Month:

December, 2009

Welcome to my writing accountability post. There won’t be much here, because outside the hundreds of typed pages of notes I took at Montessori training and the hundred and fifty or so handwritten notes I did at observations in November, other types of writing mostly did not occur this year.

Writing for the blog…well, you can see the archive for yourself. Dead for about eight months.

In the area of fiction writing, I finished one story and one piece of flash, for a total wordcount of 10,000. I know that seems like a bizarrely even number, but expr, it does not lie. I could add the fitful 2008 on the story that just isn’t working yet for a grand total of 12,008 words for 2009. Some writers can do that in one day, but I’m not going to detour into I suck land right this second.

The completed story (whose title is “Object Permanence”, btw) is mammoth for me, clocking in at 9,182 words. I can thank (or curse) my invaluable crit group for that bloat, because they kept reassuring me that it was ok for stories to be longer than six thousand words. It needs major reworking for some plot stuff, but in the main, I’m pretty happy with it. It seems rescuable rather than shelvable. I’m in the middle of another story right now, one that I had hoped to have finished by the end of the year, but gah, what I’m trying to do is so complicated that I’m really wrangling with it. It’s just going to take a little more time. The flash is a toss off, for the purposes of not being empty handed at crit group, and because the story apparently won’t be finished in time.

I edited and subbed one story from the vast stockpile of stories which need to be edited, and it’s now making the rounds of subs. I believe I’m 85%ish complete on the edit of Lie Down With Dogs, which I wrote in…November of 2005? Man. I’m editing a story I wrote four years ago! I really need to be better about editing stuff. As I said in a previous post, if I do nothing but edit in 2010, I may still have a dozen or so stories in circulation, hunting down their own hoard of rejections.

I have five stories looking for homes, though only two of those are out at the moment. A lot of markets will open back up January 1, and I’ll be able to fill out those submissions figures. I also have two reprints that I’ve started sending around, to no success, but I just want to say, sending out reprints is fun and stress free, because there’s no stakes on whether they’re accepted or not. The big news is I retired no stories this year. Some have been to more than ten places. If you’ve been reading for a while then you know I usually stop sending them out at ten rejections. So officially, of stories that have ever been good enough to submit, only one is retired. The others are all still out there, plodding along, trying to find a couple of bucks and a place to stay, even with their > 10 rejections. One of the stories in particular is one I really believe in, and I’m not going to stop sending it out until someone buys it! Witness my grim determination!

I made no progress this year on the next novel, unless thinking about it and smiling to myself is progress. Nor did I revise my YA novel Cualcotel, which needs a buff and polish pass but is (mostly) structurally sound before it can be subbed. But you know, editing.

So the 2010 goal is to learn to love editing (or learn to do it even if I don’t love it) and maybe learn to do some alternate story construction things like maybe outline or use index cards or something. Writerly suggestions are welcome, since I usually use the follow the rope down method of story writing. Because this story I’m working on right now? Needs something else. Some different methodology, some different trix, some different approach.

Well, that’s quite enough accountability for one post, isn’t it?

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So 2009 was a turning point year for me, in a number of ways, and now I’m going to set down all the ways in which my life changed, both for posterity and to share.

Throughout 2008 I started to feel pretty worthless insofar as the writing endeavor was concerned. Although I know about the million words of crap and the persistence mantra, I was feeling really worn out with my lack of success. My lack of progress, really. I had worked as hard as I could since November 2004 and the only thing I had to show for it, besides several hundred thousand closeted words, was three sales – one to a dead market which no one would ever read. Even though I felt like I was mastering writing skills, even though I felt like I had improved considerably, even though I wanted to write and only write, I still felt like a failure. My clock had ticked down, the amount of time I had agreed to let myself try without judging, had ended. So I was judging. And found myself lacking.

I had hung a lot on my identity as a writer. Because I was failing at that, or failing to see external markers I could tell myself were progress, I had no work identity where I was succeeding. And it was terrible for my morale.

I am fully aware that I had an envious situation. I did not work at a regular job. All I did was write. And it will seem so whiny and height of privilege for me to say that this was a bad thing. But it was a bad thing. For me. For someone else it might have been great. For me, knowing how lucky I was combined with how little headway I was making was utterly paralyzing.

