Rough Week with Blue Minimoon, Baby Foxes, Tooth and Rib Drama, and Summer Approaches

Red fox triplets

Rough Week with Blue Minimoon and Baby Foxes

Well, I was supposed to spend the last week on the San Juan Island at a writing residency. The first day was glorious – beautiful warm sunshine, seal heads bobbing in the water, and my first ever real-life encounter with baby foxes! The second day was cold and rainy, but I got a lot of reading and some writing done. The third day, sadly, I woke up with my jaw swollen from a tooth infection (root canal next week!) with fever and it was determined that I should probably get home so I could rest, get antibiotics and move up my root canal.

Me and Glenn getting ready to leave for San Juan Island with mountain in background, pre-tooth

So we had to leave the island early, rapidly throwing everything back in our bags and catching the last ferry out of town. I was pretty down for a couple of days, and yesterday was the first day I felt good enough to go out – for ice cream and Blue Moon pictures – and promptly threw out a rib sneezing and coughing (it is definitely crazy allergy season – visible pollen was floating around our drinks while we saw outside with our dessert.)

I felt very lucky that I saw any fox kits at all, on this trip, honestly, because I’ve been to the island many times and though I’d seen otters, seals, eagles, whales, and adult foxes, this was the first time I got to see baby foxes cavorting among poisonous hemlock flowers in bloom (which smell very good but even the pollen can cause neurological symptoms, note to people not familiar with this plan which is everywhere on the island, along with beautiful pink and white flowering laurel, also considered a noxious weed on the island, but not quite as potentially harmful.

Blue Micromoon

Here is the rising of the Blue Micromoon of May, which is slightly smaller AND a rare second full moon of the month. Apparently, all weird moons are signs of health doom for me, so I should really pay more attention to them (see many blog posts where weird supermoons coincide with unexpected trips to the hospital.) Should have paid attention to that horoscope!

Anyway, one thing I did get to do during the residency besides writing a new fox poem was look over my manuscript, and you know what? I had the strong feeling that, at this point, I could make it different, but I could not make it better. I definitely had the feeling it was time to send that manuscript out and start on a new project at last.

Mountain (I think Rainier?) from San Juan Island lookout

And what about you? You say your week was drama-free? Well, enjoy it while you can. The summer is coming with all of its accompanying pleasures and risks (wildfire season, anyone?) We’re supposed to plan for summer by 1. getting together your reading list for summer, 2. maybe planning a big trip, 3. preparing for ever-increasing food prices by starting your own organic farm. As a writer, do you find you write more or less in summer? I was looking back and seeing patterns, that I do not write as much in the summer as I do in fall or spring. Part of this might be because the heat and MS do not mix, and I tend to have a lot more fatigue and neurological symptoms in summer. But I am committed to sending out the old manuscript so I can work on some new work. The kit foxes – a sign of new life? And another first – though the rabbits have not returned since being wiped off all the San Juan islands a few years ago by a contagious plague – I saw quail here which I never have before.