Cleaning up ... and gearing up!

Next week marks the first day of school, and for me, the first day of fall. Whoah. Summer shot by like a bullet train, and productivity forgot to buy a ticket. I haven't gotten much done the last 2.5 months. My rewrite isn't done. I've made very little progress on short fiction. I've kept up with my minioning, but only by the skin of my teeth. And in the last few weeks, I've added a new set of goals (that I'm not quite ready to reveal) that only deepens the workload. But. No matter! FALL IS ALMOST UPON US!!

My pals (#seshat) over on Twitter are gearing up for a week of Massive Productivity. I don't know about you, but before I can kick up the work level, I need a (slightly) clean workspace. It's pretty hard to chug out words when the computer keeps grinding to a halt with slow-down issues and memory problems. It's time to clean house. Get rid of all those old music- and image-editing programs that I'm never going to use. Dump all those extraneous back-up back-up copies. Double-check that the ACTUAL back-up copies of documents are up-to-date. You know, all that boring junk that a lazy computer user never gets around to.

I also plan to finish all my current minioning duties so that next week (barring catastrophes!) I can throw myself into the rewrite with all my heart. I am so excited!

VACATION!!!!

Oh yeah, I'm so excited! Tomorrow I leave for a trip to my mom's house! We're planning a mass invasion, with my brother, my sister and her children and my crew all descending upon my poor lovable parent at once.

I'm really eager for the vacation, but it's going to need to be a working one. I am really behind on my minioning!

Upon my return, I hope to post a bunch of pictures, including an image of my wedding dress, which came in the mail yesterday!

Quiet week until now!

Woof, sorry to keep the silence all week! My kid brother came over, and as you all know, when you have company, you have all the pressure to have a good time and get away from it all as anyone actually on vacation--except without the free time to really enjoy any of it. Arggh!

So the most fun thing I've done this summer is work on Rigor Amortis:

As soon as Jaym brought it up, I was hit over the head by a story idea. Luckily, it's a flash collection that took multiple submissions, so when I had another great notion, I was able to send that along, too! I haven't written much flash, so I'm really pleased with my stories in here. I hate to admit it, but my story "Unparted" has made me cry every time I've read it!

I also feel an unseemly pride in the collection, since I reached out to a couple of writer pals and urged them to submit things--and they did, and they are now my ToC-mates. That's how everything came together in this book, friends telling friends and connecting friends together. It's a very indie, warm-hearted project and I'm beyond proud of how it turned out.

He's just like my mom

As we grow up, girls always hear that when they grow up, they'll marry a man just like their father. Apparently, I misunderstood.

I'm marrying my mother.

I'd always been amazed by the similarities between my Sweetie-Pie and my mom. They're both dreamy, big-hearted, artists with a love of comfort and beauty. Neither is that concerned with chocolate. Both are incredibly generous, going out their way to help friends and family members. Both have arguable taste in loved ones. My dad? Ummmn, not exactly a hunk. And me? Bossy and gassy. I don’t know how anybody fell in love with me, let alone an amazing guy like Sweetie-Pie. He's obviously a gem.

The fact that his sparkling facets matched many of my mother's was cute, but not concerning. Until one day I came home and discovered Sweetie-Pie had purchased 23 boxes of breakfast cereal.

Yes, *23* boxes.

That's when I knew it had happened. I had found the one man on the planet who actually was just like my mother.

My mom grew up Mormon and once she got married, spent the next twenty-five years of her life living in remote areas. Having a full pantry wasn't just mandated by religion anymore: it was a survival skill.

Visiting my mom is heavenly. Whatever you could possibly want to eat, she can whip up a version of it using canned or frozen ingredients. From fruit salad to gravy to cake, she's got you covered.

And now we're starting to shape up our pantry, too. We're not quite to Mom's level, but after I introduced Sweetie-Pie to the wonders of Disaster Preparedness, he became a conscientious stock-piler of all things caloric. Right now if disaster broke out, we'd be set for about three days of tasty eating (a reasonable amount). After that, we'd be reduced to catching rainwater to cook our quinoa, filling up on canned green beans.

I hope it never comes to that. My fingers are firmly crossed that if disaster unfolds, an east-bound road is clear enough for us to drive to my parents' house. I'm pretty sure nothing short of a direct nuclear blast would stop Mom from baking some kind of pie.