HANGING IN

     For me, 85% of waiting to hear back from an agent consists of trying to trick myself into thinking that I'm NOT waiting to hear back from an agent.  (And yeah, I must admit that the other 15% consists of obsessively checking my email roughly 5,000 times a day.  But still  It's only 15%.)  So, for example, I pretended that yesterday was just a regular old day, consisting of doing a little exercise (which I loathe but now have to do, thanks to my recent diagnosis of severe osteopenia - serves me right for being white-or-Asian, built small, and largely sedentary in my habits), completing three loads of laundry, going with my husband to take the dogs for a snowy hike in the reservation (when I stepped off the path, I sank into snow past my knees), looking through the window at home and watching some of the snow slowly melt (it's supposed to get up into the 40's today!  I didn't think I would make it to this point!), and completing and storing as drafts several posts in preparation for the April A to Z Challenge.  I told you about that, right?  That every day in April except for Sundays, I'm going to post, in alphabetical order, short bios of some 16th-century people I find really interesting and hope that you will too?  Right now, I have to credit this project (and Yvonne Ventresca, who suggested my theme for me) with saving my life.  Oh, and I also signed on to be a minion during the Challenge, mostly because I'm a total sucker for anyone asking for help with a task, but also because who knows whether I'll hear from the you-know-who by the time April rolls around, and the more distractions I can plan for myself, the better.
     It's called hanging in there, folks.  Living my life as if the only thing I'm waiting for is spring.