Hello from role playing art camp. I am the teacher. My daughter is herself, and her baby brother is her best friend. He, as best friend, will come into my daughter’s room (held by me, his face expectant and smiling because he loves being a part of things) and we will practice saying hello. Hopefully, this will help us later today at art camp drop off when my daughter’s best friend runs up to us, and my daughter runs the other way, saying she doesn’t want to be her friend anymore. She’ll say this, but then later when I pick her up, my daughter won’t let go of her best friend’s hand, begging for a sleep over tonight.

One other thing I’m working on: a scene in my book that feels unbelievable when I read it. I’d thought it was necessary, but now I’m wondering, is that true? Could we just take it out, entirely? Sometimes what I thought was vital turns out to be expendable. Deleting is the easiest way to edit.

But, I don’t work on that during the day. If I did, I might delete too much. Instead, I roam around the house, I do some dishes, I type here. Raven the dog is barking outside, in the sun. Her incision from her surgery is weeping, which means no walk today, no woods. It is unclear whether the tumor they removed from the skin around her neck was malignant, so we made an appointment with an oncologist. The same oncology practice who took care of our other dog when he had cancer last year. Last summer, I’d strap on his harness, I’d walk him around the back, through the gate in the yard so he wouldn’t have to go down the steps inside the house. He would walk slowly at first, but then when he realized he was leaving the house—leaving the yard to get in the car–he’d start running: a slow, leaning, determined gallop to cargo van. Hopefully he’d wait for me to help lift him up because if he didn’t, he’d slip and fall as he tried to jump in the car. Bones are fragile when you are an almost 14 year old Chesapeake Bay retriever, and they’re even more fragile when you have bone cancer. 

Raven though is only 9, and has eaten healthy food since she was a puppy. This healthy diet was supposed to insure a long and healthy life, but instead here she is, resting because of her tumor removal, looking forward to her oncology appointment. We will take the dog van again, and this time it will be me, my daughter, and the baby playing in the cargo space while we wait for her to finish her appointment. It will be another cancer summer, us traveling north on a hot and busy interstate 5 to a city far enough away from Seattle to have hills covered with dry strawy grass, like the hills by my house in California, the golden, rolling fire hazards.