Busy times...

Song of the day: “It ain’t me” by Kygo ft. Selena Gomez and “Issues” by Julia Michaels have been tumbling through my head quite a bit lately.

So, it’s been a while. Sorry ‘bout that. Life tends to get busy and regretfully the blog tends to take a back seat in that case. Grrr.

Quite a bit happened lately, not all of it good, but worthy of mentioning. Let’s see what I can come up with right now to put here.

Big brother and me were in a car accident. Yep. The zit car has its front folded in. It became clear, for once and for all that a slippery road and unexpected congestion up ahead don’t go together at all. Luckily no one got seriously hurt, least of all the car we rammed into. It barely had a dent, while our hood took most of the hit. I had some serious breathing issues that day, due to the seatbelt slamming into me. It wasn’t too bad while I was waiting for the tow truck, and while we dealt with the necessary forms, but as the evening progressed, there was some pressure there. Luckily, the next morning it was almost gone, so, no harm no foul…and as for the little car: It still runs, and as it turned out it was more outside damage than inside. Only part inside that was damage was the radiator and fan. Having it fixed, and if we get the spare parts ourselves, will cost around 600 buck…which is above our budget, naturally. But, considering that the damage is basically outside bits, we are going to try to do the majority of the repairs ourselves (the mechanic thinks that it is possible) we might be able to get the little zit back to functioning.

I got a job. Yay! Only part-time, which was the intention. Just a couple of days a week so that we can make ends meet. Signed up with a small cleaning company in the village next to ours, and now have two offices/stores that I’ll be cleaning twice a week. Heavy work, considering it’s quite a bit of square meters crammed within a few hours, while a lot of folks work there, making things pretty messy. Hah. Worst of it was, that my predecessor left two weeks earlier, so things were worse when I got there. Now, after two weeks of work. Things are starting to look neat again, smell better, and well maintained, I should be able to go back to a steady 100% rather than over it. Yay! It all does remind me of work at the sauna. And basically it requires very little thought, which is a good thing since I rather use brain power for writing, which I should be able to do around this job. My new boss is able to supply me with the tools/supplies I need asap, so there’s no messy making-due, and that’s a relief.

Regretfully big brother’s job is still a tad sporadic. As in, he’s supposed to work four days a week, but is lucky when he gets three and sometimes even as little as two. It makes the wallet a little tight. But, we’re managing to make ends meet, just barely. It just has to hold out until the book comes out…which could be a problem.

Yep. The editor got back with a new revision/edit, because, as expected some things didn’t work out as well as hoped after we had to cut out 15K words (50 pages, or so). Duh. Could have told you that. But anyway, there were some suggestions of how we could solve the problem, which literally made me cringe. Was hyperventilating there for a bit, but then we did some serious brain storming that got the okay, thank Gawd! So now we’ve spent the past week or so working on a plot beat sheet, with the twists and turns exposed (including some of the changes) and are now waiting for the Okay to get started on the actual changes. The waiting is driving me bonkers! We are sooooo not going to make the 20^th of April deadline. *sigh*

A sad thing that happened was that our uncle died suddenly, a couple of weeks ago. Was very unexpected for everyone involved, not to mention a big shock for the entire family. My dad was numbed, I think. And considering he had been suffering from the flu, the event didn’t help any. My other uncle got hit by the stress so bad that he had a minor heart attack, so he spent the week after the cremation in a hospital, adding to the family’s  distress. And considering that my dad’s sister hasn’t been well in a while, things are…difficult to say the least.

Anyway, we went to the cremation, of course, more to show our support to dad, than our departed uncle, whom we’d only met once since our return, and barely remember from when we were little. Still, it was oddly intense, the whole thing. Apparently there is something different when it involves family, whether you know them or not. Strange. There was quite a turnout. More than a hundred people and a long ceremonial kind of thing, followed by a reception where a lot of people that I remember from when I was a kid (and a lot I didn’t) came to show their respect. This was followed by a trip to my dad’s place so the older generation could meditate while our littlest brother went for a walk in the woods with us. Had some nice talks, and then later that evening, dad took us all out to dinner at an Italian place. Didn’t get home until midnight, though, which was when we heard about our uncle’s heart attack, and I had to go to work the next day.

Well, what else? I sowed some seeds. Herbs on the most part. But also zucchini, of which one is growing real fast. Gonna have to sow stuff soon, otherwise it will be too late. Looking forward to that. Getting my hands dirty, get my own veggies from the yard come summer. Would be lovely.

What with the news of revisions, and the stuff that needed working out because of it, I didn’t get to any writing except for the stuff of the plot changes. *sigh* Very frustrating that. I so want to be past working on this book, and on to something new…although, the new changes would be exciting to see how they work out. Hah.

So, that’s it for today. Can’t think of anything else…although I’m sure there is more. Just can’t come up with it now. Ah well…we’ll get to that the next time.