Focus!

There are just two more weeks left until school starts, and part of one of those weeks will be taken up with "returning to school" meetings and other nonsense.  I'm still trying to write the book, but I recently learned that I'll have a little more time to work on it, so I feel a just a little less panicked.  I've even started having chase dreams -- in this version, I'm in my grandmother's front yard and being chased by a buffalo.

To clear my head, I worked on another writing project, finished it, and actually sent it to a journal.  The momentum of getting a shorter project done has helped keep me focused on the big one.  That said, I'm still a little panicked, although my stomach has quieted down from the jumpiness I've been having since May.

The book is due to my editor around October 1.  We shall see.  I'll be taking some time to do my fifth edition of my tenure file, too, which is due soon.  I'll have one more to go after this one.

One more summer knitting project is finished -- the shortie socks. There's nothing like big needles and yarn (comparatively) to make something really move.  I cast on for the Emperor's Christmas socks, and they're underway.  Sis gave me two garnet beads that I'd been eyeing, and I instantly made them into earrings.  I had also been looking at French Kande costume jewelry -- a blogger I read wears it and I like the overall ouvre.  However, it's expensive stuff, for being costume jewelry, so I dove into my bead stash to see what I could do to echo its general look.  I put one of Sis's big pendants onto a long string of glass pearls that belonged to my grandmother, and voy-lah.  Instant fashion.  I can see doing the same thing with some of the other pendants in my collection.

See what I did there?  I made it into a heart, for Grandma.

Otherwise, it's been all writing (or trying to write) all summer long, with the writing sessions punctuated by bouts of yard work.  Next summer, this will be done, and we will spend it in Indolence.  I can't wait.

The yard is mostly mowed, and the leaves and sticks left over from The Big Storm have all been raked up and bagged.  I edged the lawn, finally, returning between four and six inches of sidewalk to the good citizens of this city.  I'd decided to skip one edge, because it wasn't bad and also because my electric connection only stretched to cover half of it, when a neighbor ran over with her gas-powered super-duper professional grade edger and zoomed over it.  On the one hand I'm grateful!  It's done and will stay done for the remainder of the summer.  On the other hand... sigh.  I was about to pick up my equipment and repair to the house because it was so hot and humid that I was seriously wilted.  I stayed with it, though, coming behind her with my broom and finishing the job right.  Anyway, I'll mow the last section of lawn when it dries a bit.  We've had three days of rain and clouds, and the lawn is un-mowably wet.