So by the end of 2008, I had decided that I needed the affirmation of regular work, and I needed to be free of the label writer. I might still write (or I might not. I was having a lot of trouble getting words down and I was willing to let myself off the hook) but I would also have other things to do, and other plans for the future. Not writing plans.

So in a nutshell, I gave up.

And even though I felt guilty about that, the guilt nowhere equaled the prior horror, so it was preferable.

I started to think about the other things I could do, and the other things I wanted to do.

First of all, I picked up a couple of once a week jobs, one proofreading and one helping someone check her email and deal with her computer. I continued to teach Spanish (also once a week). But the big job I picked up, around April (also unpaid), was slush reading for Escape Pod.

Reading slush was fantastic for me in a number of ways. One of the things it showed me was that all the “almost” rejections I was getting were probably not consolation rejections. I was now looking at the dregs of the slush, and I was mostly better than that. Even the roughly twenty five stories I have waiting to be edited before I can stand to send them out because of their enormous flaws were better than a lot of what I was reading, stuff people had felt confident enough to send out, to a primarily reprint market (which Escape Pod is). So I got a type of external marker right off the bat, something I would never have gotten had I continue to write and send out as before. I got verification that when the editor says “the writing is good” or “we seriously considered this”, they probably actually mean it. Revelation!

There’s something else I got from the slush, which is I started to gain an exact sense of when stories go off the rails. I can now point to the paragraph, sometimes even the line, where the story just goes wrong. And I learned something about myself in this process. While it’s extremely useful for me to have examples of excellence, examples of brokenness really serve as the best teaching tool. I need to see flaws to understand how things fit together and how they work. Examples of excellence are omnipresent in published work. Reading slush is free access to writing with flaws (sometimes quite clear and astonishing flaws), without the onus of a critique (as it might be in a writing group), and it’s something I’d never had before. I did very little writing this year. Learning about writing, however? I did a lot of that, especially as concerns story payoff and structure, both of which fall into areas I need serious improvement and help with.

In addition to picking up a few non-career jobs, I also decided to start retraining myself for an alternate career. I don’t particularly want to go back to working in a library right now. I want to change things up. There were two options that more or less landed in my lap, and both were options that I’d been considering for a long time. One was yoga teacher training. The other was Montessori elementary teacher training, through the Montessori Institute of Milwaukee, which opened up a training course in Kansas City. Because I’m a crazy person, and both opportunities presented themselves in the same calendar year, I started both, even though it was fraught and I ended up being ludicrously busy.

Montessori training required me to leave my family for most of the summer. I drove back and forth between Kansas City and St. Louis practically every weekend. Often, on the weekends, I had yoga teacher training to attend, in addition to the mountains of laundry and the homework from Montessori training. It was rigorous, but I loved it. I missed my family like crazy. My wildly independent child turned clingy and kept telling me how much she missed me. My husband held things together at home, but with effort, and the strain showed. He endured, as he promised me he would. My mother came from Argentina, and changed her return tickets to cover the time I would be gone, which was a huge help. She kept everyone fed. I had worried about everything in advance, and it was difficult in ways I’m probably not accurately describing (though it spares you some angst, so that’s just as well), but we all managed, and here we are.

Yoga teacher training concludes at the end of January. I’ll have two hundred hours, which is the baseline level for teaching classes. I have no immediate plans to teach classes, because I have my hands pretty full as is.

I have two more summers of Montessori Elementary training, as well as observation hours and student teaching. I did my first observations in November, and I loved observing and loved the kids and feel very strongly that I’m on the right track. I am very excited for my own classroom, the sooner the better!

In short, I’m pretty busy, not only now, but into the foreseeable future. I’m not sure when I’ll be writing, though I feel good about continuing to do so, which is not how I felt before. I only wrote and finished one short story this year. I’m working on a second, which I hope to finish before the year gets out, but it’s coming out all in hunks and pieces, and I’m very shaky on this non-linear writing thing. I did, however, edit one story and send it out, and have almost finished editing a second. If I do nothing but edit stories in 2010, I can still stay in the sub (and rejection) game.

