Proof of Life

“I’m not dead yet!” -from Monty Python, of course

But I do seem to have taken a bit of an unplanned blog hiatus. Sorry about that. I’ve been busy, even though there isn’t all that much of interest to report. Let’s see, since February [:wince:] [has it really been that long?], what have I been up to . . .

Well, there was the whole terrorist-raccoon-in-the-attic problem, which I thought had been solved well over a year ago. Until I discovered water dripping from the downstairs bathroom ceiling during a rainstorm and called a roofer, who gave me the unhappy news that if a raccoon is given even a tiny opening in an old worn shingle, they will wreak havoc:

So, that ended up being an emergency roof repair that led to the over-due decision to replace the entire freaking roof. What fun. Not at all noisy or disruptive. Or expensive. At least I didn’t have to do cleanup of this mess.

What else . . . oh, my daughter’s baby shower luncheon was fun. I even went and got a haircut beforehand, speaking of over-due decisions.

My life is so exciting.

And then there was the usual last minute scramble to get tax info to my CPA, made even more frantic by the discovery that my accounting program decided to stop working unless I paid several hundred dollars for the upgrade. Which led to much profanity and re-creating the entire year by hand, because fuck you Intuit.

Good times.

My daughter had been helping me clean out various cupboards and closets, until she got too far along in her pregnancy. Here she is holding The White Ninja during one visit. Just before I took the second pic, TWN was resting her head on my daughter’s stomach as if she was listening to the baby and giving it a hug.

What else . . . oh, this was pretty funny. In all my years of buying toilet paper, I’ve never encountered a roll quite like this one:

Are you bored yet? Starting to see why I haven’t been writing blog posts? None of this stuff is exactly fascinating.

I have been writing fiction, though. Slowly, as usual, but I’m making progress. I’ve been reading quite a bit as well, in an attempt to avoid world news. Probably I should do a post about books I’d recommend, except I’ve gotten ridiculously picky and easily irritated when authors [no, not you; other authors] do stupid stuff that ruins an otherwise great story. Yeah, there’s no way I’m going to discuss that in public.

And, of course, there are all the other Usual Life Stressors that aren’t even slightly entertaining. Nothing that I’d put in a blog post, anyway.

But exciting news is imminent! Well, exciting to me and mine.

At the moment, I’m sitting here listening to the rain and biding time, waiting for my first grandchild to be born. Which should be any day now. All this week, I’ve been fielding text messages from my daughter of the “I’m so bored” and “I wish this baby would hurry up” variety. Because she is now officially on maternity leave, her husband is on paternity leave, and we’re all just waiting. Some of us more patiently than others.

I’ll keep you posted. Really, I will. Any. Day. Now.