I haven’t written here in an age. I was kidnapped by aliens. Uh… No, I took in a family of squirrels and we sang songs and had some crazy adventures. Actually, I joined a circus.
Haha, no on that last one for sure. I am terrified of clowns. No slight to Stephen King, but I won’t be seeing It any time soon. I’m just not that kind of girl. I can barely tolerate the clowns at the rodeo, but that’s like combining two things I am rather afraid of–cows and clowns–and putting them all in one space. I tolerated the place once for the kids. NEVER AGAIN.
I know, I know, you want to know who is afraid of cows. This girl, right here. They’re big and they stampede, and, I don’t know, they look at me funny. Whatever. Don’t judge. Or go ahead and judge. It’s not like I’m not aware of the weirdness.
Anyhoo, I’ve been gone for a long time from the blog. Like, a long, long time. Admittedly, I didn’t write much either during that time. I tried to, but I didn’t. Life gets in the way sometimes.
For instance, I got an endorsement on my teaching license. Then I decided that another master’s degree would work, in a field completely different from both my first masters and my endorsement. So I got to take a whole new set of classes, because none of my previous coursework could transfer. That’s just how I roll. All that school took a lot out of me, and what writing I did–usually to the tune of 20-50 pages a week–went to that.
During that time, my job got insane, and even when I wasn’t doing schoolwork, I was living in my office.
That first spring of grad school, we decided to move. Put our names on a list for another house in a new development further out in our desert valley.
We somehow got picked first round, and we had to fix up our old house and put it up for sale. That was a trip. We’d been there for 15 years, had two kids there, and let me tell you, kids are gross. Since I’m not the best housekeeper in the whole world, the house needed some gussying up. That took a about a month.
Selling a house with two cats, two dogs, and two children to clean up after, while going to grad school and working full time, wasn’t fun at all. Every showing, one of us would have to come home, pack up said dogs, cats, and children, and load everyone into the car for anywhere from 30 minutes to three hours. The cats loved going on car rides, so they were a joy to locate any time we brought out the crate. It was a laugh riot. I’ll admit I was a little relieved when we lost the new house–at least my house was fixed up and I wouldn’t have to get up at 4:30 AM to make sure it was spotless in case someone came over to look at it.
The day before we were going to take the house off the market–after all, we’d lost the other house–we sold it. We thought maybe the builder of the new house would take our money, because our buyer’s were paying cash and wanted to close in two weeks. Our other house wasn’t supposed to close for almost six more weeks after that, so we thought, maybe….
But the builder had already sold our house, so we totally lost out on that. So we went house hunting, since now we needed a place to live.
We found another house (one I like better! And the backyard is mature and done! Woot! I do need to fix the bathroom, though), so we wound up moving after all.
Six weeks after that, we went on a family vacation to Mexico. It was fantastic!
Except that I came home so sick. So, so sick. Pretty sure that the Health Department made a logo for Norovirus that very accurately explains my life for about two months. You can find it if you look for it. It cracked me up when I saw it.
Six weeks after we got home, just as we were finding out that I had had a raging case of strep for ALMOST TWO MONTHS, the dog died. He was old, but he hadn’t been sick, and even the weekend before, he’d been okay. Unbeknownst to us, he was riddled with cancer. True to form, he decided to die on my daughter’s birthday. While I was in my roughest semester of grad school, and had been sick for two months. When I’d sort of delayed getting her birthday presents (grad school, work, sickness, still unpacking boxes, etc). In my defense, they were supposed to arrive on time–on her exact birthday. I figured I’d have time to wrap them up, right? But then my town flooded, and the presents got stuck on the other side of the hill, and the bakery lost my order for the cake that I knew I wouldn’t have time to make, so my kid had her 12th birthday with no presents, no cake, and a dead dog. I freaking owned parenting that day. Thankfully, I had friends who came through for me, and I think she had a nice day. We got our toes done, a friend brought over some presents, and I made her a cake. It wasn’t red velvet, as she had requested, but she was still happy about it. My kid freaking rocks.
A few weeks later, we were in PetSMart and found another dog. A rescue dog. One who is so much like Frank that sometimes I look outside and I don’t see the dog I affectionately call “Beet Juice,” I see Frank.
In any case, my plate was pretty full for about 16 months. I fell off social media, I didn’t blog, I didn’t even watch TV. I worked, I cooked, I sort of cleaned sometimes not really, and I did school work.
But now I’ve graduated, we’re all moved in, we have our dogs and cats, and life has sorted itself out. And I finally finished the book I started way back in 2014, when I started on my various endorsements/moving journey.
Coming at the end of this month is The Devil of Dunmoor, the follow up to Highland Deception. I’ve worked on this book gradually for three years now, and I have to say, I am really proud of how it came out. After many fits and starts, and several complete rewrites, it’s finally out, and done, and it’s coming out soon! (October 28, to be exact). I’ll keep you posted when it’s up for pre-sale. 🙂
I hope all of you have a wonderful day.
M
There's a Bee in my Bodice 