Too busy to post, apparently. We had company come out last Wednesday, and things really haven't slowed much since the long string of funerals that began a few weeks back. Makes for intense times in a pastor's family. Erik had to drive up to Spokane several times, spur of the moment, one time just missing the patient before he passed away. But things seem to be settling down again...

Anyhow. Project post, here.

I've started knitting my winter socks - just finished the November pair. And I finally got a picture of Lizzie's new skirt - I LOVE this material. Current project: a peachy-plaid Western-style shirt (with Jenn touches, of course).

( Projects... )

On the writing front, I continue to work and make progress. Not much else to say there.

Reading-wise, I was cleaning a room and discovered a book I didn't remember buying. I must have purchased The Trouble with Kings at the time I bought another book I was looking forward to... Anyhow! I highly recommend this purely fun book. I know I'm always recommending Sherwood Smith's books, but they're so much fun! (Thanks for writing another great one, sartorias!)

Sometimes, twelve-hour editing sessions lead to extensive brain injury. Sometimes, those sessions merely result in completing another finished 50 page chunk. Yay!

I'm excited for the next section - contains a scene I've been itching to write.

We're done buying meat from animal factories. I've never liked doing so (I was a vegetarian for 6 years), but felt we had to for financial reasons. This week we decided to eat vegetarian a few nights a week to defray the cost difference between organic and inorganic meats. In the past, E wasn't willing to do so, but he's changed his mind, obviously, since he was the one to suggest the change this time. Yay!

The manuscript is now edited up to page 192. What remains is a chaotic mess of fumbling bumbling late-night writing sessions that ended with a finished shitty first draft around the time of Elizabeth's conception and hasn't really been touched since. The same Elizabeth who turned 3 a few days ago. So, um, yeah. Dusty, dried, withered, lifeless, prose written in a rush while husbands pouted and a one-year-old shrieked her head off. Is it any wonder that the remaining hundred pages manages to feel frantic. Hm. Desperate? Dusty and desperate. Lifeless, yet frantic.

I've poked at these chapters. Prodded them. I like some of the scenes, hate others, love a few. The basic shape is still what it needs to be, but I'm a bit frightened of the work ahead. I have my plans. I have my lists. I've X'd out pages in my hardcopy, circling those few, solitary paragraphs or snippets of dialogue that will remain when I am done. Some of these sections are so far gone, editing would be pointless - they must, instead, be re-written. I'm 60% excited, and 40% anxious over tomorrow's work: the first huge cuts.

Time to call on my fighting spirit. Aja!

I'm cursing way too much for a Sunday. Staying up until one each night is taking its toll, but I must continue until Lizzie stays dry through the night.

And, speaking of Lizzie and her accidents, the laundry pile crept skyward once more. The dryer, frightened, decided to die a stinky death. Fabulous. The basement clothesline has disappeared (the husband probably did not want to risk decapitation any longer), so I have a soggy mass on hand that I don't know what to do about.

And, before I'd wiped the sleep from my eyes, I learned that I'm in charge of Christmas Pageant costumes and tending the church's roses. Good morning to you too, Spouse.

Grump, grump, grump.

Costumes are done - I even sewed about a hundred purple/clear beads onto Lizzie's Ariel "bra."

So, now it's time to start sewing birthday presents. Then it will be Christmas present time. I love the business and insanity of this time of year. The girls have had fun playing with their Molly Monkeys from last year...



This year, I'm sewing more clothes for their toy wardrobes.

Anyhow. Lizzie really wants an 18" doll this year (one of those less-expensive American Girl type dolls), and REALLY wanted me to sew clothes for it. So, we're buying her a doll, a wardrobe, and a box of doll shoes...and I'm sewing as many outfits as I can before November 6.

But, honestly...I can't believe she's almost 3. What the heck?

Saturday night. There was a Chuck E Cheese birthday party outing today, so all three of us are irritable. Not me! I squeezed my writing hours into the drive and parking lot sitting parts of the trip and solved a plot Ooopsie without even intending to. This oopsie was major enough, I'm considering cracking a bottle of champagne or something. I don't have to change a THING in what I've already re-written, so huzzzzah, me!

Not sure what else to say.

Oh. Yeah. We switched computers, so that I have a laptop to use again. I love having the extra space on my writing table upstairs, but I'm completely irritated by the keyboard layout. The CTRL tab is far too close to the window key, which is also too close to the shift key. When I get going, windows pop all over the place, and my words spread through each window as I type. VERY irritating. Perhaps I should look at the screen instead of staring off into space or whatever it is I'm doing that I don't notice the cascade of windows meant to be capital letters or italicized phrases.

