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You Say It's Your BirthdayJune 08, 2009 And it's true. At 1:04 this morning I turned 58. 58 isn't one of those years that everyone dreads, or thinks they've accomplished something big by reaching, but here it is. Travvy started off the day by getting skunked. We were playing sit-stay-come on a section of Pine Hill that no one drives on. Something moved in the bushes. Trav was gone. I caught up with him at the Baileys'. By then it was too late. Travvy stank. Back at home I mixed up skunk remedy in a bucket: a quart of hydrogen peroxide, a quarter cup of baking soda, and a couple of good squirts of dish detergent or other liquid soap. Of course it made a big mess of the deck, and Travvy could not understand why I wouldn't get him in, or why, when he was dry enough to come in, I wouldn't let him on the bed. He looked so bedraggled that I couldn't help laughing at him either. Travvy? Next time a skunk turns his butt to you, turn your butt to the skunk. He doesn't stink so bad now, but his collar, harness, and the leash he dragged through the bushes still need work. The purple leash was Rhodry's puppy leash. Rhodry put a few notches in it, Travvy's put far more, and the original clasp is so unreliable that I added a double-ended snap. The time may have come to lay it to rest. The rest of the day was taken up with a rush to deadline. The deadline was more than reasonable, but I've been doing Other Stuff -- editing-wise and writing-wise -- and somehow I backed myself into a corner where I had to edit about a hundred pages in seven hours, fact-check two hundred and fifty pages, organize my style sheets, and get to Vineyard Haven in time for the 4 p.m. Express Mail deadline. I dunnit. Well, OK, true's true: the edited manuscript went off sans style sheets and invoice, but I'll do them tomorrow and they'll arrive in New York via e-mail around the same time the manuscript is finding its way from the publisher's mail room to the production editor's cubicle. Then (Not-So) Stinky Travvy and I went for a walk, then we went to the barn. The weather was glorious -- early May weather in early June -- and I planned to take Trav along for a ride, but Trav was obstreperous and Allie was both fresh and in screaming heat so I left Trav in a stall. Allie and I rode the dirt roads and trails to Ripley's Field and had a very good time. I like to think that the things you do on your birthday set your course for the coming year. I'd just as soon skip the skunk, and staying inside on a lovely day to make a deadline, but I like the work and the ride was good. It's been a strange year. Holding Mud of the Place in my hands was such a high, such an accomplishment. The indifference that followed it has been bewildering. I was prepared for people hating it and arguing with it and despising me for writing it, but I wasn't prepared for the silence. It's taken a while to get used to. The death of my sourdough starter was a serious kick in the butt, and it set me off on some promising nonfiction-writing directions. I'm still working on the second of three sourdough-related essays (the first I submitted to Edible Vineyard a couple of weeks ago), and a Mud-related op-ed appeared in last Friday's Vineyard Gazette. So my original plan was for Mud to help pry open a few doors for my nonfiction, and maybe it's going to work in reverse: I'll keep doing the nonfiction, and maybe they'll help get Mud more attention. For now I don't think the universe cares if I write another novel, so Squatters is on indefinite hold. This is my first birthday with no living parents. That's not a big deal. The upside of having parents whose main influence was in the distant past is that when they disappear you don't notice their absence. Here's a good birthday song that I learned on Pandora: "Raise a Glass," by Moe. It has a rollicking bar-rrom feel to it. This is the chorus:
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