Where to Start...

Where DO I start? Sometimes, life runs away with you and I have to tell you, as someone who's been on more than one runaway horse over the years, the best way to handle a runaway is to let them run. Things run for a reason, but it's a human reaction to try and stop them, because, well, humans like to be in charge. I've always been inclined to run too though... so I can't say I've ever really tried to stop a bolting horse. I just enjoy the ride, occasionally offering a little steering advice, and wait for the horse to get tired. They always do. And sometimes you end up in a pretty cool place when it's over with, even if you end up there dangling off the horse sideways and bone weary from hanging on.

That's my current position: dangling precariously from the edge of life. But I'm okay with that. Here's a list of some of the things that have gone on while I was in absentia:

I got a request for a full... and the agent actually emailed to say she was excited about reading it...

My sister, code name Fenris got a lot fatter... that baby is growing!

I survived not one but TWO baby showers... and my grandmother only muttered about the horridness of my ruined back (tattoo) once during the family shower... *sigh* some things never change...

Made it through the anniversaries of the deaths of two high school friends (one from illness, one from being a stupid cocky boy, for which I loved him, even if that's what took him from us)...

Managed to help get two more healthy baby horses on the ground, which was a little salve for the death anniversaries...

Witnessed a motorcycle crash... the rider was alright, but his beautiful midnight blue cruising bike with its thirty-day tags will need some work... it nearly ended up in the back seat of the little Beamer I was driving... and a note to anyone who happens to witness one yourself: Act casual... if the guy (girl) pops up off the road moving all extremities and cussing, they're probably okay... this poor man wiped in front of THREE women... I asked if he wanted me to help him lift the bike and get it off the road (grew up around them, bro in-law rides) while the other two actually ran back and forth trying to call 911... the guy was not thrilled by their reactions...

My own block-headed horse nearly splattered me and terrorized my poor father... I hooked Sierra up to a load of large (eight inches in diameter) limbs to pull them into the woods and then when I got on him and urged him forward, he went batshit, rearing (his front legs were over dad's head, and dad's six feet), sitting down and nearly flipping over backwards before spinning and wrapping us both up in the traces. Poor daddy (funeral director in case you forgot or didn't know) had coffin visions, while I was irritated over the drama... once untangled, Sierra sheepishly pulled the limbs like I asked him to... for crying in the mud, he drug us all over the place in the toboggan this winter... boys...

I wrote... but not as much as I wanted to...

Helped the woman who taught me how to ride with cleaning out a storage shed where she has hundreds of wonderful old books stored (this is a work in progress, still ongoing)... she has a first American edition of Undine illustrated by Arthur Rackham!!!

Got diagnosed with a 'vocal chord hemorrhage/polyp'... which means I can't talk hardly at all, and nothing above a whisper while we try to resolve the thing without surgery... random drama... you never see it coming because, well, it's random...

Planted a bunch of new things: Flowering Almond, Blood Maple, Elderberry bush, Columbine, two more oak saplings (it's physically impossible to have too many oak trees, I don't care what my mother says) and some irises...

Submitted a short story to the PARSEC short story contest... John Scalzi is one of the judges this year...

And I lost track of everyone on Blogger... but I'm back now, hopefully for a good while... or at least a steady period. For a girl who's single and lives at home it's amazing how much I can get into... but that's one of the funny thing about being 'free'... people seem to come to you first when they need something. 'We need someone to work extra on Saturday, are you free?' Yes, I am. You knew that. I'm free because I don't date, I don't have kids, I don't make many plans. I do that on purpose so that I'm free to write... But when you say 'no' they don't really get it, because you're 'free' after all and you have no real reason to say no, other than you don't want to... and because they're usually someone you care about, you usually do whatever it is they want... which makes you less free. That's another funny thing about being free... it usually goes hand in hand with being alone... which is fine if you like being alone (I do) but it's a tricky balance between being alone, and being so far out of reach that you can't maintain your contacts and friends... this is something I struggle with...

I'll end with a few pictures of randomness, since this post is a plethora of randomness... The front of Undine...



Fenris on her beloved Bando... who knows how to treat a woman in 'delicate' condition...

Babies one and two, belonging to my best friend, code name Pippilotta...