If only Lizzie hadn't destroyed the spacebar on the old laptop. :sigh:

Erik's grandma tried killing herself again - this time by purposely driving her car off the road. Two cracked pelvic bones, two punctured lungs, a broken neck, and numerous other injuries, but she's still alive. Failed Attempt Number Five.

Thankfully, Mom doesn't blame herself this time. People are more angry than sad. Nobody thinks she will change.

On a more positive note, I'm almost healed up, my copy of Treason's Shore FINALLY arrived (a month? wtf, amazon!), and I'm still making progress on my rewrite.

Woke this morning to a naked Elizabeth jumping on the ottoman holding a spoonful of soynut butter and shouting, "ALL ABOARD! ALL ABOARD!" Where the clothing-optional peanut-butter serving train would take me, I do not care to know.

Erik's taking the dog up to Spokane. We said good-bye this morning. Miles was never sweet and loved (too much) to chase and chew Lizzie at every opportunity. We consulted training books and did what we can, but, bah, no good. It's very sad, but...he was too dangerous to keep around.

Also, I'm still recovering from pneumonia. Long convalescences do not agree with me at all. I missed the fall yard-work window, I'm gaining weight because I'm inactive, and E has burned two pots of mac n cheese to the point where we had to throw away the pans. Also, because of the last burned pot, I need to wash the cabinets and walls to rid the kitchen and dining room of the smoke smell.

I WANT TO BE HEALTHY AGAIN!!!!!

We thought the girls might be sad about Miles. Lizzie said, 'Yay!" and Emilie said, "I'm only sad because I want another pet." Um. Yeah.

Sanity-keeping activities: sewing and watching Bones. I have a book on order (the last installment in Sherwood Smith's Inda books - yay for money!), and a new magazine did come the other day. But, honestly, it hasn't been a week yet, and it's likely to take four weeks to recover, AND I'M GOING CRAZY. I think I apologize to my husband and kids a thousand times a day. Ugh.

Bored. Lonely. I'm trying to imagine how bad this would be if I were stuck in a hospital. Yeah, that would stink.



( A couple shirts... )

You guys are hilarious! Thanks for your support. I'm squeaking away here, now.

Speaking of squeaking...I slept for fourteen hours last night. The entire night, I was a hero in an alternate dimension, and a bit of a hero in this world as well. Here, I was a politician whose office was put in a haunted building because my superiors wanted me gone. Unfortunately for them, the ghosts were telling me all about the horrid things my superiors did to them.

To have some time for thought - since all office hours were filled with ghosts and their stories - I took a retreat to the mountains. I ended up in an alternate world plunged into a civil war of some kind. Not real certain of the specifics. What I do remember is that my companion was one of the main characters in an old book of mine. He was much funnier than I remember. Also, I don't remember him being a gambling addict. We kept crossing between this world and the other, and, eventually, a high school was built on the site of the world portal. A high school that featured a casino in its cafeteria. My companion was a bit useless after that casino was built, darn it. Had to fight the battle on my own, and I think I was about to die when my screaming daughters woke me.

And I'm SOOOO tired. Fighting evil all night is not very restful, fyi.

Should E have been surprised tonight that I wasn't able to make dinner? I suppose the sore throat that puts him in bed for a week is more severe than chest pains while breathing and an inability to stand for longer than a few minutes. Hmm. I did not know this.

Walking pneumonia is dangerous, especially when the patient is cheerful and disinclined to whine. Should I be more of a squeaky wheel, perhaps?

Thought I had bronchitis. Nope. Pneumonia.

Today is the first day of my three week illness that I've felt fatigued, faint, and sub-par. My nagging cough is now bronchitis (at least that). E wants me to see the doctor today, but I don't want to drive in the red flag windstorm when I feel faint like this. I don't think my lungs are full, so I don't expect I'm in any danger until Monday, if there is danger at all.

Two years ago, I made Emilie a shirt/pants outfit that Lizzie now adores. But! She treats the shirt like a dress. Originally, this wasn't an issue. The skirt part of the dress was plenty long enough to cover her underwear. But, well, Lizzie's a lot taller these days. After several arguments regarding the wearing of said shirt out of doors, Lizzie and I reached a compromise.

( Shirt-turned-dress )

Writing-wise, I'm keeping on despite these pesky health issues. The next few chapters are scheduled for demolition, and I'm hip-deep in plot scaffolding. This section of the re-write is a bit daunting, but I'm excited about it as well. I just hope I can put my hours in while I recover - don't want to lose momentum again.

It's been a while since I've written here. These days, short Facebook snippets are about all I have time for. So I say, anyhoot. My time is devoted to writing, painting, and...a new puppy. Last week was thrown off because I'm sick. *cough-hack-hack*

For now, the last month in pictures...