In September, I picked up an additional job, helping editor Rachel Swirsky at Podcastle with the organizational aspect of the podcast, which is vast. This is a paying gig, though it pays very little, of course. I’m not trying to be coy. It’s less than $50 a month. It’s also a gig that will change come January 1. I’ll speak more to that after the New Year.

Also in September, I started being courted by two local Montessori schools for their elementary classrooms. The trainer in Kansas City had assured us that there was a shortage of Montessori elementary teachers and that we would be sought after assiduously, but I took that with a huge grain of salt. It seemed like a line, you know? However, no lie, people were taking me out to breakfast and talking to me and asking me whether I’d consider their school and what would it take and so forth. This did wonders for my self-esteem, and created huge eagerness in me to finish my training and get my classroom (something I now realize might happen in reverse order). One of the schools lost their primary assistant, and they asked me if I would come in starting January and be the assistant in their primary classroom, getting to know the staff, the situation, and the kids which may one day be in my own elementary classroom. I accepted. On January 4, I will begin working at OakHaven Montessori School as a primary assistant. They are hoping to open their elementary classroom in September, and I believe they want me in it, as their teacher. I am so enthusiastic about this! I cannot wait. Think of me, and wish me well in beginning this new, great adventure. If you had told me at the beginning of 2009 that at the start of 2010 I’d be working at a Montessori school I would not have believed it. Life is full of twisty turns, many of them wonderful and fulfilling.

So this past two weeks I’ve been busy shedding all the part time jobs I’ve acquired. I’m done proofreading. I quit slushing for Escape Pod as of December 31. I no longer teach Spanish at my daughter’s school (which I’ll miss, because I love doing it). I am still on the hook for helping the antiques lady with her computer, though I’ve let her know it is no longer a weekly engagement. I’m going to keep trying to shuffle off that last job, and the easiest way will be to find my own replacement. So if anyone wants like three hours a week of work, one morning a week, (it can be more, depending on your ambition, there are potential projects) helping a woman read her email and keep her customer database updated, let me know. It requires more patience than computer knowledge, and the working environment is peaceful and slow-paced. Comment, or email me, if you are interested.

I’m also looking for a place to stay for about ten weeks this summer in Kansas City. I have a fallback option, but I’m trying not to wear out my welcome. So if you know someone who could benefit from a roommate or house-sitter this summer in Kansas City, please leave a comment.

So, to sum up, in January I will be doing sekrit, soon-to-be-announced, extra stuff for PodCastle and I will be working at OakHaven as an assistant in one of their primary classrooms. At the end of January, I will have finished my yoga teacher training and be able to teach, should I want to. I have two more summers of Montessori training left to go before I get a diploma. It’s been a roller coaster of a year, but as I come into the new decade, there seems to be a pretty well-defined path ahead. I’m comfortable with that.

Also this year, unrelated to job acquisition, training, or job loss, my family got into a local CSA which we’d been on the waiting list for. Being a member of the CSA has been awesome! We’ve tried a number of new recipes, incorporated far more vegetables into our diet, and begun to eat more in tune with the seasons. We’ve learned about all new fruits and vegetables, too, such as sunchokes and daikon. The stuff we get from them (fresh mushrooms! carrots that taste like carrots! figs!) continually amazes and delights me.

So see? There was stuff happening, and plenty of it. I just wasn’t reporting it. But now you’re all caught up. Wish me well in 2010, I will be immersed in Montessori (teaching + training) and PodCastle, with a small helping of writing on the side and a little bit of yoga thrown in to keep things interesting. Also, since my new blog is so, so pretty, maybe I’ll keep up with it better, and you’ll hear from me more often. To be fair, though, my internet access while it was at training last summer was basically nil, but that could change this summer, and there’s a lot of the year that isn’t the summer. No promises, but the odds of more blogging are high.

