Patti O'Shea's Blog

I’ve had a pretty lazy morning so far and I shouldn’t. I need to be working on my revisions. It was nice, though, to sleep in, and last night, I did a load of laundry and was outside dragging the hose around because the lawn needed watering so bad. My tractor sprinkler jumped the hose line three times and that necessitated some rescue trips. After all that, I woke up at 3am to lightning. Yes, it rained and it must have come down for hours judging by how wet things were when I got up at 9. Oh, well. As dry as it’s been, I’m sure the extra watering didn’t hurt anything.

You know, even as I wrote the above paragraph, I’m thinking when the hell did I get so into my yard? I water my flowers every evening, on my day to water, I’m out there dragging hoses around. I check on my peony tree and lilies almost every day. And I’m someone who never used to give a rip. The only thing I can think of is it’s the difference between owning my own home and not owning one.

My revisions were waiting for me when I got home from work yesterday. Yea! Um, kind of yea. The part of me that worries is glad they’re here and not lost. The part of me that wants this story finished is thrilled too. It’s the part of me that’s still tired of this book that’s balking. I’ve never had revisions turned this fast before and it must be some kind of mental thing.

Parent story. My folks went to Chicago for a bridal shower for one of my cousins. She’s registered at Target, so I went online, bought a gift and had it wrapped and set to be delivered to the cousin that my parents are staying with this weekend. I barely get in the door yesterday afternoon and the phone’s ringing. It’s my dad. The gift hasn’t arrived yet. I’m like dad, it’s no big deal. If it doesn’t come before the shower, it’ll just have to get to her later. It’s not like no one is ever going to see the cousin getting married again.

Maybe I should call Target, my dad says. Sigh. It’s 3pm in the afternoon. I explain that it’s coming UPS. He finally seems to get it. The gift might still be delivered that afternoon. Then I logon to the computer and I have an email survey from Target asking if my inquiry had been handled satisfactorily. Yep, he called Target and must have done it almost immediately after I we hung up.

Is this one of those ways that parents are supposed to drive us nuts? The things I think he should worry about, my dad blows them off. The things I think are unimportant are critical in his mind. I just don’t get it.