Birdsong in February might be the most gloriously hope-filled sound in the world.
Or at least in the northeastern part of the United States.
We got hit with another snowstorm last week, but spring really is coming. The birds promise it.
Category: seasons
Getting By
Last week was a rough week.
Monday, we learned that our friends’ unborn daughter has been diagnosed with open spina bifida with a probability of added complications.
Thursday night, we got the shocking and heartbreaking news that an old friend of mine died unexpectedly. She was in her late twenties.
In between, I worked on the sewing project from hell, cleared out two clogged drains in one day, and ignored my writing.
I spent a lot of time with my head buried in books, trying to find some relief in fiction. I read through close to a dozen novels in one week. I’m honestly seriously embarrassed and ashamed by that confession.
We adjusted fairly smoothly and quickly to this new life here, a seminary family, and I think I forgot that it’s still hard, and that there’s probably a good reason for why I feel tired all the time.
The good thing – the grace learned from seven years of waiting for seminary – is that we as a family have finally learned to stop living as though life is going to start sometime in the future, when everything has settled down and things are calm and smooth, and instead to be in the here and now, experiencing life as it happens. It may be messy and exhausting and frustrating at times, and I may still miss out on a lot of it because boy do I not function well without sleep, but at least we’re in it, not on the outskirts waiting.
Joy turns six tomorrow. Six. Five seemed ridiculously older than four, and six even more so than five. And in the midst of everything else we’ve got happening, we carved out time this weekend to go out for a celebratory breakfast, and then take a hike through the woods. Tomorrow she gets her presents and cake (we like to stretch birthdays out as long as possible around here). A few moments of calm and rejoicing amidst the storms around us.
It’s good. We’re good.
(also, Sunday night right before bed Joy came proudly out of her bedroom to read me a story she wrote and illustrated herself titled “Kristen and the Dragon,” and you guys, I was planning on teaching things like story structure etc later on this year but but she instinctively gave it a beginning, middle, and end, and I was so proud I almost cried when she read it to me. THAT’S MY GIRL.)
Autumn Glories
I love this season. When I was younger, I loved winter (skating, sledding, skiing, hot cocoa and cozy sweaters) and summer (swimming, berry-picking, berry-eating, sunny day dreaming) the best. The older I get, the more I appreciate the moderate seasons. I’m not even going to try to psycho-analyze that – it doesn’t take a genius!
I do find myself craving spring after just a little bit of winter now, and craving autumn a short way into summer. I miss the light more than anything in winter, but I don’t handle the extreme heat of summer well. AT ALL.
This autumn has been a little bit warmer than my ideal. BUT it’s still been glorious.
See?
Glorious.
What’s your favorite season?
Things Learned
Important news out of the way first:
Magic Most Deadly is now available through Nook, and the paperback version is available through Amazon. iTunes has proven … challenging, so I’m still working on that.
The Goodreads giveaway is still going – it’s open until the 10th, so go enter if you haven’t done so yet!
If anyone would like an autographed bookplate for Magic Most Deadly, just send me an email with your name and address, and I’ll send one to you, free of charge. If you want to send me your actual physical copy of the book to autograph, I’ll do that, too, but I’ll have to ask you to pay for the shipping on that.
So then! There’s the housekeeping done (if only real housekeeping could get taken care of that easily).
My first week of being a “Real Author” with a “Real Published Novel” has passed, and I’ve learned some important things.
1) I don’t like self-publishing for the sake of self-publishing. By which I mean, I understand and appreciate what self-publishing allows me to do. I do not like messing about with figuring out formatting, hunting for a cover designer (even when I find a good one!), uploading the book to each seller, marketing myself, etc.
There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. I just get frustrated with the time doing them well takes away from actual writing. I don’t have a whole lot of time to devote to writing as it is (okay, and I do waste some of it just because I am SO TIRED these days and so much of my free time is spent on cat naps or comfort reading), and I get twitchy when I have to sacrifice my writing time to business time.
It is a business, and I get that. I’m not complaining. But I felt it was a rather important discovery for myself – that I do the self-publishing because it is the best choice for me right now, but I don’t have to love it. I love what it does for me. I’m not crazy about the process. And that’s okay.
One of the other things I’ve learned is that even being a published author doesn’t change a whole lot in the grand scheme of things. Dishes still had to get washed, laundry still had to be done, schoolwork taken care of, meals made, friends visited with, insomnia dealt with, life lived.
On the other hand, accomplishing a goal you’ve held since second grade is pretty damn awesome even if it isn’t earth-shattering, and I’m not gonna lie. Last Monday, I felt more like a rock star than I ever have and likely ever will again.
