Contrary to Popular Belief…

I have not fallen off the face of the earth. Real life has intruded and decided to complicate life further. Nothing bad, just I have more than one person should have to do at once. The number of demands on my time, my attention, and my car are quite high this week.

My in-laws are coming this weekend so trying to get the house in shape for that is a Herculean effort. Hey, why can’t they send me a demi-god to take care of all this? I’d be tempted to reroute a river to get rid of the clutter but unfortunately, our stable sits at the top of a hill and I don’t think it would work.

I don’t know why I feel so overwhelmed lately. The weather has changed from sunny and in the low eighties to cloudy/foggy in the mornings and settling in the upper sixties during the day. Usually I thrive in that temperature range.

I think the lack of colorful fall foliage has a lot to do with my fall downturns. I grew up in western Maryland near the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lots of color there. There was a huge red maple at the foot of our driveway. Giant leaves would turn a brilliant golden, shift to a fiery orange and finally turn a flame red. When the calendar claims it should be fall and everyone else is talking about the fall colors and the frost and everything else, for the last dozen years I’ve sat surrounded by people wearing shorts.

I haven’t had time to do more than my daily journals this week. I did pull out a set of index cards and printed off my spreadsheet layout of what are essentially digital index cards to work on adding emotional notes on the back of them. Unfortunately, the kids had other ideas and needed too much help with finishing their homework.

I need to come up with a set for the other two stories that I’ve been working on lately: the food critic and the spinster who’s going to the masquerade ball. I think not knowing the exactly sequence of events and then what emotional state the characters are supposed to be in at those various points along the plotline are making themselves into a convenient excuse not to work on them. If I exhaust every excuse I can come up with, I think I’ll have a better shot at working past all these self-erected obstacles.