Sorry I’ve been gone so long.
I spent the last couple of weeks before my return to work working on Breaking Point with the religious zeal. It was glorious to do nothing but write, truly glorious. That’s the life I want. I have to say it felt very busy, even though all I was doing was going for walks, making meals and writing.
Last Monday, I went back to work. Everyone was fantastic and very helpful. Although I thought I was ready, I found it much more exhausting than I’d realized, and I spent a lot of this weekend sleeping.
But last week was a crappy week for reasons having nothing to do with going back to work. It was the Week of Homeowners Hell.
Sunday night as I was doing laundry and rushing to finish Chapter 24, my main sewer line backed up into my downstairs bathroom. I was sitting within sight of it and just sat there staring, unable to believe what I was seeing. I stopped the washer, which stopped the flooding, then I threw towels on the water, called a plumber, called my parents and sat down on the couch and cried. (Yes, very effective technique.) My parents cleaned up the mess — God bless them! I'm still not up to that — and the plumber found a giant wad of thick, blond hair in the pipe. (Where did that come from?)
Monday involved going back to work, calling the carpet cleaners and.... Buying a new refrigerator because my fridge broke. Yes! Bonus!
On Friday, the carpet cleaners came and made my cream white carpet look like new. And my new fridge arrived — but was about two inches too wide for the space. Who knew fridges came in different sizes?
I had spent about an hour getting everything out of the old fridge, and it wasn’t easy. The most painful thing these days is bending over. I doesn’t hurt to bend; it hurts to stand upright again. That unhealed bone graft at C5/6 shifts just the tiniest bit, and it flipping hurts. So getting stuff out of the fridge was not fun or easy. Putting it all back in again when the delivery guys drove away with my new fridge was even worse.
Then I had to go find a skinnier version of that model, which should be here on Friday again. Fortunately, this time I’m going to have help from one of my gangsta BFFs, who promised even to feed me grapes (hopefully not the shriveled ones at the bottom of my veggie crisper) while unloading my old fridge.
All of this is a way of explaining my prolonged absence, though truly I don’t think there's anything more interesting I could post here than the cover to Breaking Point and the excerpt.
Unless it’s several photos of Jed Hill...
I hope these photos bring a rush of estrogen to your Monday. And thank you to all of you for your e-mails, messages, letters and cards during these past two months while I’ve been recuperating. They meant so much to me.
I probably won’t be around much during the next four weeks as I work to get Breaking Point written, polished and in to my editor. I would hate for you all to have to wait longer for the book. July is far away enough as it is.