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28 Dec 2009, by

The lyrics game

So it’s been a while, and I thought we could all use a tally plus a reminder of how the lyrics game works. As you may have noticed from the “What I’m Listening To” portion of the sidebar, I listen to a lot of music, and music plays an important part of my life. I often use lyrics for post titles, because I love how just a few sung words can so fully express thoughts and feelings.

The game works like this: I award two points to the first person who comments with the next line which follows the one I use as a post title. You can throw in artist and song, if you wish, but what gives you points is the next line of lyrics. In the first iteration of the game I gave points to either answer, but now I’m narrowing the rules a little. Other rules: posts close to comments after one hundred twenty days, so that’s as far back as you can go for your points; also, I may occasionally grant one point to someone for random amusing commentary, but the full two points only comes to the provider of lyrics.

Now I know you can all use google, and it would very sad and unsporting if you used google to get your two points, but if you must, so be it. It’s not cheating to listen to the song, of course. Also, I do not consider it cheating to look at my Last.Fm page (or the sidebar, which tells you the most recent tracks I’ve listened to), and that may give a clue. My tastes are pretty wide-ranging, and I’ll try not to stick to a certain musical ghetto, so everyone will get chances to guess.

So I had to do a little reconstructing from old comments to get the current rankings, but I believe they are thus:

  • 2 points Sunjunkie
  • 2 points Jerm
  • 6 points Lanfaedhe
  • 3 points Dave Lartigue
  • 4 points Elaine

It is still, as they say, anyone’s game. There’s now a nifty tracker on the sidebar, so you can clearly see that Lanfaedhe is the current king daddy of lyrics here at Among Mad People. There’s also a page where you can see the rules, in case you forget them.

At some point, perhaps toward the end of 2010, I’ll declare the game closed, or this round of it closed anyway, and send the winner something wonderful and extraordinary!

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Well, since I didn’t keep up with my reading list in 2009 (because I didn’t keep up with the blog, see), now I must attempt to reconstruct the entire list from memory and stacks of books sitting on the chest of drawers and the help of Library Elf. Here goes! This will be an abbreviated version, and maybe my new widget (see the lovely sidebar) will take care of keeping track of the books I read in the future, obviating this endless list. The ordering is roughly chronological, but nowhere near exact. List is numeric for the purposes of telling me how many.

  1. Evil Guest by Gene Wolfe
  2. Hikaru No Go, Volume 1 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  3. Hikaru No Go, Volume 2 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  4. Hikaru No Go, Volume 3 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  5. Hikaru No Go, Volume 4 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  6. Hikaru No Go, Volume 5 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  7. Hikaru No Go, Volume 6 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  8. Hikaru No Go, Volume 7 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  9. Hikaru No Go, Volume 8 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  10. Unbinding The Gospel by Martha Grace Reese
  11. Shadows Over Baker Street edited by Michael Reeves and John Pelan
  12. Beloved by Toni Morrison
  13. The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
  14. Knights of the Kitchen Table Time Warp Trio Book 1 by Jon Sciezka
  15. The story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wrobleski
  16. The Alchemy of Stone by Ekaterina Sedia
  17. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson
  18. The Shambhala guide to yoga by Georg Feuerstein.
  19. Into the woods by Lyn Gardner, pictures by Mini Grey
  20. Howl’s moving castle by Diana Wynne Jones
  21. Peeps by Scott Westerfield
  22. Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, Volume 5 by Bryan Lee O’Malley
  23. Hikaru No Go, Volume 9 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  24. Hikaru No Go, Volume 10 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  25. Hikaru No Go, Volume 11 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  26. Hikaru No Go, Volume 12 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  27. Hikaru No Go, Volume 13 by Yumi Hotta, art by Takeshi Obata
  28. Queen and Country Definitive Edition, Volume 1 by Greg Rucka
  29. Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey
  30. The Austere Academy Volume 5 of A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
  31. Mixed Magics by Dianna Wynne Jones
  32. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
  33. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
  34. Club Dead by Charlaine Harris
  35. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
  36. Dead To The World by Charlaine Harris
  37. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
  38. Dead As A Doornail by Charlaine Harris
  39. Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris
  40. All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris
  41. From Dead To Worse by Charlaine Harris
  42. Four and Twenty Blackbirds by Cherie Priest
  43. Shakespeare’s Landlord by Charlaine Harris
  44. Grave Sight by Charlaine Harris
  45. Finding God in a Tangled World: Thoughts and Parables by Juris Rubenis and Maris Subacs
  46. Farthing by Jo Walton
  47. Mistborn by Brian Sanderson
  48. Frindle by Ander Clements, illustrated by Brian Selnick
  49. The Magicians by Lev Grossman
  50. Dead and gone by Charlaine Harris
  51. Naamah’s kiss by Jacqueline Carey
  52. The green glass sea by Ellen Klages
  53. Yotsuba&! Volume 1 by Kiyohiko Azuma
  54. Yotsuba&! Volume 2 by Kiyohiko Azuma
  55. Crazy in Love by Lani Diane Rich
  56. The Red Tree by Caitlín R. Kiernan