(Unless my fairy godmother suddenly gives me the ability to skate at the level I’ve always dreamed of, and I get to join Stars on Ice. And Scott Hamilton, Kurt Browning, Torvill & Dean, and Kristi Yamaguchi are all in it again as well. So yeah, not likely to happen.)
The only other matter of interest from this week is that I finally broke down and joined Instagram. Yippee! I’m trying not to go too crazy with it.
How was this first week of October for all of you, friends?
Tap, Tap … Is This Thing On?
Wow, I think I’ve almost forgotten how to blog.
Our days have been filled with unpacking, running errands, organizing, re-organizing, re-packing stuff we don’t need right now, making lists of things we still need to buy, throwing other stuff out, and trying to get outside to the playground with the kids at least once a day.
We’ve also been doing some fun stuff – we went to the beach, and this past weekend we visited Boston, and while we haven’t made any bosom friends yet, we have met a few people who seem like they might be kindred spirits.
Still haven’t made it to the library, though.
I will be starting school with the kids on Monday, so that will add a whole new wrinkle to things. This morning I wrote out our education plan to submit to the district. Ugh, I hate doing things like that, but oh well, they have to be done, and at least, from all I hear, this district is pretty hands-off and homeschool-friendly, so I’m hoping we won’t be asked to provide meticulously detailed descriptions of all our curriculum and materials. It is, after all, only kindergarten.
(We’re doing first-grade work with Joy (Grace is still preschool age, so I don’t need to start reporting her for another couple years), but technically she’s kindergarten age, so that’s what I’m reporting her as, which gives us some cushion room in case she hits a road block with her studies and we need to take longer with any particular subject than they would in public school. Which pretty much sums up MY entire mathematical education.)
Visiting different churches, not fun but necessary. Setting up bookcases, SUPER fun and necessary. Figuring out which of my beloved books I can keep in storage for now, painful but has to happen in a small apartment! Working on the baby quilt for my niece, not necessary but fun and a good way to relax. Working on three different writing projects, probably stupid.
I made spaghetti and meatballs, with fresh green beans and homemade bread, for supper Sunday night. It was our first “big” meal in this place, and it happened after Carl and I finally got the last of the boxes in the living room unpacked and disposed of, and the kitchen organized the way we wanted it. It felt like a celebration.
Life’s going to be different, these next few years, and parts of it will be very hard indeed. But we take our joy wherever and however we can, and I think we’re going to be okay.
Scattered
-My copy-editor send back Magic Most Deadly this morning. This marks the last round of edits on it (whee!). Then I get to move on to formatting (not so whee). Still, overall way more exciting than not.
-On Saturday, Carl, the kids, and I went to the fabric store to pick up supplies for my sister’s baby quilt. Carl is, surprisingly enough, absolutely the best person to go quilt-fabric-shopping with. He has an unerring eye for colors and patterns that will work well together. Most of the prettiest quilts I’ve made have been ones he helped with.
-I’ve started packing up non-necessity items around the house. Pictures came down off the walls last week, and I’m starting to eye the bookcases, wondering what books we can live without for the next month and a half. (Answer: not many) Winter clothes are already packed away, and pretty soon I’ll be putting extra linens away in totes. Despite the many, many moves we’ve made in the almost-nine years we’ve been married, I still loathe packing.
-In related news, holy cow the end of July and our big move is coming up FAST. We’re going to be traveling three of the weekends between now and then, too. Yikes.
-As the work I need to do on MMD winds down, I’ve actually started writing, not just plotting and researching, my next book project (working title: Wings of Song). I’ve written, deleted, and re-written the first chapter already. Exciting! It’s odd but fun to be working on something without any magic in it at all. It’s also just sheer delight to be writing something set in the same era and general location of my grandfather’s childhood. I think this book will be dedicated to all my grandparents, in thanks for the stories and memories they’ve always shared.
-I’m backing off on the full load of school I’d been attempting with Joy. I think we’ll be fine doing that once the move is done and we’ve settled, but everything is too crazy right now. We’ll just keep doing a little bit here and there (working mostly on art lessons, because that is what she loves the best), but not try doing full weeks until sometime mid-August.
-I love all the fresh fruit starting to be available now. I’ve a big batch of rhubarb in my fridge waiting to be made into rhubarb crunch, and I made a strawberry cake for Grace’s birthday party that was amazingly good, and just to be able to open the fridge and indulge in fruit without worrying that it means we’ll run out before our next grocery trip is a treat. It’s so much easier to stay healthy this time of year!
-It’s also pretty fun to be back browsing at the farmer’s market every Saturday (the ones where we aren’t traveling, that is). I came home this weekend with a pot of thyme and a tiny bottle of fresh cream. SO good.
