I\u2019m writing today\u2019s blog from a hotel room in The Reeds on Third Street in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, where it\u2019s a bit dreary and rainy outside.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t ventured beyond the room yet, but since people are a. wearing shorts and b. carrying umbrellas, it\u2019s apparently warm and rainy outside.\u00a0 Warm and steamy is a surefire recipe for a bad hair day, so I probably won\u2019t venture outside until it\u2019s time to go do an event for the Avalon Public Library.<\/p>\n
Regular readers of this blog may be saying to themselves, \u201cWait a minute.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t she just say she was cancelling this fall\u2019s book tour because of her shoulder?\u00a0 What\u2019s going on, and what in blazes is she doing in New Jersey?”<\/p>\n
I\u2019m about to tell you what I\u2019m doing here, but first let\u2019s take a walk down memory lane, back some ten years ago to another blog I wrote in another time and place.\u00a0 In January of that year, I proposed to Bill that we take a trip to Monaco that spring in honor of this birthday so we could watch the Formula 1 race.\u00a0 He said, \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so.\u201d\u00a0 I was shocked.\u00a0 Stunned, even.\u00a0 This is a guy who had followed Formula 1 for years\u2014long before I met him\u2014and during our earlier trip to Monaco for the race, we\u2019d had great fun.<\/p>\n
So, shocked as I was, I took him at his word, but I also took action.\u00a0 I invited all the kids and assorted grandkids on a group-grope trip to Disneyland.\u00a0 Our hotel was across the street from the entrance to the park.\u00a0 The street was six lanes wide\u2014two traffic lanes in each direction plus one left turn lane in each direction.\u00a0 Pedestrians were given 20 seconds to make the crossing.\u00a0 By stepping off the curb the moment the light changed, we were able to cross, but only just barely, and by the time we reached the far side, Bill had to lean against a light post or a trash can to recover.\u00a0 (There are not nearly enough leaning-height trash containers anywhere in Disneyland.)<\/p>\n
Those days in the park preceded and ending with those agonizing street crossings gave me my first inkling of just how bad Bill\u2019s knees were. He\u2019s tough. He is NOT a complainer. He had successfully hidden the truth about his bone-on-bone suffering. So when we got back to Seattle, we went to see a highly recommended knee surgeon who, in May, allowed as how he could do a dual knee replacement sometime in August. But then, toward the end of May, the surgeon had a cancellation, and Bill\u2019s surgery was moved up to June.<\/p>\n
A year earlier, I had been asked to appear at a writer\u2019s conference in Boise, Idaho in June\u2014the very weekend that Bill would be released from the hospital and transferred to rehab. When I told my daughters that I was going to contact the conference, tell them my husband was in the hospital, and that I wouldn\u2019t be coming, what do you suppose happened?\u00a0 Cindy and Jeanne T. immediately replied by spouting back some of the very words I had said to them over the years. \u201cYou gave your word. We\u2019ll take care of Dad. You keep your promise.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so, muttering under my breath, I went, and going to Boise that weekend resulted in what\u2019s now turned into a ten-year long friendship with one of my longtime idols, singer Janis Ian. The girls looked after Bill, and ten years later, his very successful knee replacement counts as a daily miracle in our lives.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s why I\u2019m in New Jersey today and why I\u2019ll be going to Newport News, Virginia, in October\u2014because I gave my word. Those two events were set up long before the shoulder injury presented itself.\u00a0 Individual trips I can manage. But two weeks of steady travel and appearances? Those are beyond my capability right now.<\/p>\n
Getting to Avalon yesterday wasn\u2019t easy. We packed differently. Since it\u2019s only a three day trip, we were able to pack far more lightly than we would have had to pack for a multiple appearance, multi-week road show. We arrived at SeaTac at 6 AM. When we checked in, the guy at the ticket counter didn\u2019t bother to mention that our flight was currently on an FAA-mandated weather delay\u2014what turned out to be a FOUR HOUR weather delay\u2014due to thunderstorms on the Mid-Atlantic Coast. So we had gotten up at the crack of dawn for a flight that didn\u2019t leave Seattle until after eleven AM. We arrived in Philadelphia where we stood in the rain, waiting for our car rental shuttle. Then we drove on strange, twisty roads through gathering darkness for 70 or so miles before we arrived at our hotel. Whew! But The Reeds in Stone Harbor is totally worth it!<\/p>\n
Twelve hours of sleep anyone? Yup, that was the only way to recover, but we made that work, too.<\/p>\n
Bill just checked the weather report. Currently it\u2019s showing that tomorrow may offer more of same, but at least as we head back for our return flight, we\u2019ll have a better idea of what we\u2019re up against and make our plans accordingly.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, I have my laptop, I have my fingers, and I have my little gray cells, so it\u2019s time to get back to Ali # 14, aka The A-List.\u00a0 By the way, that\u2019s the baby\u2019s agreed upon name now\u2014The A-List.<\/p>\n
Because, wherever I am, whatever I\u2019m doing, I\u2019m a writer at heart.\u00a0 And with twelve hours of sleep under my belt, I should be able to make some forward progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m writing today\u2019s blog from a hotel room in The Reeds on Third Street in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, where it\u2019s a bit dreary and rainy outside.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t ventured beyond the room yet, but since people are a. wearing shorts and b. carrying umbrellas, it\u2019s apparently warm and rainy outside.\u00a0 Warm and steamy is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[33,5,133,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-family","category-health","category-traveling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-qw","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1644"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1647,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1644\/revisions\/1647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}