It’s nice to have reviewed the list all in one gulp, even though it was kind of a time-consuming pain to reconstruct. It was like a slide show tour of places I’d been, because I can remember where I sat reading it and what was happening during the time I read. I can feel the passage of the year, here, whether I was bundled while reading or lying in the sun; whether I was home or away; whether I was in public or private. I’d forgotten, for example, that I’d read Ekaterina Sedia’s wonderful Alchemy of Stone, very early in the year.

Additionally, I read loads and loads of short stories this year. Not in a way I can quantify, because most weren’t in anthologies, and some weren’t even published. But trust me, I read vast amounts of short stories this year. Outside of the obtuse “unpublished” comment I just made (which will be explained in due time!), I also read a good amount of short fiction online. In addition to the usual suspects: Clarkesworld and Strange Horizons, I’m also reading fiction from tor.com. They’ve put out some excellent stories this year. I am still a faithful listener of Escape Pod and PodCastle, and I mean to go back to Pseudopod at some point soonish. If I were to recommend a couple of stories from the podcasts, they’d be: EP215: Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store, EP214: Sinner, Baker, Fablist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast, EP209: On the Eyeball Floor, PodCastle 79: Marsh Gods, PodCastle 77: Nine Sundays in a Row, and PodCastle 62: The Fiddler of Bayou Teche. Happy listening!

Also of note, this year I was given a Sony e-book reader for my birthday. I read three books on it: Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Farthing, and Mistborn. I really enjoyed the reading experience. It was lovely, in particular, to sit on the boat at my in-laws, reading a fat paperback that was actually the slimmest of books because it was the reader. I’m also pleased not to need physical storage for those books, because while I enjoyed them, I am not terribly likely to re-read them, and am pleased not to have deal with the dead tree versions.

This list will probably be modified before year’s end, because I expect to finish some of the books listed in the “Currently Reading” Sidebar on the right before the year’s out (my guess is the diet book and the Kiernan book will be finished). Next year, there may be no list, if I can slice the data from the library the way I want to. Also, there are books missing, probably, and I’ll add them in as I figure out what they are. My husband looked at the list and said, “No Bujold?” which seems odd to me, too.

I met the challenge again this year, though meeting the challenge is always helped by the vast number of graphic novels and YA books I read, which are faster to get through than regular books. Although, to be fair, both the M.T. Anderson books (ostensibly YA) were full-fledged door stops, so it all evens out, in the end.

Christmas goodies in book form this year included Finch by Jeff VanderMeer, which I’m very much looking forward to; The Confessions of Saint Augustine which I owned but lost to water in the basement, so it’s a replacement copy; The Very Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction which is going to be a glory of re-reading goodness and – of course – gift certificates to Amazon which will be delightfully spent shortly.

For mild accountability, because everyone knows my desiderata is out of control, here are the books I’m hoping to read this year: Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves (I read half of it in 2008), China Miéville’s new one The City and The City, Soulless by Gail Carriger (which sounds fun), Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout (squee!), and N.K. Jemisin’s One Hundred Thousand Kingdoms because N.K. Jemisin is awesome like an awesome someone (if you don’t believe me, read her incredible story “Cloud Dragon Skies“, or listen to it at Escape Pod). Other than those books, I’m looking forward to an interesting reading year in 2010, full of great stuff and surprises. Hope your 2009 had as many lovely stories as mine did, and that your 2010 gives you the reading experiences you want.

