We're home. One torn muscle, two dead toenails, three big blisters, but we made it to the finish line. The planned 26.2 miles on Saturday (one full marathon) turned out to actually be 30.25. Trust us, that's a huge difference -- at that distance every extra mile feels like five. And the 13 miles on Sunday turned out to be up and down the steepest hills in San Francisco, over and over on legs and feet already battered from the day before.

But we made it.

Today we had massages, lots of food, and lots of vegging out time. Will write more and start posting pictures when we've recovered a bit.

ONE DAY to go! Tomorrow is Day 0, aka Check-In Day. Lots of waiting in lines for tent assignments, etc., but nothing really too strenuous.

The strenuous day is today, actually. The Pile O Stuff is even bigger but still no closer to being packed up than it was on Sunday.

See you after the walk!!!!!!!!!!!

Complete mental collapse. My brain is ready to leap out of my head and run screaming down the street. Only THREE DAYS until the walk! Packing is not done. Packing has not been started, unless you count making a knee-deep pile of shoes, sleeping bags, almonds, bandages, Cytomax powder, clothes, flashlights, glowsticks, camping mats, socks, beef jerky, tent stakes and Mr. Salty pretzels on the floor. We made that pile on Sunday and it is still there, untouched, because...

Tony is in Austin! Until Wednesday night!

And me, yikes, just this morning I promised to deliver an electronic version of the manuscript (easy) and a whole bunch of processed art files (hard) ASAP. I thought nothing of it at the time, but now all my hair is falling out as I wander from the computer to the Huge Pile O Stuff and back again.

Saw The Big Green Frog (aka The Hulk) with a bunch of friends last night, and then went to check out all the chaos at the midnight Harry Potter release party at Barnes & Noble. We never dreamed it would be such a madhouse!

Now staggering around the house, tired. The agent from the title company will be here in a half hour -- she's bringing our refinance papers to be signed. Tony is actually dressed already but I still can't open my eyes all the way or get out of my computer chair.

...and suddenly the dum-dums are gone.

I have empty nest syndrome.

Tony is in Montreal, and I spent the day in a hardhat, volunteering for Habitat For Humanity. This mostly meant picking up wood, lots of wood, carrying it from place to place and making stacks. There was also a fair amount of hole digging, hole filling in, and more hole digging. Then more carrying wood. Then filling in another gigantic hole. All in all, a lot of moving things (dirt, wood) from one place to another, which felt rather futile until the end of the day when I got to see the astonishing amount of progress we made.

(I don't know how people manage to wear those hardhats day after day, though. They are REALLY HOT, and not in a good way. When I took mine off I looked as if I just stepped out of a shower.)

Now I am exhausted from all the work, and Tony is exhausted from all the flying, and we're both going to sleep early.

We have FIVE google-eyed, chirping little birdlets in the nest over our front door. We call them the dum-dums:

"Hey, look, the dum-dums are awake!"
"The dum-dums are getting big."
"The dum-dums sure are loud. I can hear them from all over the house."

The last one is the most common, but I don't really mind. Been snapping trillions of pictures, though brown dum-dums in a brown nest over a brown doorlight doesn't really make for inspiring images.

Only one more weekend before the 2-day! We went on a 12-mile training walk on Sunday, despite my foot, and had a grand time. Took it less seriously than usual, tried a new route, hopped along the railroad tracks, stopped off at the bookstore, at Best Buy, and the burger place, and basically had a fine time.

Now we're both back to work. Tony is preparing for another trip later this week, while I'm working madly on text and illustrations. (Six weeks to go before my August first deadline, which means six weeks to make everything perfect!) So between his work travel and preparing for the 2-day and my deadline and everything else, please forgive both of us in advance if our email advances are a little delayed for the next month or so.

Got the contract for my book today! I'm dying to get my paws on it but must allow my Agent Amazing to use her superpowers on it first, checking the details and such.

Feels great to be out of limbo.

Maybe Tony will get home in time for a late celebration dinner! It will have to be ordered in, because the foot is still no fun, but I don't care. I'm a happy, happy, gal.

Tony was up at 5:30 to catch a flight to Vancouver. This is only the second of five planned trips -- he'll also be gone for part of next week, part of the week after, and so forth. It makes it a little hard to finish our training for the breast cancer walk, but this week that doesn't really matter because...

My foot is NO BETTER. In fact, the doctor says that wasp stings often get worse and worse for up to a week before they suddenly fade, and there's nothing he can do except suggest lots of antihistamenes, Advil, and keeping it elevated over my heart as much as possible. Sweet Tony left a whole bag of supplies by the bed: peanut butter and bread, jelly bellies, Balance bars, bottled water, etc., so I'm lying around with my foot propped up and eating goodies. Not so terrible!

YOWWWW!

Foot and ankle were swollen yesterday, but not nearly as bad as this morning. My foot is hot pink from my toes to my sock tan, puffed up and hot to the touch. (Don't touch it though or I will scream and then kill you.)

Mr. Stupid Yellow Jacket is out there laughing somewhere. I wish Tony had squashed him good.

STUNG by a WASP.

We were on a training walk and it got down between my foot and the tongue of my shoe. When I stepped down the tongue pressed against him and he went berserk. So did I. It's a bad feeling to look down at your suddenly-painful foot and see a long, black insect leg protruding from under the tongue of your shoe. It's worse to look closer and see Mr. Enraged Yellow Jacket. Tony was a hero and pulled it away with his bare fingers when I started howling.

It still hurts. Tried allergy medicine, Advil, baking soda paste, pain-relief Neosporin, pain-relief sunburn spray, cold compress, hot compress, and medium bath. Still hurts. A LOT.

Going to the Giants game tonight. The Giants are bound to win, and it's Fireworks Night at Pac Bell Park, but a little of the joy is gone with Nen out for the season.

Waiting-waiting-waiting for the book contract to arrive. Apparantly, this is something every author goes through but none know about in advance -- book contracts take forever. And ever. In the meantime, trying to convince myself that being in limbo strengthens character.

Fortunately, so much else is going on that I haven't eaten all my fingernails yet, quite. For example, the breast cancer walk is in only three weeks! WOW. We feel profoundly unprepared, at least mentally. Time to go to REI and start getting supplies! Tent stakes, blister pads, Mr. Salty pretzels, snack-sized ziplocks, socks, glo-sticks, Cytomax, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

We both had dentist appointments yesterday; I had a crown seated and got a deep cleaning, and Tony had two fillings and a deep cleaning of his own. We'd heard horror stories about those deep cleanings -- the kind where they actually go under your gumline -- being really painful afterward, but it turned out to be no biggie. A few Advils, a chocolate pudding or two, and we were just fine.

We also had the plumber come to repair a broken handle on the tub. Sounds simple, yes? No. Turns out that the entire shower/tub unit will have to be removed, the plumbing replaced entirely, the unit put back, and then the wall repaired from all the trauma. Expensive. That's what we get for shopping so much last weekend.

Big walk, big climb, but the highlight of the weekend was the Arts & Wine festival, where we shopped like lunatics. A massage stone, some art, two totes, two bags of honey roasted almonds, two sausages, three cokes, a pile of fried artichoke hearts, and sunscreen so we wouldn't burn up doing all the shopping.

And the best of the best was a diamond and ruby toe-ring for me, to celebrate selling the book. No, I'm not kidding. Real diamonds, real rubies, totally decadant, I'm still whistling and hopping around the house, I'm so pleased. (Only problem was that my toes are so itty-bitty skinny that I have to wait five endless days for the ring to be resized before I can wear it ... grr.)