My cleanup of the blog is complete, and now we (which means, mostly Tom, the tech savvy person at Houndstooth Hall) are working with a couple of companies’ technical support to resolve various issues before I take the site live again.
It’s a profound relief not to be going through hundreds of posts a day, trying to clean them up. Instead, I’ve given time to leisure activities I enjoy. I started this book yesterday. Lady of Bones is the 24th in Carolyn Haines’s Sarah Booth Delaney series, and I finished it today. Set in and around New Orleans, it’s got a bit of everything, and it was nice to catch up with the Zinnia crew again.
I’ve listened to some of my recently purchased CDs while cleaning house, cooking, and enjoying time with my dogs. Music, as the Beach Boys sing, is in my soul.
Also, I finally, finally have returned to the Neverending Saga. One of the things I discovered as I reread my entire blog was how long these characters were percolating in my brain again before I took the plunge and decided to revise and rewrite those old manuscripts in 2019. In every way, I realized that I’ve reached the phase of peace and resolution I wanted. I’m writing for me. It doesn’t matter that others have not and may not ever read what I’m writing. It doesn’t matter that people used what I’m writing to project their own challenges or miseries onto me or my work. I’ll tell the stories. I’ll tell them in ways that honor my characters and who they were created to be. That’s all I can do.
It’s nice to be with them again after more than three weeks of being denied that joy.
Here are a couple of characters who help me celebrate friendship. The dress on the left is one I made way back when, and on the right, from Mattel’s 1962 black and white floral Fashion Pak, are this blouse and skirt and included another skirt and a romper. The entire set is almost certainly from Lynne’s collection.