I was typing an entry. It was a long entry. I was also trying to play little people with Ethan. Ethan hit the keyboard with his wooden daddy, and suddenly, the entry disappeared. All of it. And now I have to type it again. (And now he has run away, because his work here is done.)

(Pause for a loud crash, which would be my head hitting the keyboard)

This is how my week has been going. Our trip to New York State has been bookended by rejections, one for "Maenad", the other from an agent. I think this makes ten form letter agent rejections, and for "Maenad"... 15, I think? I'm close to just trunking it. I still have two poems out, and I bet they come back in the next week or so as well. On our way to the airport Sunday, I slammed the little finger of my left hand in the car door. The nail immediately turned a lovely shade of violet-black, and my finger swelled up like a sausage. The swelling still hasn't completely gone down, and I think I may lost the nail.

It wasn't the best way to start the trip. Maybe it was a sign.

The trip did not go as expected. The area was just gorgeous -- snow-covered hills and mountains, old barns, Victorian houses, creeks, and firs -- and almost all the people we met were really friendly. The town where we were thinking of moving to reminded me a lot of the one I grew up in, except, as Andy says, twenty degrees colder and with an upstate New York accent. (It was a little disconcerting to sit in a PIzza Hut, listening to country music with an Alabama twang, when it was -1 degree F outside and there were a bunch of Nascar fans who had trouble saying their r's. Really weird.)

But -- almost all the people. Unfortunately, I made the mistake, under questioning, of admitting to a couple of the people Andy would be working with that we homeschool.

I don't know why I didn't keep my mouth shut, and just smile and accept the information and questioning about school districts and where we might want to buy a house instead of saying, "Well, we homeschool."

Oh, no, no. Wrong answer. Suffice it to say that some people do not ask questions about homeschooling to learn more about an experience and opinion different from their own. Some people ask about homeschooling so they can convince you how misguided you really are.

This was not a good experience. It happened at dinner, and by that time, Ethan had had enough of being confined, thank you very much, and there was no way he was going to sit through a lot of grown-up talk. Andy and I had to eat in shifts, which made the whole experience even more miserable.

More than that, I don't think Andy would want me to say. So I won't. Except that we have gone backwards a bit in the whole process, and now something I thought was about 90% sure, is, well, less sure than that.

At least I've gotten in touch with some actual homeschoolers in the area to ask if that kind of anti-homeschooling sentiment is more prevalent there than it is here in Missouri. What I've heard from them reassures me, and it turns out there are a lot of homeschoolers in that area, so my kids would not be lacking for activities.

And there are the mountains. In The Bean Trees, Barabra Kingsolver writes a passage about why her protagonist has to get out of Oklahoma. Her protagonist (why can't I remember her name??? Is it Taylor? I think it's Taylor) is from Kentucky -- eastern Kentucky -- and she says something to the effect that Oklahoma is so flat that it looks like where you are is all there is. But in the mountains, you can't see the whole world. In the mountains, you never know what will be over the next ridge. You have hope.

When I read that passage, I was sitting outside a tiny little townhouse in a DC suburb. I had a four foot by four foot space where I was trying to grow two cucumber plants and some marigolds. I was also about seven months pregnant. So when I read that passage, I just sat there and bawled like a baby. Then when Andy came home, I told him we had to get in the car and drive up to the Catoctins.

I grew up in a town of 5000 people. We couldn't see our neighbors. Every fall, when danger of snakes and ticks had passed, my mom would let me back into the woods again, and I would tromp back among the boulders and lay on my back and watch the wind sway the tree-tops and the hawks and buzzards soaring above them, dipping and circling on the thermals. I found a bleached rattlesnake skull and took it home. I discovered that cactus grew among the limestone. I built forts and climbed trees with my best friend.

I have been trying to get back to the woods and the mountains ever since. So our experience in New York was discouraging, to say the least. It still may work out, but... I am no longer as sure of it as I once was. (And there is also the fact that cost of living is a lot more expensive there than it is here -- a minor detail.)

Then we came home, and Andy, Garrett, and Kate all came down with colds. It was inevitable, I suppose, but still.

In any case, I am trying to get back to normal. We came home on Wednesday, and I spent yesterday hanging up coats, unpacking, etc., and relating our experience to family and friends. Today I made a few more inroads in cleaning up, made a bunch of doctor's appointments for the next few weeks in case we really do move, and this blog entry was not supposed to take this long. I was going to try to get a few more revisions to the novel done (I finished revising ch. 1 and most of ch. 2 on our way down to Memphis to drop off the kids last Saturday), but then I had to rewrite the entry. I also have some e-mails to answer from homeschoolers I contacted for information. They have been a bright spot in the day, which is cold and cloudy, but not cold enough for snow. Only rain, which is supposed to start tonight.

True to form, though, I have reached out for my comfort reading. The kids and I have gotten a little over a quarter of the way into Matilda by Roald Dahl today, and his wicked sense of humor has always been my antidote to the blahs.

Maybe a little superglue or PLATINUM BLONDE HAIR-DYE EXTRA STRONG would have come in handy on our trip ;-).