Winning Awards and Butchering Meat...

Well, it is finally up and I can declare my illustration for David Sklar's "Sky Fishing" poem which was featured in the May/June 2013 Ladybug has won the Society of Children's Books Writers and Illustrators 2014 award for magazines. Official announcement HERE.
I've known for awhile, but the circumstances of finding out illustrates how everything on this earth is so "relative", because the last few weeks, we, my husband and I have been dealing with the adjustments of taking on more of a caretaker role for one of  our parents, who will be 90 next spring and though amazingly fit up until recently, now has health issues and can not drive.

Just getting off the phone in a string of phone calls taking care of said parent, I did not expect the person calling me would be a SCBWI board member announcing my first place win, which she promised came with a plaque. I think I laughed when I finally got off the phone with her. Not that I was and am not very much honored for the recognition, but because in that moment, with my head pounding for all I had to do, the lack of sleep we were suffering under since settling back into life after the racing to the hospital, two flight for lifes, the surgeries in distant cities, the home care, etc. winning an award felt like a far off thing with all the other things in front of it, the laundry, my dusty house, the lack of planned grocery trips instead of grab and goes, the dogs that were bouncing off the walls and on one occasion eating the wall from lack of attention. Don't ask me when I have changed the sheets on my bed, I couldn't tell you, maybe before the weeks end. I know there is art in my studio, I just have to excavate it, a project started that was just going to have my studio messy for a few days, well now, it is what it is.

Today? Today when everyone now  knows, I forgot about it. Only reminded because I received a gracious congratulatory email from the author of the poem. My today has been three trips to the larger town twenty five minutes away, twice for my kid, the third because I finally decided not to given up yoga...again. Another trip was needed in the opposite direction,  to take said parent to Senior Lunch. I'm averaging  an hour and a half at home to get something done between trips. Got twenty three more minutes to get this done and posted!

What else did I do today? Art? Nope. Write? Nope. Do my laundry? Nope. I butchered a deer....by myself. My daughter's first. The outside shed refrigerator is going out and thought we could keep the quarters in it  until the weekend when someone could get it to the processor, but no such luck and I was the only one with the time to do it. So, yep... trimmed out the the meat, I had cut from the bone last night, with my laptop set to watch "Copper" on Hulu on a plastic tablecloth, surrounded by freezer paper and masking tape.

And that isn't the first thing we have harvested this Fall, we are so isolated we have to travel far for specialized surgeries and such and so along home  with the patient from Albuquerque came a bushel of roasted chilies, that once have steamed in their burlap bag after roasting have to be peeled.  Got those  harvested and four crates of apples from our homestead have steadily been turned into cider by my husband, still plenty on the trees  for the other deer, I was watching out of my window as I was filleting the venison of their cousin in my kitchen. Plum rum, which grows wild on our property and makes a yummy fruity rum for the holidays are steeping in our pantry, with another case of just rum, since making the pear rum from our trees just ain't going to happen this year. Rum won't go bad, right?

What was this post about..... oh yes, I won an award and more exciting things are happening and if I had a week, I could get things situated and tell you about our big announcement... I hope this is the week, but it is Wednesday, isn't it and the week, like the last four has sort of slipped by, with this distant echo in my head that reminds me,
" I am an artist" and now, " I am an awarding artist." The echo says, "I am a writer" then reminds me the words that I wanted to so get out to the world that will have to wait a little longer. Then a louder voice reminds me, " I am a wife and I am a mother by choice, first and the rest will have to wait a little bit longer."

And it will. because I have to spell check this thing, upload it and head back towards town...wonder if the construction is done on the highway or if I should go the back roads again. A real dinner or grab and go- that isn't decided and will probably be weak to my daughter's suggestions.