Why my keyboard has been silent

I've felt a bit guilty about ignoring everyone for the last four days. It's not that I couldn't have found time to blog. I just didn't. Instead I alternated between being busy and being blah, and couldn't work up enough guilt or enthusiasm to actually sit down at the keyboard and be entertaining. Or thoughtful. Or informative. Or anything else one can do with their fingers and a bunch of letters, numbers, and other symbols.

So, what have I been doing? Friday night we attended William's "Grizz Feed", an annual event to kick off the high school football season. It involved a lot of catching up with friends, eating, and milling about - a few exhibitional scrimmages which no one really watched very carefully because, since the teams were playing themselves, you couldn't tell the offense from the defense.


I couldn't even pick out my own kid, who is usually easy to find in a crowd - #66

Saturday William, Rosie and I went to Redding. We visited with #3 son Sam and I got to hear all about his girlfriend Kyla's trip to Italy. She made it back (with a bottle of absinthe!) just before the no Slakes on a Plane terrorist plot. Ooooh, groan, but I couldn't resist. Here are the two brothers.

In the evening we met up with my daughter-in-law Lisa and her mom, who had flown up from southern California for a bridal shower for Lisa's friend and a baby shower for Lisa herself.

After an uncomfortable night sharing a corner couch unit with William, Sam and William spent the day jet skiing and Kyla and I joined the rest of the "girls" for Lisa's shower. Here are Lisa and Kyla, didn't my boys snag themselves some gorgeous women?!

And they're also funny and smart and sweet and athletic and resourceful and .... well, I'm pretty pleased with their choices. Don't tell them that though. I mean, I would hate for them to get uppity about it. Especially Lisa. She's already got a big belly, she doesn't a big head too. Hehe.

Had to get home Sunday night so William could go to school on Monday. It's so odd, our family has a ....... schedule to follow! Just like normal people. On the way home we stopped to see some property that Sam is hoping to purchase. It's very pretty - just above the pine/snow line, five acres of oak forest.

He's been looking for something worth investing and building on for over a year. It would be really wonderful if this worked out for him. Knock on wood. I kept spying little glimpses of the sunset behind me as we were driving up the western slopes of the Sierras. I finally had to pull over near the entrance to Lassen National Park to take a picture. I missed the western color, this is actually a photo of the last of the eastern skies before dark fell. And up there in the mountains, it falls with a WHOMP! One second I was taking this photo, the next, I could barely see my car two feet away from where I was standing.


Monday I woke up, walked out into my livingroom, and felt completely overwhelmed by my torn apart house. I spent the morning moaning woe is me, complaining to a couple of friends who had the misfortune of being home when I called them on the phone, and hiding on the computer looking for someplace new to go on realtor. com. Then I took the third Harry Potter book out with me to a local Chinese restaurant. I noticed they had a sign up in the window that said "Now serving Thai food" They only have a few dishes, but the curry I ordered was wonderful. After a bit of international cuisine and several chapters of Harry putting up with the Dursleys, I realized my mood had mainly been caused by a combination of hormones and hunger. So I decided to suck it up, go home, and face the mess.

Some of Monday evening was used up with more of William's school and football commitments (William did had his very first ever homework assignment!), but I just started with one small task, then another, and another, and managed to get quite a bit done.

Yesterday, Tuesday, I worked most of the day, only stopping to watch the DVD that was due, The Libertine. I also watched the second disc in the other DVD we'd rented and watched on Thursday night, Frida. Salma Hayek was wonderful in the role. The most exciting accomplishment of the day, it was finally cool enough late last night to burn all the paper trash that had been piling up for weeks. I managed to get rid of four big boxes of cardboard, cereal boxes, scratch paper, junk mail, and so on, that had been blocking the walkway between the living room and dining room. All that's left, mostly newspapers, fits in the basket storage space alloted for.

I woke up this morning and felt like getting right back into the fray. I looked around the house, trying to decide what spot to tackle first, when I realized that I had pretty much finished the furniture rearranging. There's a tall wall shelf that I unsuccessfully tried (twice) to get into the studio. It wouldn't fit around a tight double corner. No matter. I've decided to use it just outside the back door in the breezeway to store practical things out of sight. I do want to move some more furniture at some future point in time, but that will have to wait until I've managed at least one, maybe two go rounds with clutter removal so that I can dismantle another shelf.

In the meantime, I'm now down to cleaning and decluttering and rearranging STUFF. I won't have to wrangle "large things" back and forth or walk around temporarily homeless cabinets or shelf units for a week any longer. When I looked around this morning and saw that I had finished that first level of the project, it was the first time I saw that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. Granted, it felt more like a slight lightening of the ambient darkness, but it was still a very exciting moment. Maybe I'll really make that deadline I made for myself! Maybe I'll even take a few pictures soon. Yah me! Pat myself on the back.

Pat, pat, pat.