This really is a perfect image for what I am doing right now (on a twenty-three hour -thank you daylight savings time-non fiction proposal writing retreat without my children across town). When I looked at images of real trenches, my entire being sucked inward. (This really is not an idiom to be taken lightly. How we get from the trenches of WWI, to these particular styles is for someone else to write about.) I will tell you that I am partial to number 7, although in another life, I’d like to be the woman wearing number 1. Maybe it’s her hair. Maybe her stance.

A) It is pouring here.

B) Writing a proposal is very much like determining which style coat to buy when it is just time to do so.  Is the book going to be blog posts and back story? Will it include resources and how to’s? Where will it start, where will it end? Should the poems be included as side bars? Who is my audience? I am qualified to write this why?  The movie version must cast Jamie Curtis as me. Can I wear that coat on a cruise ship, hiking the Himalayas, a t-ball game, and an evening stroll along the beach?

C) I did not miss, I LONGED for my children last night. I had NO IDEA that I would. It completely hit me over the head at midnight, two, three, and so on. The rain pounded on the window as my ache to scoop Marcel in one arm and Sammy in the other nearly sent me racing down the five flights of stairs to my car parked below.

D) Being without children for a day is something I have not experienced in over three years. The struggle to stay in a story about being possessed and changed by motherhood while sensing a long ago semi-banished me on the other side of a large glass door knocking softly is not something I have time to entertain. And look, she is wearing coat number 1!