11.26.09
Posted in Writing at 11:28 am by Bridget Zinn
These lovely, lovely flowers were sent to me by my Madison writers group as congrats on selling my novel to Disney/Hyperion. Aren’t they gorgeous?
Earlier this year, my group got together with some other SCBWI-WI folks and made me a healing quilt. My cats took a liking to the quilt so now it’s hanging up on the wall instead of on my bed to protect it from the little hairy monsters. It still sends off healing vibes, just from a little higher up.
I’m especially fond of the Bridget in a Cake square that Michael Kress-Russik (whose first illustrated book Moon Over the Mountain just came out — check it out here!) made.
My writers group is awesome.
We are celebrating pie this year for Thanksgiving with some Portland friends in a Piesgiving Fest. This involves eating a lot of pie and pie shaped food and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Thanks to everyone for all of your support this year and Happy Thanksgiving! Or Piesgiving, if you are so inclined. 
Love to you all,
Bridget
p.s. Don’t forget the auction is starting up tomorrow. Check out details here.
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11.17.09
Posted in Events, Recipe at 9:20 am by Bridget Zinn
I know a lot of you have already seen the happiest Buddha on facebook, but
I wanted to make sure that everyone got a chance to see him. I feel slightly guilty that he used to make the day of all of the shoppers in Port Townsend where he lived as a doorstop and now he just makes Barrett’s and my day living next to our fireplace. Doesn’t he make you smile?
The lovely Reiki practitioner that I work with (she’s awesome, check her out here) commented that it looks as though my happy Buddha is drawing energy down into his heart — I think she’s probably right and we can use all of the good energy in our house that we can get, but sometimes I just want to give him a high five.
In other news, I baked last week, something I’ve only been dreaming about doing for months. There’s something so enticing about baking — it makes your house smell great and there’s this feeling of transforming disparate pieces into an entirely new whole that’s like magic. I used a recipe for banana bread that I found online here. It uses agave nectar which I’ve been eager to try. I’m a big fan of most foods that are reputed to be gifts from the gods. It turns out that agave nectar is quite tasty and the banana bread got a thumbs up.
If my tech guy weren’t busy working at his other job, I would post pics of the cool things my talented and fabulous friends gave me for my birthday (as you can see from the Buddha above, my pic-taking is not quite up to Barrett’s standards). Carolyn and Adrienne both gave me homemade jam which are like jars full of edible sunshine and my friend Cyndi made this scarf that looks exactly like fudge ripple ice cream and there are more cool things, but without pics, I feel like I’m just taunting you and no one likes a taunter. I have no idea how I have been so lucky as to have fallen in with talented people who know how to make things (outside of banana bread which is about as much as I can do), but I am greatly enjoying the results.
And I have more news from my other talented and fabulous friends who have been helping to keep us out of debtor’s prison (which I have mentioned before is a grim and cakeless place) due to our surprise medical bills this year — an online auction run by Cailin and our friends in Madison. If you didn’t get a chance to be part of the fun of the last online auction, now’s your chance! Jone, who so generously ran the Portland online auction, sums it up all very nicely here. You can also see a picture of Barrett, myself, and cake.
I hope you are having a fabulous week!
Love to you all,
Bridget
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11.03.09
Posted in Events at 9:48 pm by Bridget Zinn
We went to the beach on Sunday and it was gorgeous — not too cold, not at all crowded, really, it was absolutely gorgeous. I got to watch Barrett watch his first sunset into the ocean — the way the sun just suddenly dips down like the ocean is swallowing it up is so amazing the first time you see it and just as amazing the however many times I’ve seen it too. And I was feeling pretty great and thinking “ha ha, I’m going to be a whole year older tomorrow, take that Fate, you can’t slow me down with your stupid cancer, I’m still going to keep having birthdays and getting older and YOU can’t stop me!” And I may have even done some fist shaking and triumphant laughing, it’s all a bit of a blur now.
Then, two hours later, after a nice dinner at the cutest little pizza parlor in Manzanita, I came down with a fever. Not just any fever, one of those volcano lava alternating with freezing ice bones alternating with volcano lava on the inside/ice sheet on the outside and then vice versa fevers. I probably don’t need to tell you that chemotherapy patients aren’t really allowed to get fevers. We are under strict instructions to go immediately to the ER with a fever over 100.5. I won’t get into why, but getting another year older was starting to look dodgy.
I would not recommend shaking one’s fist at fate.
But we didn’t have a thermometer at the hotel, so we couldn’t say FOR SURE that I had a fever of 100.5+. And I really really didn’t want to drive back to Portland to the ER where they would definitely place me as an inpatient where I would definitely have had to spend my birthday (if the fever didn’t get me first). If we didn’t have a thermometer to PROVE I had a fever there was no way I was going in. Possibly I wasn’t nearly as hot as I thought I was.
At 1 a.m. my fever broke in a great big gush causing the necessity of a complete costume change. We headed home in the a.m. and my fever only spiked once during my birthday (which is sort of funny because I just felt a tiny bit warm and it was 100.1, who knows what it was when I actually thought I felt hot). But I made it to my birthday which is all to the good and I didn’t even have to spend time at the hospital.
I will not be shaking my fist at Fate over that though. Just quietly chuckling to myself maybe.
Did not make it on a bakery crawl, but so many treats came my way that it wasn’t even necessary starting with the hand delivered cupcakes from my cousin Chris last week who’s mother gave him cupcake delivering instructions (and scared the pants off me when she e-mailed me and her name came up Grandma Ryan and I thought it was a message from Beyond from my Grandma Ryan who I’d temporarily forgotten didn’t even go by Grandma Ryan when she was alive, she went by Grandma Gert, but then I figured it out and realized that of course it was my Aunt Janet who has been Grandma Ryan to my cousins’ children for a good portion of my life and, in fact, I’m related to a good many Grandma Ryans as my family seems to be trying for world domination by sheernumbers, if not actual military skill). 
Then there were the Restorative Cookies that Barrett baked me to heal me from my fever (oatmeal chocolate chip) and more cupcakes were delivered by Cupcake Jones from my Aunt Jane and her girls. Plus, we had gorgeous leftover Tiramisu Tart Something Great and Crunchy That I Can’t Remember the Name of Cake that Jone baked me and brought to Portland Kidlit Drinks Night on Friday.
So I stayed home mostly and ate treats and read the fabulous books Barrett bought me — Laini’s Lips Touch Three Times and Johanna’s illustrated Clover Twig and the Magical Cottage. I highly recommend both. I think they may have been restorative too. Plus, we got copies of Janet’s book The Great Lakes and if you look inside (you should buy your own copy to see for yourself in real live print) you will see that it was dedicated to Barrett and I. V. exciting.
And I got to read all sorts of lovely birthday messages via e-mail and on facebook from all of you!
Overall, it was a great, if somewhat dramatic, birthday.
And I still have three days of birthday week left! It all ends Thursday and then back to chemo where I’m hoping the nurses are not reading my blog and if they are, they’re thinking “that Bridget and her not coming in when she should, what larks” instead of “how are we going to keep this stupid girl alive if she doesn’t come in when she’s so obviously supposed to.”
Love to you all,
Bridget
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