Aunt Waguli...

I just wanted to write a short post to say I'M AN AUNT!!! My twin sis Fenris went into labor at 3:30 am yesterday morning and proceeded to fart around 'in labor' (yeah, I know, she'll kill me for making light of it, but what are sisters for?) until 2:08 this morning, June 17th when my niece, code name Walelu, was born. Mom and baby are both healthy and happy and more than ready to be two people rather than one. Walelu, which is Cherokee for 'hummingbird' was 7 lbs and 1/2 and ounce, and 20 3/4 inches long. And she arrived right on her due date. Yeah I know, being on time is so cliche these days, but frankly I'm glad the little girl has some commonsense. My best friend, code name Pippi, laughed and said Walelu was definitely NOT type A personality since she was taking her time getting born. Then she changed her mind and decided that the baby WAS type A since she'd managed to take just long enough to make it to her specified due date, but not long enough for trouble. Time will tell.

Which brings me to the title 'Aunt Waguli'. Is that not one of the coolest words you've ever heard? Phonetically it's wah-goo-lee. In Cherokee it means 'whippoorwill'. I've decided that rather than try to say my name (which wouldn't be easy for a baby, hasn't been for all my friends babies) I'm going to be Aunt Waguli. The whippoorwill is my favorite bird ever and a creature dear to my heart. And one just happened to be calling when I went out the door so early in the wee hours yesterday on my way to the hospital. I also came face to face with a barred owl as I drove. It swooped from an embankment and across my windshield, close enough that I can tell you it was a female by the coloring. When I got to the hospital Fenris was all excited because, - yes this really happened - she and her hubby Chucky Duck had a big barred owl cross their path on their way into town, and owls are Fen's totem animal. Now, some cultures and many myths revolve around owls ferrying the souls of people between the different realms and I've heard whippoorwills referred to as harbingers of death, soul eaters even. But considering my family's history of interacting with the dead (funeral directors etc.) we look at owls and whippoorwills as good omens, even if they do normally deal in traveling souls.





But I digress. The point is that I am now Aunt Waguli (say it over and over really fast, it's ridiculously fun) and baby Walelu is officially a member of the family!!! Well, a member we can now hug and spoil, rather than talk to through Morse code via Fenris's stomach. I've added a picture of Fenris not long after delivery (looks good for twenty-two hours of heaving) and one of me and Walelu taken at some ungodly hour this morning when more sensible creatures were either retreating into the shadows or venturing towards the morning sun. And yeah, the kid on the left (my right) is mine... that's the sort of baby I'm used to...

Too Many Irons in the Fire...

Life has been crazy recently. Yeah, I know, every time I manage to post something I usually give that line somewhere in the post... but it's true. And life's even crazier at the moment because my sis Fenris is due to blow at any moment. It turns out that I'm not really that good at waiting to be an aunt... I worry (not obsessively, but this is my TWIN sister, and things can happen) and I can't really talk about the worry because, well, people either tell me not to worry, or they don't 'get it'. I can't blame them. Being a twin is a weird thing. It's something I could try and articulate but the post would go on forever and it would sound like some sort of deranged psychopathic rambling. Suffice to say, that I would just like to fast forward to the part where the baby is in her daddy's arms and Fenris is ordering me to go get her a pizza.

On top of waiting for Fen to produce our first great grand baby, I've been housesitting... a lot. And waiting around for agents to reject me. I say it that way because I'm an optimist that plans like a realist. I project a good outcome while at the same time assuming that it will be a bad one. I don't know why but this really works for me, because it keeps my hopes up but gives me a little padding when they're dashed.

And I've been writing. Not as much as I want to (it never seems to be enough) but enough that I'm in the home stretch of one of my WIPs, 'Amarok and the Gone Missing Girl' and I've gotten a fair amount of work done on several others, including my retelling of Beauty and the Beast, 'Thornbriar'. I'm getting antsy though, because since 'Evernow' is out floating around in query space there's only so much rereading and editing I can do on it. So this leaves me with the need to get something on the computer so that I can get working on it. But I'm not finished a hardcopy of any WIP yet. So I have this drive to write and not enough time to do it. But that's life for you. If you weren't struggling to get something done, what would you be doing? If you didn't have a lot of irons in the fire, how would you ever get anything forged?

And randomly I'll leave you with a little photo to prove that the housesitting thing has it's upside and that I do take time to do 'normal' things, like lounge around with beer.