-There’s not much else for news on this front! Posts are probably going to be scattered and/or non-existent from now until after we move (early August), so don’t get alarmed if a week or so passes without hearing from me. I will try to stay active on Twitter and Facebook just so you all know I’m alive!
-Have a fantastic week, all.
April, May, Tulips, and Writing
I hope you all has a wonderful Easter! We did; my husband’s family came out for the weekend, and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time together, filling and hiding plastic eggs for the kids to hunt on Sunday after church, and eating all the food I could keep coming out of my kitchen. We were a surprisingly hungry bunch this weekend!
As much as I loved having family out, and visiting them in our turn, I must confess to a sneaking sense of relief and freedom as we enter the month of April. Why? Because we have NOTHING planned. No trips, no people coming out to see us, nothing. Just living.
Now, I have learned in the last almost-decade of my married life that this is usually when life decides to laugh heartily at our expense and whack us on the nose with a broomstick. So I’m fully expecting Things to Happen. Even so, I’m reveling in the illusion of freedom right now.
We can finally start following our schedule! I can finish sewing the kids’ spring clothes! I can get more writing done! We’ll be able to do more than two days of school in a week! I can keep practicing driving so as to be more comfortable behind the wheel by the time we move! Carl and I can work together on the weekends to sort, organize, and pack boxes so that I don’t get completely overwhelmed by it all the week before we move!
(I am so laughing at myself even as I type this. This is NOT going to happen.)
Also of excitement to me are two things happening in May (in the merry, merry month of May …). One: my mother is getting her Master’s! We’re going up north for her graduation ceremony, and THEN we’re going just a little further north to go to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa, Canada.
This was an excursion we made most years when I was a kid, and Carl and I have wanted to go up every year since we were dating, and never made it. This year I said since we were already going to be so close (my parents live just south of the US-Canada border) at the right time of year, we WERE going to go. And so we are making sure our passports are up to date and GOING. I can’t wait. The girls are going to be blown away by so many tulips in one place, and downtown Ottawa is always worth a visit even without the flowers. Hurrah!
The second thing will actually happen before the first (confused yet?). For Mother’s Day weekend, happening before my mom’s graduation, Carl is going to take the kids to visit his mom. Where will I be during this? I’m SO glad you asked. I will be having a couple days entirely to myself. Not Here. Not at home, surrounded by all the Things I need to do every day, mocking me whenever I take the time to write. Not at his mother’s, where I still have to be mommy and wife (and daughter-in-law) even though we aren’t home. They are going to drop me off somewhere between our house and his mother’s, and I will have a real-live solo writing retreat. It’s my (belated)birthday present/(current)Mother’s Day present/(future)keeping everything functioning while Carl’s in seminary present.
So, any recommendations for a good place to stay in the Berkshires or southern Vermont for a solo writing retreat with no car?
And how is April looking for you?
Ever been to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa?
Did you have a nice Easter?
(A picture from last spring, taken at a park here in our city. Now imagine that, plus thousands more. THAT’S what it will be like in Ottawa.)
Turning
I woke up this morning to a fog so thick that for a split second, my sleep-befuddled brain thought it was snowing because it was so white outside my window.
(Incidentally, wouldn’t that be a great opening line for a story?)
The summer heat has worked its usual magic, and I find myself looking as forward to autumn and – dare I admit it? – even winter as I was to spring and summer this past March.
Autumn and spring are my favorite seasons, each in its turn. I love the awakening that comes with spring, the glorious warmth and light after an inevitably long, cold, dark winter. I love to see the world turning green, the birds returning and filling the air with song, the flowers and plants pushing up from the ground. Everything is fresh and new, and returning to life, and my soul expands with it.
It is a quieter delight that comes with the autumn. The summer has (usually) been hot enough to make me long for cooler days and crisp nights. Even if its a cool summer, I still find myself looking forward to the richness of the autumn colors, the leaves changing and the apples ripening, and soon, the snow starting to fall and all the joys that come with that.
My writing always flows so much better with the changing of the seasons. Watching life start again in the spring, as well as seeing everything settle down in autumn, both start my inspirational juices flowing. My other creative interests seek outlets then, too – usually my quilting picks up for the cooler months, while gardening and photography interest me in the spring and summer.
Our life has taken an unexpected twist this past month, and we have no idea if we will stay in this house for the next month, season, or year. But I know that wherever we are, whatever we are doing, the earth will continue to turn, and the seasons to change. There is great comfort in that, great hope. Great trust.
Do you have a favorite season? Are you happy to see summer drawing to a close, or does the very thought of cooler weather make you cringe? What times during the year are the best for your writing, or other creative outlets?