Most of the pictures Andy’s sent me, he looks absolutely worn out. Like this next one: 
Ok, it’s not a picture, but he sent me one after this that one of his buddies had snapped of him and his roommate passed out. He’s been only getting like three hours of interrupted sleep a day. 
Cold, icy, and muddy.
My good friend, Krista had a death in the family, so I offered to watch her dog while they went to the funeral. This has been a good test run for us, because we’ve thought a lot about getting one of these puppies for ourselves. Molly follows me around like I’m her best friend and she can’t get enough of me. Max has been trying to get her to come sleep with him, and she likes Max okay, but she wants to be in my room. I’ve enjoyed having a little travel companion as well as a writing buddy. She just quietly sits on my lap while I work on my novel. I’ve gotten a lot of time to work on my novel this week. The kids had school off on Monday and so that day was busy with chores and playdates, but for the first week in a month, I had no kids home sick! Andy’s been too busy to chat this week too, so I’ve been keeping myself occupied with my novel writing and making photo books (I’m two years behind). I finished reading a book called, “Freak the Mighty,” for Max’s middle school. It’s a tender story about two misfits (one who has dwarfism or something similar and one who is abnormally large for his age). They become best buds and face their challenges (or quests, as they call them) as a team. For the most part, I’ve really enjoyed reading these books for Max’s school. I’ve read a few that I probably wouldn’t ever pick up on my own, but usually leave feeling edified or enriched by them. There’ve only been two that I recommended they don’t purchase. They were either boring or had horrible writing.
I’ve also taken on another project with my sister, Crista, and a distant Cook cousin. We’re compiling four vignettes on Phineas Wolcott Cook’s life and are working to make it into a children’s book. The organization wants it done by June so the published copy will be available by August for their annual Cookarama, which means I won’t be able to do all of the paintings for it. I’ve got too much going on to pump out more than a painting a week, so we’ll probably have to utilize AI to finish it up. I am excited to pay tribute to one of my great ancestors and learn more about him. As I have stated a few times before on this blog, I feel the more I learn about my ancestors, the more I feel their support and strength in my life. Not that it isn’t there without me learning about them, rather, as I learn about them, I learn to recognize who it is that is helping. I really wanted to finish the first draft of my novel by the time Andy gets home, but I’m not sure if that’s going to happen with this added project. I’ll still work on it, hopefully as much as I am, but I’m trying to figure out the balance of getting everything done. When Andy gets home, we have a few house projects we want to get done before he gets back to work full time.
Andy is having a tough week. He’s sleeping on a concrete floor during day time hours (he’s on nights) and has only been managing an average of three hours of interrupted sleep a day. He’s been working almost nonstop (thus the interrupted sleep). Luckily, this exercise should be done by Tuesday and then he’ll be back to rooming with three other men on bunks and sleeping at night, which still isn’t the best of sleep, but better. It’s also been pretty cold there. Thirty degrees in the tent they’re sleeping and working in and -10 outside. I’m beyond excited for him to get home, but I imagine, after the week he’s had, that his excitement trumps mine.