I Know…Shame on Me

I’m sorry, guys. I meant to take only a very short break, but then the world went kind of crazy and frankly I just wasn’t up for it. You know I stay politics-free here, so I didn’t want to talk about what was going on, but I also didn’t want to appear insensitive by burbling on about making beds and painting bathrooms, about editing and writing and critiquing, while all hell broke loose.

But you know, just because I don’t say anything publicly doesn’t mean I don’t speak up privately, or don’t donate my time and/or money, or especially that I don’t care. I’m a no-politics zone because I want this to be a place where you can come knowing you won’t be subjected to someone else’s political opinions/lectures/rants, a place where you never have to worry about possibly be made to feel “less than” or like you’re wrong or bad for not agreeing 100% with whatever it is I or someone else says…a place where you don’t have to think about those things, and where I don’t have to think about them, too, for a short while. An escape; a short break. But again, just as I’m sure you’re all thinking and doing what you can and what you feel is necessary, so am I. I’m just not talking about it.

We had some more bad news a few weeks ago now, in that one of my elderly neighbors–one of my bread recipients/food recipients–passed away (non-COVID related). It cast a bit of a pall over things here in our house/on our street for a bit, and it’s still sad. She was a lovely lady who’d lived here since the neighborhood was built, and always had some interesting stories to tell and a smile for everyone.

We also have a couple of new residents of the street, in the form of these two:

Yes, those are foxes.

We think they’re living in the junkheap that is our neighbor’s back yard–there’s a structure back there that used to be a shed but is now, well, a shed with a lot of holes in it. We hear them rustle around back there and they bark at Bullitt a lot–a fox’s bark is quite an unusual thing to hear; I keep wanting to record it but they stop before I can get my phone out and ready. (It’s not a series of barks, it’s generally just one or two short sharp ones.) The morning I took this photo, I went out to put the garbage on the curb and one fox was in that same neighbor’s driveway, just looking at me. Being me, my first instinct was to start to stoop down, you know, “Aw, come here, sweetie,” and then I realized/remembered that this was a wild fox, not a stray cat, so I stopped myself. We just looked at each other for a minute, perfectly calm. It wasn’t until I turned to go back inside that the other fox came out, and that’s when I grabbed my camera–by the time I came out with it they were in the yard across the street, which is where I took the picture.

One of them was out in almost that same spot this morning when Dad and I headed to the park with the dogs. Both dogs barked at it; it didn’t even blink, just kept sitting there calmly. We’re (meaning the neighbors and us) all a little concerned by how unafraid they are, but we’re also not sure if that’s something we ought to be worried about. Anybody know anything about foxes?

More big news: My Princess, our older daughter, is officially a High School Graduate. Funnily enough, she’s actually the first person in our little family-of-four to get a diploma from her high school, since Hubs went to school in England where they don’t do them, and I got my GED instead of taking another semester of algebra. But my baby has graduated high school, which just Does Not Compute for this mommy. How did she graduate high school, when in my head she’s only four?

But we are immensely proud of her, and excited about where she will go next; she’s considering taking a year off before starting college and we support that (provided she does something with her time), and I think that’s probably not only what’s going to happen but for the best considering the whole COVID thing. So in the fall it will once again be just me and her at home, the difference being that of course this time I won’t be changing her diapers or making her scrambled eggs for breakfast and baked potatoes for lunch every day (her lunch potatoes always came with proteins, too: chopped ham or turkey or chicken, or tuna fish, or whatever), and we won’t be watching the Noggin channel together, I imagine.

Oh, and our stimulus money FINALLY came, about two weeks ago. We got the stupid debit card, which we’re not thrilled with, but at least it came. I hope all of yours did, as well.

Which brings me, sort of, to my next little project–well, my next big project, which is unlikely to be complete for some time, but still:

I love my family, but frankly, it is so hard to work with them all around all the time. It seems every time I sit down and put fingers to keyboard, one of them pops out of their bedroom or the living room or whatever to say hi, or ask a question–“What’s for dinner?” is the most popular, followed by, “What do we have for snacks?”–and it just throws me completely out. Now I’m reaching a point where I can’t concentrate at all because I’m expecting the pop-out and question, and that’s not a good place to be.

I want to build a small home office/storage room/guest room in our back yard, which will (hopefully) also act as a storm shelter–so I want to build it with concrete/concrete blocks. And I/we will probably do most of the work ourselves, since we can’t possibly afford professionals (which is a whole ‘nother issue–trying to get any sort of building pro or building supplier to contact me back is a nightmare. No one is interested in jobs as small as this, sigh. My basic plan is a building maybe 20 x 14, with a small sleeping loft with storage underneath at one end, hopefully a small bathroom, and the other end walled off to be essentially a shed. So the actual “living” space would be about 16 x 14. Roughly.

Are any of you interested in hearing about it, when the time comes? Which will hopefully be in the late fall sometime?

Until then I’m starting to contemplate taking a cushion into the bathroom and sitting on the floor there. Although, having said that, I estimate Bullitt will give me about fifteen minutes before he starts yipping on the other side of the door.

So, there you go. I’m sorry I was away for so long and promise I won’t be again. I am working on things for you guys–critiques, some things I think(hope) you’ll be very excited to read, and the next re-issue–which I hope to get out very soon.

How are things with all of YOU, though? What’s it like in your area now? We’re under mandatory mask orders here; I don’t love wearing the stupid mask–I hate it, it makes me feel sweaty and itchy–but I do rather enjoy not worrying about applying lipstick. So there’s a bright side, right?

I love you all. I still believe we will get through this together.

OH!! And don’t forget–you can still download BLOOD WILL TELL for free here; it is also free on Kindle Unlimited (as is BLACK DRAGON, so if you’re a KU member, feel free to get them there). If you need a format other than PDF or Kindle, email me and I’ll send it over to you–for some reason I couldn’t get Jutoh to make an epub file for it, so I had to use Calibre to convert it, but it works. So I do have that format, and can produce lots of other formats–just let me know.