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24 Dec 2009, by

Overheard.

My daughter is playing in the sink, with soap and dirty dishes we just made. She’s pretending to make pies. She just said,”I don’t need an instruction manual to make these pies! Pies are my specialty!”

I think those are my husband’s genes speaking.

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Shortest day of the year. I always feel like it’s a victory if I can get this far along without feeling dreadful. This is usually when I tell people I’m going to quit writing/living/breathing/thinking/etc. From here on out the days lengthen again and it won’t be quite so dark. At the beginning of December, when I realized I was starting to feel pretty badly, I picked up some vitamin D. The research on the link between vitamin D and seasonal affective disorder (that which is internet accessible, anyway) seems pretty sketchy, but it’s a ten dollar gamble, whereas buying those lights (though I’ve been contemplating that, too) is like a hundred dollar gamble.

Predictably, I went for the cheap option. And obviously I have no way of scientifically proving that it’s helping me, because we all know how widespread the placebo effect can be and how unreliably one measures one’s own moods…but I really haven’t gone to quite such a dark and bitter place as I usually do at this time of year. I’ve been able to maintain some semblance of social relationships, and I haven’t felt as tired, or as in need of as much sugar and fat. So completely subjectively, the vitamin D supplements are helping. I don’t even take them every day (because I can’t seem to remember to) but even taking them every other or every third day appears to be having a positive effect.

Now there’s a lot of dark and cold left to the season, and maybe I’m being to too quick to call victory. We’ll just see about that.

Still, I wish I’d tried it years ago.

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So I’ve had plenty of things going on, but I’ve not blogged much.  In fact, since this blog is in a new location, none of you can see it yet.  For a while, Facebook filled the need I had to send occasional messages out into the world, and after that, it seemed I’d left the old site derelict for so long that there was no point writing there anymore. I also spent two months this summer essentially without internet access, as well as frighteningly busy (more on that in another post), so blogging fell off the things to do list. Thinking about all the things I’d left pending, and how ugly the site was just made me ignore it.

But here I am, with a great new re-design and motivation to post again. Thanks to Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios for helping with the migration of the site, and for making it look so good.  As any righteous book acknowledgment would tell you: where it looks good it’s to his credit, where it looks bad, the fault lies with me.

So welcome to my introductory (re-introductory?) post to let you know a little of the boring meta stuff.  With any luck, this will be three posts down by the time the site goes live, thus recording the changes for posterity but without requiring anyone to read through them.

Things that are different:

  • I broke down and got the annaschwind.com domain name.  That’s an acknowledgement that I’ve not buried the hatchet so far as writing is concerned and am engaged in brand building and marketing. Or something.
  • I switched from Nucleus to WordPress.  I liked Nucleus fine, mind you, it just had the ability for (and sometimes required) way more customization than I was ready to put into it.  So far the switch is a little bit like moving from PC to Mac land.  Stuff just works, without wrangling and curses.  Also, it’s aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. Yeah. That’s a lot like moving from PC to Mac. Part of the ease with which the move happened was the assistance I had in migration (which was a headache I knew I had coming, and part of what made the old site languish) so I’m just talking about using one versus using the other here, not about transitioning.
  • I can now tag stuff! As if categories weren’t enough. Ha!
  • I’m no longer posting as Anarkey. I am not disavowing my online persona (you can still find me under that name in many a corner of the internet), I’m just linking it to my real life name now, because obscurity and anonymity are my enemies.

Things that are the same:

  • It’s still me writing, with all the notorious irregularity that implies. I’m not going to make any vows to post frequently, but neither will I vanish for six months at a go.
  • I still want to hear from you. Comment away.
  • We’re still playing the lyrics game! I’ll tote up the totals and see if I can’t place them in the sidebar.
  • I also owe some folks some crafty stuff from my crafty meme, which was one of the last things I posted. I am definitely not promising it by year’s end, but I’m promising I haven’t forgotten.

It’s good to be back. Enjoy the site!

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