Cloud walking

Life is rather busy right now.

Not in a bad way.  Just in a “OMFG how is it almost the end of August already?” kinda way.

The days are long but the years are short.

Working steadily on Tome 2.0.  The word count is racking up and the chapter is ready to be edited, amended and then eventually weeded for extraneous words and thoughts.  Someday I’ll even send it out to my writing group and get to lunch with my ladies.  Every day I work on it is a day closer to that.  Even baby steps eventually add up.

The house is looking a wee bit better by the end of every weekend.  Well, it was until the eldest returned home, till at least the new year, and her room exploded its contents across the rest of the house.  She never really got a chance to scale down and store things after she graduated because first she went to the tropics and then she went to the capital.  All those boxes just got thrown into her room because she wasn’t here anyway and at least they were out of my way.

She made good progress over the weekend on moving things where they needed to go.  Even better, she’s willing to do some of the deep cleaning projects that would probably wreck me, at least temporarily.  And plus, I just don’t want to freakin’ do them.  She already laid down on the kitchen floor and scrubbed the baseboards and lower cabinets.  I’ll hit the upper ones when I do the annual reshuffling of the cabinets and then the kitchen is clean and pretty again and ready for a fresh coat of wax on the floor.

It’s such a pretty blue when clean and shiny.

I’m making a serious attempt to take advantage of having the eldest back for a few months and spending some time playing as well as working with her and her sister.  We went to the park on Monday for the eclipse.  The ranger station had set up a low-key program and had all sorts of eclipse viewers to play with and people brought their own.  It was a good, communal way to share the event.  So glad we decided not to go to one of the two observatories I was considering.  They got thousands of people.  There were maybe 25 of us in the park, including the rangers, and we were pretty spread out.  Just bumping into each other’s orbits occasionally to pass around the viewers or comment on what was happening.

Just perfect for three introverts out on the town.

Then I got to spend the rest of the day all alone in the house until I left for work Tuesday morning.  Finished up a book I plowed through over the weekend and sorted out writing related paperwork for a couple of hours before dozing off on the couch with one of my favorite monster movies.  I didn’t want to watch anything bright after all that staring at the sun and a literally dark movie was the perfect entertainment.

Didn’t even have to make dinner because we had gone out for lunch courtesy of old gift cards and there were plenty of leftovers.

Everyone needs days like these.  Perfect in whatever way works for them.  This is what worked for me.

I’m making a point of trying to write down the good so I can remember it when things swing the other way.  Not that I’m sitting here waiting for the next disaster.  Just that the memory of the brighter days can help us get through the darker nights.

This rambling is no different from canning tomatoes in late summer.

Pop one open in January and you’ve got sunshine in a jar when the snow is piling up outside.

My brain tends to wander a bit when I’m really working on the writing.  I get wrapped up in the world I’ve created and the mind drifts.

Don’t mind me.

I’ll just be here looking at the clouds for a moment.