One More Detour on the Writing Road

Whew.

It has been, one might say, quite a year so far. And that’s not even talking about political stuff. The overwhelming dominant theme so far has been the work on a house we’ve been getting ready to sell. We bought it for a relative to stay in while finishing up their career before retirement. The interval between that purchase and going to sell the place led to some changes in the house and, well, our attempts last year went nowhere.

Major renovation work had to be done if we were going to get this place off of our books. While it is in a resort area, running the numbers didn’t show much if any of a benefit for running it as a short-term rental and it’s a location where we didn’t really want to spend time ourselves. Long-term rental wasn’t something we wanted to do for very long, since we’re downsizing everything due to our ages.

So we sucked up and did the renovation. The big pieces were contracted out but some of the small repairs plus painting was a job we took on ourselves to save on expenses. Since the house was several hundred miles away, that meant traveling a lot. Because we are olds and sustaining a lot of effort for more than a few days was more than we could handle, this ended up taking more time than it might for a younger couple (and dealing with contractor schedules plus finding more things we wanted to fix…).

We started in January and finished in the first part of August. Dealing with this took a couple of weeks out of every month. That doesn’t seem like a lot until you factor in travel time, other things that had to be done, and recovery time. As a result, I really didn’t get much writing done this year to date.

Add to that some shifting in my volunteer work. I left one regional writing organization because it just wasn’t fitting my needs anymore and I felt as if I was putting in a lot of work for no return or recognition (acknowledgments and/or thank yous go a LONG way for hard-working volunteers. I wasn’t getting any of that plus credit for what I was doing kept being attributed to other people). I’m doing work for a couple of other writing organizations as well as my local Soroptimists and that ends up consuming time, too. However, I do feel recognized for that work and one big piece is starting to (hopefully) come into being.

And then there’s the horses. Managing Mocha in her last months (we’re discussing euthanasia scheduling with the people who will be handling that plus burial) is a challenge. She started going downhill last November when she sprouted new bone spurs on one arthritic knee and it just keeps getting worse. Keeping weight on her and providing limited pain relief (she has colicked on the best medication before so she only gets a half dose) has been a dance. The vet is firm that she shouldn’t go through another winter, and both vet and farrier have speculated about what an x-ray or ultrasound of that knee would reveal as far as twisty, weird bone formation goes.

This has also been the summer where I started serious arena schooling with Marker. The previous year and a half has been more about conditioning him and letting him grow up a bit mentally while establishing a lot of boundaries. In addition, the owner(s) before the person I bought him from let him get away with a lot of stuff. The owner before me started the hole-filling process in his training but didn’t necessarily have the time he required. Plus he needed a slower process due to a past significant neck injury. I really didn’t feel right asking him to collect up until he had the right kind of muscling in his neck and…that takes time to establish. But that’s another post!

Nonetheless, progress is happening. I took a class in July which resulted in the creation of an onboarding sequence for my monthly newsletter. A spinoff of that was making a batch of themed samplers to showcase my book catalog. That, along with house painting, sucked up July.

Ah well. I’ve survived all this.

Now it’s time to get back to writing work, and catching up with household stuff that has been getting a lick and a promise since January. I also have a pile of sewing stuff that needs to be happening.

In the meantime, there are some story ideas simmering in my brain.

Onward.