Back in Biz

Hi all! Hope your Julys were fun/productive. I hoped to be back blogging a week ago but instead went on a writing retreat to a friend's cabin on the far, far side of Missouri, with no internet connection. So my "unplugged" extended an extra week, and just as well! I am now 25K words into my YA dystopian novel. (Pause for self-congratulations here.)

In case you're wondering/jealous, here is how the writing retreat(s) work. I team up with a colleague from work who also likes to write, mostly academically. We go about once a year. The last time we took an entire week and drove to her sister's cabin on the far, far side of Missouri was over two years ago, and I spent it editing my academic book (bleuch!). If we "only" have a 3-day weekend, we instead rent a cabin much closer (but still in Missouri, because it's purdy).

We split the meal plans, and shop for extravagant foodstuffs. We go for a walk every day that weather permits. We get straight to our respective work right after breakfast, break for lunch, and then continue to work until 6pm. Then, we have a glass of wine, compare notes about our day's work/frustrations, make a gourmet feast, and settle in for a movie. My favorite movie of this trip was re-watching Whale Rider, in case you were wondering.

On the way there and back we passed Mansfield, the later life home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, about whom I wrote earlier. We resisted going to visit, because my mother is visiting from the Antipodes later this year, and I would like to see the Ingalls houses for the first time with her and my daughter. Daughter has become entranced by the experience of reading Little House with me this month, and I have the TV pilot for the series awaiting the end of the first book.

I look forward to reading your blogs over the next day or two, and resuming the writing and parenting business as usual!

Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah...

First camp survived! Trials and tribulations. The first irony only took us sixty feet inside the camp perimeter: after spending four hours the previous night (Saturday night, of course) in ER an hour away to get son's 7-days-in-a-row headaches checked out (referred there by nervous PA in our town, given the nervous all-clear), a mere and literal thirty seconds inside the camp gates son gets stung between the eyes by a wasp... = first visit to friendly medic. The cubbies did archery, leatherwork, panning for gold, shooting BB guns, swimming, flag retirement, campfire skits, running around (no running in camp!) after dark with glo-sticks... the works. But also, of the five cub scouts in our group only two were left standing at the end. One had to leave early with a parent who was having surgery; another threw up at 4am and then again all over the mess hall (now I know... oh, never mind); and still another was picked up by the medic for suspected heat exhaustion. I would like to blame my camping inexperience and ignorance of native flora and fauna for my son's own 67 chigger bites (yes, we really did count them). And the tick in the ear removed by the medic with tweezers was actually a scab... although son has no memory of what might have created such a thing deep inside his ear... But, we are both just thrilled with ourselves.

Today, in need of a debriefing for reentry into civilized life, and struggling to remember which day of the week it is. Have grading to do... Sadly, checked amazon and now see that the release date for book is listed as August 1, so champagne will have to wait another month. Ah well, other books to write while waiting!