And there's so much you've missed!
Not really. A lot has happened, but as I've said before, while I am almost never bored, I find it hard to believe anyone else would find my life anything other than dead boring.
So, let's see. What's changed?
The kid escaped third grade with all A's and B's, although it seems like he cut it awfully close. This summer he's dedicating his time to behaving himself, relearning his states and capitals (same as every summer) and mastering the fricking multiplication tables he opted not to lean while his teacher was going over them in school. Actions, as they say, have consequences. I'm hoping the consequence of repeatedly reminding him that if he'd learned them when he was supposed to, he'd be free to watch more movies this summer will be that he does his classwork in class next year.
As for the summer, he's been to a day camp where they made rockets out of soda bottles. He's been to a camp where they play a lot of games and run around most of the day. He slammed his thumb in a car door and got a brace for it even though it wasn't broken. He was absolutely stellar on the Fourth of July, and he's got all kinds of excitement in store for him in the next couple of months. But I'll need blog fodder in the future, so I won't share what that stuff is just yet.
The house is still the house. Lots of dog hair, lots of grass, lots of lethargy as far as doing anything about either. We survived the "derecho" with the power going out for a whopping 20 seconds, and the cable/internet/phone mysteriously going out 4 hours after the storm and staying out for about 36 hours.
Not Your Average Blogger is still trucking along. He's working on a new book. Because I "shamed" him into it. What I actually did was suggest he resurrect a book he wrote several years back, retool it and start shopping it around again. Apparently he'd rather REsearch than REwrite, because he took on a new idea instead. I have already told him that I'm going to take on his old book and turn it into gold, but I'm not entirely sure when that will be, because......
1: I have a new job! and,
2: An editor liked my YA superhero book!
So the new job is as an editor with a wonky think tank and I absolutely love it and I'm reading all kinds of very cool stuff that I'm not going to tell you anything about unless or until I get explicit permission to do so because, HELLO I GOT FIRED BEFORE I WAS HIRED last time I talked about work. I will say that I really do believe that the first six months of this year were serendipitous: The fact I got jilted by That Other Place simply meant I was free to take this job, which is a monumentally better fit for me and infinitely more interesting -- and, not for nothing, seems to have much nicer and much saner people on the payroll. (And someday, yes, someday I will tell you exactly what I think of That Other Place and the assorted nonsense that transpired and how Your Tax Dollars factored into the whole sordid mess, but today is not that day.)
The book news is very exciting. Now I just need to figure out how to carve out 16 uninterrupted hours to go through the thing and retool, rewrite, reshape and reform. I'm hoping next weekend will provide the time. I may have to check into a motel to get the distraction-free environment, I'm not sure. But I'm hella excited that someone is hella excited and wants me to put the work in.
The problem with a new job and a book rewrite is they aren't exactly compatible. In my new life, I can actually sleep until a reasonable hour, and given the option, I choose to take advantage of it. So where I used to get up at 4 a.m., be at work between 5 and 5:20, then usually home by 3 or 4 and able to watch the kid and write and do assorted other things until I dropped dead at 10:30 or 11, what now happens is I get up at 6, run the dog, leave for work by 6:45 and arrive between 7:30 and 8, workworkwork until I leave at 4, and get home around 6, which really only gives me four hours to Do Stuff, Including Dinner. Four hours is barely enough time for me to figure out where I left off on a manuscript, certainly not enough for me to get back into the mood and voice and make any headway. I was all set to work on it last weekend, but we had no cable/internet/TV -- which meant no GoogleDocs. (Because that's where I started storing the thing after my hard drive crashed. I'm constantly outsmarting myself.) This weekend we have a concert tonight, and dinner with friends tomorrow, and I really really do need to do some more yardwork ... or housework ... or napping. Probably napping. So, maybe next weekend.
The only other thing worth reporting on is that the Fourth happened, and it was probably one of the nicest days we've had in years, despite the fact it was literally 100 degrees out. We started the day with NYAB and myself taking the dog for a walk, then everyone packing into the car and going to a ballgame, which was a great, great show. And sitting in the Red Porch seats means the wait staff don't want you to keel over in the 100-degree heat, so they brought out ice water along with ice-water drenched towels for all the delicate flowers. It was great. The kid pulled his usual trick of playing his videogames instead of watching the game, but he was generally well-behaved and as a reward we took him to see Spiderman -- a much better outing than the Toby Maguire version, I must say, although a bit alarming to me in its liberal use of recombinant DNA gene-splicing stuff (upon which my book also hinges, le sigh.) After the movie we headed back to NYAB's office and watched all the fireworks shows in a 50-mile radius. It was as lovely as last year, but it also made me a little sad to think of how much has changed in the intervening time. On the other hand, the 2 hours it took us to get home hadn't changed a bit, and reminded me I don't miss commuting from the Capitol at all.
And now you're all caught up. See you back here in a week? Maybe? Maybe not. Time will tell
I'm really, really happy for you, on every level! I truly mean it.
And you had better schedule a stop in Long Beach when you go on your book tour, or I'll bring a mosquito-infested blinking construction horse and some flat cheesecake to the nearest stop on your tour.
;)
Posted by: Heather | July 08, 2012 at 02:21 AM