I probably should have updated yesterday, when I was more awake, but I couldn't bear to lose all the September entries all at once. They're still so young! So fresh! So...oops, I am tired, aren't I? Anyway, here goes: a whole new month!

We stayed up late last night for an international phone call/novel crit from a friend we haven't seen since Clarion. It was great to talk (I snuck in at the end to catch up on kid news, etc., after Patrick had done all the serious literary discussion) but I realized after hanging up that I'd been almost totally incoherent by the end of it. I am so not a night-time person, anymore. Oh well. At least I got through a mini-conversation in German with his adorable daughter...I think my German (now that I haven't lived in Austria for a year) is actually better when I'm tired, so I can't tense up and worry about feminine-vs.-masculine articles, etcetera.

So now I'm veryveryvery tired, and trying to psych myself up for a day of productive work. Meanwhile, today is--tada!--the day I've been waiting for for a solid week, the day that the results of two encouraging responses are due...AND it has finally hit me (darn it) that when editors say "Give us one week to decide", they may well not mean exactly 7 days. So, "somewhere around a week" might be a sensible and realistic interpretation.

Drat.

I am so not mature when it comes to things like that. But I am working on it. With the help of generous helpings of apple-banana bread, I think I can get through another couple of days, or even, if it comes to it, another week or so.

And I am trying very hard to tear myself offline instead of hanging about waiting for an email to appear.

Maybe I'd better go find some more apple-banana bread....