First full week following the Christmas break and I am nearly back to my normal schedule. Once yoga and spin classes start next week, I hope to find a sustainable rthym  for the quarter.

Progress? Nearly finished reading Breathing the Ghost Out and have begun the review for next Friday’s post. It’s not a easy read because the tone is dark and the subjects uncomfortable, but it is an incredibly well-written and beautifully told story. Kirk Curnutt is a good writer.

I poke along as far as getting blogged a bit ahead here goes. I suppose it is better for you dear readers that I am in the moment, but it makes much more work for me. I got two pieces done for 50 something Moms. One is published here. The other I am keeping as a draft until later because I am a bit tired of the two a week pace I have been trying to maintain recently and if I released it from draft today, I would end up getting published on the weekend again and no one will read it. I have been getting weekend spots a lot. Luck of the draw partly, but also because I try to put pieces up for the editors when the queue is low but by the time anyone sees it to publish, other pieces appear and they get the better “time slots”. Maybe the quality? Maybe. I am not a “professional” and some of the others are. Still, there is a little bit of randomness involved and timing matters when you post something from draft state to ready state.

The memoir? Not done. Yeah, I know what I said but it just keeps getting longer. It may end up closer to 90,000 words all told, and I am having issues with details again. How detailed do I get in order to describe my circumstances or explain events? How much of my life is mine for the telling and how much privacy do I owe anyone who may have intersected it enough to stir up a memory or illustrate a point? I am going to check on this with a memoirist or two that I know and who have published.

I think writing about the old neighborhood brought the issue up again most because of the creepy guy who lived next door. He was coincidently an old schoolmate from grade school days. He was unemployed, an alcoholic and a pain in the ass at too many different junctures along the way. I don’t know where he is now. Last I heard, he’d fallen victim to the burst housing bubble and the bank took his home. He could be back in our hometown living with his parents again because they bailed him out several times during the three years we were neighbors. That kind of enabling seldom ends.

He caused me the  most trouble when Will was still at home. He thought it was funny to give Will access to alcohol, which was like poisoning him because he’d lost the ability to metabolize it. I had to call the police and get lawyers involved. He is a part of the story, but he is also  pathetic substance abuser, so I feel a tweensy bit sorry for him.

There is another funeral this weekend. Shelley’s biological father died last weekend. Rob and the girls are attending and I am staying home with BabyD. She really didn’t know Grandpa D and we see no need for her to sit through yet another service. 

Oh, and it’s snowing. Nearly every day. I remind myself that spring is three months off and that there has only been snow on the ground for 6 weeks now, but it’s not like back in the Midwest where the temps go up and down and snow melts. Snow falls and then it stacks up here. It will not be above freezing for a long time yet. The only plus to this is that ice storms are extremely rare. 

Not a very exciting week, eh? But I am pleased none the less.