I can’t believe that the summer is nearly over and the children are headed back to school. Yesterday was open house at the high school. Tomorrow my baby starts 10th grade.

And as if to rub my nose in the fact that I am not quite needed any more, today she is going to the mall with her friends. In her friend’s car. With said friend driving. I am nervous about this jaunt. It’s the first time I have let her go on the highway with a non-adult driver. O_o

Not much else is going on. I will be working on web site edits the rest of this week after finishing up a few more illustrations.

Next week I will give my school visits section of my web site my full attention, as well as the companion print brochure which I will begin mailing out to schools after Labor Day.

Most of my time right now is spent on the waiting game. Waiting for replies to emails, returns to phone calls, waiting for checks to arrive in the mail, waiting for my daughter to get home. I guess my task is to become a connoisseur of patience.

The beginning of the month I was initiated into Cronehood. It was amazing and peaceful and the year of planning and waiting finally ended.

Today, I sent my baby off to high school. Well, she’s not a baby any more, obviously. But still, I miss her small head laid in my lap and her requests for me to “scratch my belly, Mommy.” Now-a-days she spends most of her free time with friends or holed up in her room writing fan fic on her lap top. She’s awesomely talented, by the way.

It seems so hard to believe that this is the same girl I wrote and illustrated my first book for. She was my model and my inspiration for An Ordinary Girl, A Magical Child which came out in 2005 as a paperback.

It took me so long to find a publisher for that first book, she out grew it before it was ever printed.

Still, the last thing she said to me this morning as she poked her head back in the door on her way to school this morning was “Get to work on your pictures!” She is still an inspiration. I am so proud of the woman she is becoming. *snif*