Occasional

Hmm, I am so behind on blogging that every additional day that goes by without my having blogged gets me even further behind, and with more to write when I actually do blog, so the task becomes more daunting, so I don’t blog, and….you get the idea.

I guess the thing to do is to sit down and write when I feel moved to. Like now. And not worry about getting it all caught up. I mean, I won’t remember it all anyway, and you’ve probably all heard all my news on Facebook already anyway.

A question: how many of you reading here also are Facebook friends with me? And of those, how many look at Facebook with any regularity? 🙂 Because I do actually post things there with some frequency.

Like pictures of dahlias

It’s not that I don’t have the time or focus for longer-form writing (though, yes, life is busy, when is it not?). I think it may actually be because the Queen & Tower rewrite is going so well. I don’t manage to work on it every single day, but I work on it most days, for good chunks of time at a sitting–two hours or more. That’s what I am doing with the nice long uninterrupted spans of writing time, instead of blogging. And the small bits of in-between time, those are good for garden pictures, and food pictures, the other stuff that Facebook is for.

Anyway, that’s my working theory now. Another theory might be that nobody reads this blog, so why bother updating it? Comments disproving this theory would be welcome.

So! It’s been (it is still being) an eventful summer. I believe I made mention of our project to retrofit the toolshed into an office for me? Well, it’s done now, and OH MY GOD IT IS AMAZING YOU GUYS. I love it to pieces, just absolutely it is the best thing.

A picture I took before I filled it up with my clutter

And let’s see, what else? A veritable deluge of house guests. Lots and lots and lots and LOTS of VERY hot weather. Lots of gardening (which means lots of watering–see VERY HOT WEATHER). Lots of writing. Mark is working very hard on Thimbleweed Park (the link currently points to a podcast interview with him, I haven’t listened to it yet!). He is also working hard on something that is very cool, and is secret, but is only going to be secret for another week, so I will tell you about it then. (Or maybe I will tell Facebook about it then and blog about it two months later. Heh.)

And we went to California and got to meet the new nephew!

Yes, I am sitting on a yoga ball bouncing him. Otherwise he cried. He LOVES to be bounced.

Oh and Our Lady of the Islands is a finalist for the Endeavour Award. That’s a thing I should probably tell you about. 🙂 My first award nomination. Now I need to buy a pretty dress. Right???

Last weekend we drove northward and were workshop leaders at Cascade Writers, which was awesome and amazing and fun and productive, even if the hotel did have the fakiest fake orchids EVER.

Since my office furniture (and clutter) is no longer in the dining room, it meant we had to (got to) go out and buy new, actual dining-room-appropriate furniture. We’re not quite finished with this, but we’ve gotten the major pieces. Including a lovely cabinet with a leaded glass door that had two broken panes (so it’s at a glass shop right now, being repaired) and hideous painted-over paper on the shelves and back, which I recovered with lovely wallpaper just the other day:

BEFORE

AFTER

Pay no attention to the odd brownish streak down the middle; that’s an artifact of the camera and the light, I guess. It’s really quite beautiful. And I can’t wait for the door to be ready…

My next non-work, non-writing project is to put in a drip irrigation system to take care of ALL the pots in the garden. It currently takes about an hour and a half to do all the watering by hand. Which strikes us both as a bit excessive….especially when it happens every day, because it’s been a hundred million billion degrees.

So I got a tutorial from my dad when we were in California, and I’ve gone to Home Despot and bought hoses and connectors and all that, then realized I’m short a few things; but mostly this hasn’t gotten done yet because a) it’ll take a LOT longer than an hour and a half to do, so every day I think Eh, I’ll just water, and tackle that big thing some other day; and b) it’s been a hundred million billion degrees, and I don’t wanna work outside in that for hours on end….

Today was a little cooler. Next week is supposed to be a little cooler. Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a drip system in, just in time for winter. 🙂

So! That’s the general gist of things around here. And that’s certainly plenty of update for now, and anyway, this French 75 is nearly empty and it’s time to go make dinner.