Castle in the Clouds

Okay, so I thought the beer smell would improve. Was I ever wrong! I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that he had to store it upstairs this time and had elected to use our walk-in closet. When he first announced this I thought, "No big deal." Egads. It stinks to high heaven! Nasty, smelly, breath-stealing stench. Of course, it's only in the closet, so if I'm content to avoid all my clothes in there I don't need to worry about the smell. Like that's going to happen. One week. That's what how long it needs to sit in the first carboy. Then its moved to the Secondary, where it needs to sit for another week or two. Eventually the hubby will bottle the brew and I'll have my closet back. Let's hope my clothes won't reek of beer by then.

I'm just about to head to bed. The hubby went a few minutes ago..I think he got tired of watching Planet Earth on the Discovery Channel . I'm only half watching it myself. I did manage to make some progress this weekend on the WIP. Added a little over 2000 words. Not bad for a couple hours worth of work. I also finished two scrapbook pages (a double-page spread). I'm not sure I'm as happy with them as I'd like to be, but they're done. Sometimes you just have to know when to stop. Otherwise you run the risk of ruining it completely. On a less exciting front, I did lots of laundry and dusted my bedroom this weekend. Baby steps. Maybe next weekend I'll clean out the kids' dressers. While I did laundry, scrapped, and wrote today, the Hubby made another batch of beer. This one is fermenting in our closet because apparently the basement is too cold for this particular brew. It's stinky, but I know the smell will disappear over the next few ho...

Five years. It hardly seems possible that we've been at war with Iraq for that long. Five years ago my babies were still babies. My oldest had just turned four and my youngest had celebrated his first birthday only a few months prior. Our little nuclear family had just moved into the new house and hadn't even had a chance to do more than upack the boxes we had brought with us. The first flower bed and garden were months, maybe even years, away yet. Now the garden has seen several harvests. Flower beds accent the porch and deck. A swingset sits in a distant corner of the yard, the rock-wall steps sun-bleached. The interior of the house has taken on new life as well. Warm colors hug the once white walls. The pictures on the walls reflect the passage of years as my boys grew from babies to little boys. My dog has twice as much gray hair and we've lost several cats to the wild critters lurking in the woods outside. Much has changed. The war with Iraq has changed, too...

I realize it's Sunday night and I've accomplished nothing. Not a damn thing. I can't even claim doing more than a single load of laundry--and I haven't even folded that load yet. Thank God for the hubby because without him I don't know that anything would have gotten done around this place this weekend. I did finish reading the History-Book-from-Hell and started the paper that's due Tuesday. I'll finish it tomorrow night at the library while the oldest boy is getting tutored. The truth is, though, that I don't want to do anything. I have no ambition. No drive. If blah were a feeling, that's how I'd say I feel right now. Blah. Bleh. Blek. Could this be what depression feels like? I wonder. Two days off and all I want to do is curl up on the couch and watch hours and hours of mind-numbing television. I don't even feel like reading. Writing holds even less appeal. But I force myself to do my homework at the very least. This sucks...

This year's Critical and Creative Writing Conference has come and gone. I read both days: two short stories on Thursday and one this morning. My first story got quite a bit of reaction, more than I had expected. It seems everyone could relate in some way with my protagonist. And almost everyone in the room told me how. The second story I read got absolutely no responses. Not a single word. I'm going to blame it on genre-shock. From what I understand, it was the only genre piece to make it into the conference. Certainly it was the only one that mentioned dragons and elves. :-) My final story got a few generalized compliments. The usual "I really liked it" or "it was really good". Hey, at least no one threw rotten vegetables. I missed most of the Keynote speaker on Thursday. Luckily, he had made a guest appearance in my creative writing class last semester, so I didn't feel too cheated. I more or less knew what he was going to say. He seems li...

Your Mouth is a Little Big You're not a total tell all, but you don't hide who you are either. You've struck a good balance between discretion and sharing. People know you fairly well, at least on a superficial level. But you save your most revealing secrets for your best friend... or no one! Do You Have a Big Mouth?

I could sleep for a week. I'm sure this is a direct result of emotional stress and Daylight Savings. I didn't do much of anything over the weekend. Basketball with the boys. Watched kids Saturday night. Might have done some laundry when it crossed my mind from time to time. Read another chapter in the history book from Hell (although I honestly feel better about that one after talking to the professor). Other than that I have a whole lot of nothing to report. Maybe tomorrow...

Writing: I've added over 3000 words to my vampire-romance. I've also been playing around with a new title because the working title SUCKS. I'm toying with Saving Angels or Broken Angels or Love's Demon. I dunno. What do you think? Scrapbooking: I completed a two-page spread. I think it turned out really cute. There are hardly any embellishments on it. It's a very simple design but it's also very eye-catching. I used a variety of colors in this one instead of sticking with my usual monochromatic schemes. I'd post a scan of it but I'm too lazy to scan it in and patch it together right now. Homework: I've read two chapters this weekend. The book is interesting but difficult to read. It's a lot of facts thrown together without any narrative to make it go down easily. Reading it has reminded me I'm not all that fond of academic papers. They're much too dry for my taste. The really scary thing about this book, though, is that I'm...

I got tired of pink. Hope you like the new green decor. On a completely unrelated note, I heard back from the Creative and Critical Writing conference about those three short stories I submitted for consideration. All three were accepted. I'm scheduled to present both days (2 stories on Thursday and 1 on Friday). So why did I say this was only maybe good news? Well, I just realized I'm supposed to be out of town for a work-related conference. I need to man a booth at MACUL, which is taking place in Detroit. My co-workers seem to think I can get out of the work-related conferece. I'm not so sure. I don't want to piss off the boss. The job is definitely more important since it's paying the bills. Update: Talked to the boss and she very graciously agreed to let me attend the writing conference so I could present my work. So...I have a couple weeks and then I'm in the hot seat. Three times. Whee!