A baby quilt I made in December. I still need to give it to the baby, but the holidays got in the way, and then the weather got in the way ... Soon!
It is a gloomy Saturday morning. I just dropped Jack off at school, where he boarded a bus to a debate tournament in Raleigh. In a little bit I'll eat breakfast and then work on some quilts. At 2PM, I'll meet my writing workshop girls at a nearby Barnes & Noble. Our group is small, and sometimes I think my presence isn't necessary, these girls are such good writers, but it's true I do keep them on track.
I had not meant to stop writing here when I last wrote, but I did. It was a hard, hard summer. My mother-in-law had a stroke in early July and died in late August. I have often relied on theologian Sam Well's words, "If you can't make it happy, make it beautiful," but we could make that time neither happy or beautiful. To protect the Man's privacy, I can't go into details, but the actions of some of his relatives made his life--and our life together--miserable. To give you some idea of what it was like, I actually convinced the Man, a total non-self-helper, to read a book called
How to Talk to Crazy. I highly recommend this book if you have to deal with difficult people on a regular basis.
It's not really over yet, as the Man is the executor of the estate, which is a huge job. He finally hired an estate attorney to help him with some of the paperwork, and we're hoping everything will be taken care of by the end of the month.
Some nice things happened this fall. I published my first book for adult readers (it's about quilts and quilters--you can check it out
here), and it's gotten a great response. I entered three quilts into the Modern Quilt Guild's national show, QuiltCon, and two were accepted. The show is next month in Savannah, GA, and I'm going! Jack applied early decision to Davidson College and was accepted, which he's very excited about (as are we all).
I've been working really hard, maybe too hard. The good news is, as soon as I get my show quilts mailed off to QuiltCon on Monday, I'm going to have a nice long period of quiet time. I plan to write and quilt and to maybe take a hike or two, maybe find a new house cleaner (the old one didn't work out in the long run) to come in every couple of weeks to clean the bathrooms and mop the floors. I plan to take a little time off to do nothing. Doing nothing sounds really nice.
I hope this finds you well. I hope I won't be a stranger.