I’m back.

I got back yesterday from a glorious visit to the first national park america made.

it was amazing and incredible and I spent the last three days sad that I had to leave.

I spent the first five days pretty sick with a cold. That adds up to 8 days, which is how long I stayed there.

Fortunately, I have the world’s most considerate boyfriend and he was able to drive me around and I saw a tremendous amount of the park and it’s wildlife.

Wow.

Wow.

I will post some photos (you’ll be sick of all the photos I post!) when I download them.

It’s just a quiet day at home now, getting used to being home.

I am very excited to go on my vacation. I can hardly wait.

Chris has been talking it up for forever, and now we are finally going to Yellowstone.

He and I have been on a lot of nature trips. Heck, we’ve been on a lot of trips. Most of them have been nature oriented.

This will be a doozy. No one in my family has been to Yellowstone. I have not been.

I am looking forward to it. And since it’s a matter of thumb-twiddling for the most part, I took the opportunity to organize my photos of other nature trips.

I’m on flickr, and I’m now working to get it synced with this blog. I”d love to share my photos with you all.

Just wait.

This is the last third of the year.

It’s been a good year.

I’ve felt particularly lazy this week. My co-worker said he’s felt the same way. Could it be because that the weather has stayed in the high 90s?

I’ve felt like doing nothing but watch TV, read, and sleep.

So, this would be the perfect way to spend my holiday weekend. Somehow, though, I have planned all sorts of things. I’m helping my church move this saturday, going to meet friends on sunday, and having dinner on monday.

I’m reading a really good book right now. Desirable Daughters by Mukherjee. It is kind of a mystery, but not so much that it hits you over the head with it. It’s a mystery that sneaks up on you. Which is good, because I don’t like mysteries.

However, I think I will finish it tonight. I only have about 8 pages left.

Back to the library!

But I’ve got another on on tape, called Bang!
It’s an african-american lit book…There are a lot of african american books out there…whole sections of book store are now being given to african american books. Interesting…Anyway. This one is about a family, well, the son in the family, whose younger brother was shot at the age of seven.

Poor little kid just got in the way of a bullet meant for someone else. The family gets destroyed with grief though. The mom can’t let go, and the dad decides that he let his sons be too soft, and if the 7 year old had been tougher, he would have made it.

So the older boy and his best friend (whose father is dead) are taken on this camping trip. THe dad drives way out there, and after two days of camping, just drives off. He leaves them there to fend for themselves and find their way home.

It gets worse and worse from there. It’s pretty sad.

I only have one more tape of that to listen to. I’ll probably finish it this weekend too.

Summer is almost over. Perhaps it is over. It doesn’t feel over in my new home town. But the kids are back in school.

I miss school. I miss it very much. I miss having a teacher tell me “Good job!” when I turn in my homework. I miss the motivation that comes from know that someone notices how I am doing.

But I’m a grown up now. I dragged out the whole school thing almost as long as I possibly could. It’s time now for me to kick my own butt.

I have done a huge project, getting my book published. But I am realizing, that is only half the work. Just because I wrote it does not mean people will read it. I need to get it into their hands.

Which takes a whole new set of skills and experiences that I simply do not have.

I am going to have to learn them. It’s harder than I realized.

And the fact of the matter is, no one is going to really care if I don’t succeed. That means it’s very easy for me to not do it. I could procrastinate and take forever and ever and never quite do it.

I want to do it. But this is harder than I thought. It’s taking some real effort.

and a lot of it is just mental work. It’s scary. And it doesn’t seem like it should be.

But I really feel liek I’m swimming with sharks. Even if they are only in my mind….

..or just finished reading…

*Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami
*Pay it Forward
*The Language of Archetypes
*Until I find You
*Liza of Lambeth
*Anne Frank
*Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

I wish I could slow down a little and savor some more. It seems difficult to do, as if I am very behind on my reading and the books are all so interesting.

Perhaps I will re-read when I am old.