I have deep respect for those writers who can work all day, write all night, raise a family, AND blog on a regular basis. I have two blogs, and while I'm better at the other one than this one, both took a serious hit this year. This may be a sign I should shut this one down, but I just ... can't seem to bring myself to do it. Every few months I get the urge to assess and check in, and because the laptop is more of a habit than a journal at this point (and because blogging software is so much nicer about organizing and keeping things chronological and legible) I just do it here.
So, OK. Checking in.
Getting the book published was a struggle, but did finally happen. I think I am a bad client because I am in publishing myself and know how to do this stuff and really would have been quite happy to format everything and do it all myself. The things I wanted help on -- editing and citations -- I was told were fine. I don't think they are. The book has been out three months and I can't bring myself to look. I will probably never look.
Once the book came out, it was off to the races. I did two festival events, one bookstore event, and shopped the thing around a bunch of places that were low-hanging fruit. I went to a really cool Living History event in St. Louis centered around the 1872 election. This weekend I'm going to spend the night in the jail where the events of the book took place, and people are going to listen to me talk about it. (Which makes me equal parts queasy and excited. The talking part, not the sleeping in jail part. Not that I am accustomed to sleeping in jails.)
Meanwhile, the kid flew through the second half of school, got some new meds and a counselor, had a reasonably OK summer with two great weeks of camp, one good week with my parents (as far as anyone would tell me), and a few weeks of slave labor at home that he took with varying degrees of acceptance. He's now back in school and seems to be doing fine, although his even keel of mood seems to come at a cost of losing the straight academic As (though nothing lower than a B, so that's not horribly horrible). I'm not sure why this is, and while I'm OK with the trade-off for now, I want a better understanding of why. The current plan, as far as I know, is to get him back into 'regular' school for high school, so he can sort of shuffle into the mainstream at the same time everyone else is trying to figure out the whole new weird thing and he won't stand out too much. I guess we'll see how that shakes out.
Work continues to be work for Not Your Average Blogger and myself. The work retreat was fun, I got to visit with friends and hang out with colleagues and generally not do as much work as I usually do, so that was good.
In June, we took a whirlwind family trip to Austin when NYAB decided to drive there on business. We had some horrible spats on the way there which I think happened mostly because NYAB knew he was saddled with his family because his wife was spitefully annoyed that he took two extra days to drive when he could have flown there in four hours and not left her home alone with the kid for the extra time. The joke's on him, though: While we were there, one of my dearest and oldest friends took us around the UT film school, and I'm pretty sure the kid was so blown away by it that he may end up there. Which means his politics will skew wildly from ours, we will have horrible fights, the kid will decide we are stupid and choose to spend time with his in-laws instead of us, and it will all be because NYAB just HAD to drive to Texas that one time. Or perhaps I am just wildly speculating to the most absurd outcome possible.
Fourth of July, we took a boat tour around the Inner Harbor and watched fireworks. It was fun, but I'm not sure I'd go again.
In August, we went to my cousin's wedding in Massachusetts. It was a lot of fun and great to see family that I don't see very often. I speculated that the next time I'd see them all again would be a funeral. As it turned out, I was right, though it was sooner than I'd anticipated. My grandfather died in October, and there most of us were, together again, but in Illinois.
In between, I won four blue ribbons for jelly at the county fair, saw Lyle Lovett in concert (again), went to the timeshare and read books almost the entire time, went to what I think will be the last DragonCon for us, maybe, and Thomas got to meet some Stargate heroes and bond with other nerds, and school started again.
And now the Cubs are in the World Series, which is nice for a lot of my friends and not-so-nice for assorted other friends who are Dodger fans. So that catches us up, for now. We'll meet again, as Vera Lynn sang...
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