Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 48

Happiness is a Garage Door That Closes

For most of the past week or so, my garage door has been open, flashing the neighborhood the chaos of the unloaded pod Stuff because some of it was blocking the door. This week, I cleared out the space under the door and closed it. It’s not as good as clearing out the chaos–I’m doing that little by little–but at least now it’s my chaos and not the neighborhood’s. It’s the little things that edge us toward happiness.

What little thing made you happy this week?

State of the Collaboration: August 19, 2023

Most of July and August were a waste because I was in disorganized moving hell, and Bob was patient, thank you very much. But in the past couple of days, I’ve cleared enough space in my place and my brain and started back to work. I’m still behind on everything, like legal things and getting a doctor down here and clearing the boxes and packing stuff out of here so I can walk through the rooms, but since the copy edit had to be done on Pink NOW, that is done (and thank you to all who offered and helped), and I am now restructuring Vermillion while Bob sighs in the background and pushes for a bad title for the first Rocky Start novel, which I WILL go back to on Monday.

For example:

This is a Good Book Thursday, August 17, 2023

I just finished doing a proofread of Rest in Pink, which I have now read one million, five thousand, three hundred and eight-two times. It’s out Tuesday, but I’m not going to reread it again.

What did you re-read or just read this week?

Working Wednesday, August 16, 2023

Today I am working on getting my brain back in working order so I won’t forget the Working Wednesday post again. Fingers crossed that works.

What did you work on this week?

It’s National Apostrophe Day!

According to the Washington Post, today is National Apostrophe Day.

The big question is, do I tell Bob?

Answer: Yes.

Happiness is No Pods

For weeks, I worked on filling the largest POD available with my Stuff. (See George Carlin on Stuff.) Then I moved and waited five days for the POD filled with my Stuff. Then I spent two days practically killing myself getting the Stuff out of the POD. And now I must spend the next couple of weeks sorting and cleaning the Stuff from the POD.

This has led me to see the POD as a metaphor.

I have to work on the proofread for Pink for Bob which I am vastly behind on. I feel guilty. It’s a POD.

I haven’t heard anything about Emily William, and I know it was the right thing to do to leave because the entire neighborhood is on alert and will feed him, but I feel guilty just the same. Emily William is a POD.

I left my daughter an enormous mess when I left NJ, which she and my realtor Sydney are tackling with cheerful non-drama. I feel overwhelming guilt about that even though I know she’s ecstatic about me being down here. My old cottage is a POD.

So here’s the thing I learned about PODs two days ago: If you keep unloading them until they’re empty, somebody comes and takes them away. And the relief is ENORMOUS.

I will finish the proofing on Pink by tonight (Pat and Jon are coming at ten to help me put furniture together first because good friends are not PODs, they are POD unloaders). And Bob is maintaining a polite silence even though I know he wants to strangle me because he knows I’m in chaos and he’s not going to make it worse. He’s a POD unloader.

I can’t do anything about Emily William, but I did adopt a cat yesterday whose owner here had died here and left him disconsolate, and he’s already sat on my bed several times and glared at me for being the wrong person, so I think it’s going to go well. His name is Little Guy, which he is not, and he’s spending most of the time under the bed, but he has other options, and he and Veronica have already gotten to the I-Don’t-Like-You-So-I’m-Ignoring-You stage of dog-cat relationships. Little Guy, whose name I long to change, is a POD unloader.

My daughter keeps giving me cheerful updates on the house and finding things she doesn’t want to throw out so it’s almost a treasure hunt up there, and she insists there’s no reason for me to feel guilty, she wants to help, which I believe. I still feel guilty, but nowhere near what I would if she wasn’t laughing when she tells me about things she’s found. Mollie is a POD unloader.

Bob and Pat and Jon and Little Guy and Mollie cannot make my PODs go away, I’m going to need therapy for that, but they unload a lot of the guilt so that I can function and do better next time. The only real drawback is Bob talking about me becoming a POD person, which if we’re going with this metaphor, I’ve always been: I was raised with guilt and it took me years to stop letting people inflict it on me–see Liz’s come-to-Jesus talk with her mother–but as long as I have my POD unloaders around to help, I’ll make it.

Happiness is no PODs or at least good POD unloaders so that eventually, the PODs go away. How did you make your PODs go away this week?

Lavender’s Blue: A Character Chart

The POD has come and gone and my new place is a mess because I just unloaded everything at once. But I can fix that.

What I can’t fix: How confusing people are finding the many characters in Lavender’s Blue. So I made a chart. I may have missed some people, I was doing it from memory, so feel free to weigh in to make things clearer and more accurate. And, as the chart says, there are some inaccuracies on there because people lie, aka, I didn’t want to put in spoilers.

Also, we need a last name for Marvin, an extremely minor character.

This is a Good Book Thursday, August 10, 2023

This week I read Rest in Pink for proofreading, and a book by one of my favorite authors that I gave up on in the middle and skipped to read the end. I don’t know if that’s my fault or hers, but I’m thinking my head is just in too many places and it’s mine.

What did you read all the way through this week?

Working Wednesday, August 9, 2023

This week I put together a lot of furniture–I don’t care if I never see another Allen wrench again–and unloaded the POD I spent two weeks loading in two days and burned rice onto my AllClad pan because I was unpacking more flat pack furniture and . . . I’m so tired and achey I could die. Okay, exaggeration.

I’m really tired and sore. But I also proofread Rest in Pink, although I probably still missed stuff because I wrote parts of it, and I got a lot of things put together, and I had dinner with my pal Pat Gaffney twice, so things are looking up. Now if Emily William will just get his butt in the cat carrier . . .

What did you work on this week?

Happiness is Not Moving

I’ve spent some time vegging this past week (sore muscles) and I’m finally starting to feel like me again. It’s odd being in a new place, but it makes me happy that I’ll never have to move again. At least I’ll never have to move me again. Somebody else can do it.

How did moving or not moving make you happy this week?