could strip it to feed the lifestock. The rain drizzled across my brow and into my eyes, soaked my hair, ran up my pantlegs to my knees. We've had so much rain over the last few days. The ground is soaking it up, or appears to be until you put your feet on it and the mud tries to suck your boots off. I wouldn't trade feeding stock in the rain for anything, though.

When you come inside during a rain like this, your pants are so wet they are struggling to stay up and when you toe off your boots, you might as well just let your pants go with them anyways, because that's what they want, and you have to walk through the house in your underwear, strip your slimy sweater off, and grab a towel to wring the water from your hair. It's an iconic series of actions, tried and true through my entire life, and I wouldn't trade it for a thing.