Randomosity

Remember the saga of the homeowners insurance? JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE. We got another letter, I think the week before last (my amazing powers to block this whole problem out of my mind are amazing). We need to clean off the roof, fix an improper something or other with the bonus water tank, and we have a distinct lack of yard maintenance. Our insurance will be canceled February 2nd if these items are not addressed. Tim had already cleaned off the roof when we got the inspection done in … November? …; he’ll fix the hot water heater this weekend, and this weekend we’re also going to gut the front yard (with a few exceptions in order to maintain the homes for the birds who use certain plants as nesting and shelter). If I may paraphrase TMBG, I am so happy now my head is caving in!

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I got a fancy-pants new phone, which is smarter than I am, almost. It’s practically a laptop computer the size of a deck of cards. Have I sent you my new phone number? I mean, if I know you. Not if you’re a lurker. Or weird. It was a little more than I wanted to spend (meaning: it wasn’t free). So, uhm, buy some soap, will you? Wait, is that shameless? Sorry if it is. HaldeCraft just needs to be able to pay for my new phone. Who wants a Sugar Skull Virgin Mary!?!

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Speaking of Sugar Skull Madonnas, my first print ad came out! I am advertising in this current issue of BUST Magazine. Not as dirty as you might think – it’s a feminist/craft/travel/sex/how-to/pop culture magazine. Sort of like MS., for the younger, craftier, less-affluent crowd. Oh, and check it – if the ads don’t rotate, you can also see it online here. Hee! I feel faint!

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Long, long, long time ago readers – like, the three people who were here pre-yarn-shop who have stuck around – may remember when I was in a writer’s group? Well… I’m writing again! Slow going, as I re-learn how to work it into my schedule of other crafty bits. Also slow re-writing as somehow in the last three years I have lost all the electronic copies of everything I had written before. I remember, distinctly, saving everything to a disc and then putting that CD somewhere Very Smart and Easy to Find. :sigh: But starting over from scratch really hasn’t been that horrible. The story has had three years of me ignoring it, and as such the subconscious part of my brain has had time to mull and think and point out errors in logic and point out ways to fix and make better. So I feel it’s a much stronger story now, and a much more rich one.

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I spent last weekend unpacking boxes. Y’all know I hate doing that. I don’t know why; I unpacked about six or seven boxes and about three of them had crap I directly threw away (all the time wondering why I had put crap into a box rather than just tossing it to begin with, but whatever) and it wasn’t really… well, it was hard, but it wasn’t impossible. Some boxes had crap and old photographs. Some boxes had some stuff that no longer has any meaning to me, and Hospice Attic will be getting a box or two sometime in the future. Some boxes had some real treasures. But why is it always so hard to go through stuff like that? Is it the decision making process to keep or pitch? Is it regret that something that once meant so much to me is broken or doesn’t mean anything at all to me now? Is it how I come down hard on myself for not going through all this stuff earlier? Is it remembering who I was and what I wanted when I packed that box up, and the regret or thank-goodness feelings that go with unpacking and looking at the things?

One thing I found were two photo albums The Stepmonster had put together of a trip to Europe she and my dad had taken in the…. oh, late late 80’s sometime. I flipped through them, trying to figure out what to do with them. The pictures were beautiful. Very scenic. Very indicative of the places to which they traveled. And very… sterile. Not a person in most of them, and the people who were in them were shopkeepers or fisherman or other tourists in line. Not a single photo with my father in it. She could have gone by herself, for as impersonal as the pictures are. Or could have clipped them out of a travel book, really – there’s not anything to indicate the personality of anyone on the trip. So I spent about half a day chewing on that. What do I do with them? Contact my stepsister and ask if she wants them? Contact my stepsister and get my Stepmonster’s address and mail them to her, on the off chance those photo albums mean a lot to her and that she’d like them back? Choices. What to do… what to do. So… I pitched them. I hope they did mean something to her. Fuck you, lady. This one’s for getting rid of my entire line of Nancy Drew hardcovers.