Tag Archives: blog hiatus

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.

 

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Filed under blogging, health and well-being

So, about this hiatus

I guess I should just go ahead and make it official, since my blog appears to be on hiatus. Not sure how that happened. It wasn’t intentional.

Which one of you hit the pause button?

Who hit the pause button?

Partly, this random break is a result of me being busy with other things. I know, weak excuse. It’s also due to me being lazy. And getting out of the habit. And now it just feels awkward, trying to find a way to start blogging again after [gulp] four months — has it been that long? really? — because it seems like I should kick it back into gear by saying something important. Or, I don’t know, something that matters. But the thing is, posts over here have never been all that significant. No set topic, no driving purpose. Just me rambling along about . . . whatever. That’s not likely to change.

Honestly, I’ve been wondering whether I should just call it quits on this whole blogging thing. As a practical matter, I wonder whether anyone would care. Or even notice. I pretend the answer is yes. I pretend I don’t care if it’s not.

Interestingly, I followed a link a while back to an old post from Neil Gaiman where, as a footnote to other things, he relayed the news that blogging had been declared dead by The Scotsman. That was in May 2004, way back before I even knew what a blog was, and at which time Gaiman said, “That’s an enormous relief, of course.”

Right.

So I could perhaps be excused for finally realizing that blogging is indeed dead, in Scotland at the very least, and congratulated for ceasing all efforts to maintain the practice. Seems reasonable. But then I remember what McB told me when I considered quitting a few years ago: the minute I make that decision, I’ll suddenly have a dozen things I want to say.

Sigh. Right now, I’d settle for even ONE thing.

After seven years, it feels as if I’ve said everything there is to say on every conceivable topic. I suppose there’s always the cat as blog fodder . . . actually there were two cats for a while this summer, since my daughter’s cat stayed with me for a couple months. But I suspect there’s a limit to how many cat stories you can tell before people question your sanity. Probably I’m already well over that limit.

I could write about my daughter’s bridal shower. It was lovely. She got some very special and thoughtful gifts. Defying all expectations, everyone survived what seemed (to me) to be an excessive amount of conversation. But I’ve been asked not to post pictures of it, so . . .

I’ve been writing, but I don’t like to talk about it while I’m in the process, so that’s out. I did get a FitBit and have been walking A LOT — well, these things being relative, a lot more than I had been — and have lost a good deal of weight as a result. Not sure what else can be said about that topic. I’ve been on a bit of a reading binge lately, but haven’t run across anything in particular that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.

See? None of this is remotely entertaining.

The problem is, I know you guys. I know what you really want to hear. You want to know when I’ll have some fiction ready for you to read. And I don’t have a firm answer on that. Yet. But I’m working on it.

What have you all been up to? Anything interesting to report? Any topics you want me to expound upon in the near future? Given a prompt, I’m reasonably adept at rambling about pretty much anything. Or I could just continue on with nothing. It’s worked so far.

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