Last day of August
Last day of August, which is nice. The publishing year starts back up after Labor Day--yay! My TBR pile is thin and I have nothing on hold at the moment. But September and October are coming, which usually brings more new books than any other time in the year. I'm looking forward to it. I did read Ruta Sepetys's BETWEEN SHADES OF GRAY last night, which was good. I checked out a pile from the library, hoping to find one that caught me, and read the first few pages of several. But this was the one I ended up staying up to finish. It's inspired by her own family who were refugees from Lithuania when the Soviets took over, and most of the things the characters do and the things that happen to them were things that happened to real people. If you liked Anne Frank's diary, you will probably like this. Since my own grandparents came from behind the Iron Curtain, it's always fascinating to me to see what was going on there when we were over here.
Politics. I keep erasing what I really want to say because it doesn't belong on the internet. But suffice it to say that I hate extremism and I hate mudslinging and there are things I like and things that make me really, really uncomfortable about both parties, and why can't we all just sit down and play the Cooperative Game? Yeah. That sums it up.
Orchestra. My 10YO is taking cello, thanks to the overwhelming influence of The Piano Guys. The best thing is that she rents a school cello to leave and home, and plays a different one at school. Which means that *I* get to play the cello when she's gone. Only, somehow in transit, we managed to bump a tuning peg, and the highest note plays something other than A. We are afraid to touch the thing for fear of breaking the very delicate (and expensive!!) string, so today I get to bring it back to school and see if the teacher can adjust it. Hopefully so. 10YO is very excited and wants to play it all the time nonstop.
Writing. I didn't mean to do this, but I have two WIPs going on right now. I have a more detailed outline for one, and I have a looser, less developed outline for the other. One is YA, one is MG, and they have very different tone and genres, too. When I get stuck on one, I write on the other one. The thing is, I'm sort of tangled in the plots of both of them right now. I have these plot elements that all need to go in there, but either I'm missing something still, or I have some pieces matched together that need to be reconfigured in a different way. It's the sort of thing where I probably need to just talk it out with someone, only I don't know how/with whom to do that. Nobody has read much of either of them because they're still in the proto draft stage, and they are not pretty. But I need to talk to someone about my characters as if they were real people and we were in charge of helping them somehow.
It's the end of August/nearly September. This is the second summer in a row we haven't moved. Usually at the end of spring/early summer, we get this overhwelming urge to purge and pack. Okay, so we did go through some things this year and get rid of them. That purge and pack feeling is followed by the need to drive thousands of miles in the middle of summer. Did that--3500 miles in two weeks. Now we're on the other end of the moving spectrum, which is the feeling that we MUST visit all known thrift stores in the area and pick up new-to-us furniture. (It's useless buying new furniture when you move often. Thrift stores are like the library--check it in when you move in, check it out when you move out.) September means new furniture! New wall decorations! New kitchen stuff! Heck, a new house! Um, yeah. But we can't just do that every year! Still...my kids' dressers are getting crowded, and it would be nice to pick up a couple of extra ones so there was one per child. *Fights off urge to drive to this really cool estate sale store on the other side of Idaho Falls.*
My husband hasn't started classes yet. He's been busy finishing up a book and getting things ready for the new semester. But that will be soon, so tomorrow we're hoping to go hiking. Maybe to Yellowstone--we haven't explored the northern end around Mammoth much. There's a chance of storms, though, so we'll see what happens.
What about you? What are you doing for the Labor Day weekend?
Politics. I keep erasing what I really want to say because it doesn't belong on the internet. But suffice it to say that I hate extremism and I hate mudslinging and there are things I like and things that make me really, really uncomfortable about both parties, and why can't we all just sit down and play the Cooperative Game? Yeah. That sums it up.
Orchestra. My 10YO is taking cello, thanks to the overwhelming influence of The Piano Guys. The best thing is that she rents a school cello to leave and home, and plays a different one at school. Which means that *I* get to play the cello when she's gone. Only, somehow in transit, we managed to bump a tuning peg, and the highest note plays something other than A. We are afraid to touch the thing for fear of breaking the very delicate (and expensive!!) string, so today I get to bring it back to school and see if the teacher can adjust it. Hopefully so. 10YO is very excited and wants to play it all the time nonstop.
Writing. I didn't mean to do this, but I have two WIPs going on right now. I have a more detailed outline for one, and I have a looser, less developed outline for the other. One is YA, one is MG, and they have very different tone and genres, too. When I get stuck on one, I write on the other one. The thing is, I'm sort of tangled in the plots of both of them right now. I have these plot elements that all need to go in there, but either I'm missing something still, or I have some pieces matched together that need to be reconfigured in a different way. It's the sort of thing where I probably need to just talk it out with someone, only I don't know how/with whom to do that. Nobody has read much of either of them because they're still in the proto draft stage, and they are not pretty. But I need to talk to someone about my characters as if they were real people and we were in charge of helping them somehow.
It's the end of August/nearly September. This is the second summer in a row we haven't moved. Usually at the end of spring/early summer, we get this overhwelming urge to purge and pack. Okay, so we did go through some things this year and get rid of them. That purge and pack feeling is followed by the need to drive thousands of miles in the middle of summer. Did that--3500 miles in two weeks. Now we're on the other end of the moving spectrum, which is the feeling that we MUST visit all known thrift stores in the area and pick up new-to-us furniture. (It's useless buying new furniture when you move often. Thrift stores are like the library--check it in when you move in, check it out when you move out.) September means new furniture! New wall decorations! New kitchen stuff! Heck, a new house! Um, yeah. But we can't just do that every year! Still...my kids' dressers are getting crowded, and it would be nice to pick up a couple of extra ones so there was one per child. *Fights off urge to drive to this really cool estate sale store on the other side of Idaho Falls.*
My husband hasn't started classes yet. He's been busy finishing up a book and getting things ready for the new semester. But that will be soon, so tomorrow we're hoping to go hiking. Maybe to Yellowstone--we haven't explored the northern end around Mammoth much. There's a chance of storms, though, so we'll see what happens.
What about you? What are you doing for the Labor Day weekend?