Yesterday, I spent two hours in the pool playing pearl diver. The wind whipped up and the walnut tree twenty feet away dumped half its leaves onto the pool. Before I could turn on the pump, I had to scoop a thick layer of leaves from the steps. When there’s that much debris, it tends to move. I found a live salamander, a live frog and tons of crickets.

The pearl diving came in when I got the surface clean then had to take a small hand-held net and dive to the bottom because there were too many leaves for the robot to handle. I like to pretend I live on some South Sea island and have to dive for pearls at the bottom of the ocean. I’d suck at it in real life. I can’t hold my breath longer than 15 seconds when I’m exerting myself, and I’d have to tie huge boulders to my waist to get my fat ass down 50 feet—fat floats quite well, ya know.

I didn’t mind the time away from my desk. I received a “this isn’t quite right, but I’d be willing to look at revisions” answer on one of my proposals. First reaction was extreme disappointment. Naturally. Second was anger. Third was call a friend to see if she had time to look at the notes and the work and see if there’s hope. Since the friend writes for that publisher, her opinion was very helpful. Plus she reminded me that this particular line tends to put authors through a bit of hazing before acceptance.

So now I have my head in a more positive place. I didn’t get a flat no. I have the invitation to resubmit the same work or something else. I’ll work on revising and ship it back out—just not today. I need to work on something that will be more immediately successful. Egos are fragile things. And while I tend to think I’m tougher than the average person, I can still get huge dents in my armor.