( Miles of Pictures... )

Sorry for the pic spam. :P

This is for texasmagic especially, but for the rest of you as well. I've mentioned a few times the odd taste my girls have in lullabies. At last, someone uploaded a youtube video with this rare Joan Baez song. So, for your enjoyment:

The Death of Queen Jane

Now, if someone would just figure out the guitar chords!

The Queen Jane in this song is Jane Seymour, wife of King Henry VIII. She did not actually die in childbirth, nor was the future King Edward VI delivered by cesarean (both of which occur within this song). However, this ballad reflects the rumors that circulated surrounding the death of England's queen, and birth of its long-sought prince.

The girls and I agree, the best verse is this:

How bright was the moonlight
How yellow was the room
How costly the white robes
Queen Jane was wrapped in

Ah, so wonderfully morbid!

Project-wise, it's been a slow summer. I have several long-term projects in the works, but none of those are completed. Still, I did make a few dresses for Vegas. One proved inappropriate, but the other was PERFECT.

( Two New Dresses )

Hm. Haven't posted for a while, have I? My sewing docket was full up until vacation time began two weeks ago, and so, here we are.

The girls and I spent an awesome week up in Bellingham. I'm glad they had time to form memories of the town I still love while there was sunshine to cheer things up a bit. I love sunny Bellingham, but hate that town when it's raining. Perhaps I might dislike it less if I'd owned transportation while living there...

Last week, E and I drove down to Vegas. We did not fight. Also, though we were down there for seven days, we were not bored. Also, we did not run out of cash. For us, these three factors mark the Vegas trip as a smashing success.

The last night there, E played $1 Blackjack (a 20 goes far when the stakes are low) while I chatted with strangers. Met the Vietnamese wife to a former US ambassador and listened to her life story. The woman was hilarious! She told me about her childhood as the sheltered only daughter of a Vietnamese Colonel (pre-invasion), and about how she married her husband because her father said that any Vietnamese boy she met could be his illegitimate son, and about how she ran away to Hong Kong after she had sex for the first time because she had no idea that pain and blood were normal and believed that her husband might be a bad man after all. And she talked about trying to rescue her father after he'd been sent into the "education" camps, and about how he'd killed himself in order to rescue two of her sixteen brothers instead.

Jackie. I have no idea who she really is, but my favorite two hours of last week were spent sipping rum and cokes and laughing with her. And, though I know this isn't very culturally acceptable of me, I hope her daughter marries and has lots of babies for Jackie soon. ;)

I've been working on large sewing projects lately, so there hasn't been much to update. I have seven days of work yet to do on a quilted duvet cover I started a few weeks ago, and, when I'm too tired to stand over the cutting board or sling the iron around, I work on my little tapestry.

But I wanted a few new summer tops before vacation season begins.

( Something Simple )

News and events in the order experienced.

1. My brother, sister-in-law, and niece started their long move back to Bellingham after a brief visit with us this morning. Some tears on our end after their van pulled away.

2. Called Mom. Dad's tests came back clear and they brought home a new puppy. Dad, who's always been a bit standoffish toward pets since BruunHildegard, the Norwegian Elkhound we had when I was a kid, actually suggested that the puppy spend his nights in their bedroom. Jaw-dropping, that.

3. Phone call from my Mother in law in Montana. Grandma, the one who's had issues with suicide and diabetes, has been in a coma since Thursday. She had a minor stroke a few weeks ago, and suffered an aftershock seizure Thursday morning. Doctors expect her to wake up soon. We'll see. They had trouble diagnosing her at first; thanks to her prior history, they assumed she'd OD'd on something, so they wasted some time trying to take care of her stomach first. :sigh: Oh, Gran...

But, oh, I'm so very, very glad that Dad's okay!!

Thanks, all. :) I hope we know about Dad soon...

On a more frivolous note... I'm "the minister's stylish wife." When I heard that today, I about died laughing. Oh, how things have changed!

I remember listening to a sermon where the pastor described a girl dressed "very scary" who walked by a specific greasy spoon in Bellingham during the previous week. He described the outfit. Um, yeah. I'm pretty sure that was me. It was a pretty unusual outfit. :sigh: I wasn't even rebelling through clothes, that's the sad thing. But I thought the sermon was funny because the guy was urging people to reach out to people who dressed in ugly tights and combat boots while I'm thinking, "Totally not necessary, Dude," and feeling very surly indeed.

I'm not ultra stylish, though. Still can't abide booties on anyone other than gazelle-like women, and it will be a cold day in Ecuador before I think a jumpsuit should be worn anywhere other than the military or prison. Or on a baby. Babies can pull off jumpsuits. Grown women should not wear jumpsuits, no matter what they're calling them this season. And those necklaces that are just strips of fabric wrapped around strands of beads? Um, WTF.