BH: 340

Blessed Imbolc! I’m not sure what all I’m going to do to celebrate. I did trim the rosehips off the bushes, and I’ll clean off the altar and put more springlike things on it. According to some sources, Imbolc is a time for cleaning out the winter things in preparation for spring. We’ve been working on the house today, and I think that counts! [g] Ken’s pretty much finished with the outbuilding roof; as I write this, dusk is falling and he’s putting a final coat of paint on the trim. All of the solar panels have been moved over from the main roof and secured down. At some point in the future, he’ll re-pipe them and we’ll be able to heat the pool again.

We slept in today, a rare morning when we didn’t have to set the alarm or be anywhere. Then we lounged in the living room eating leftover pizza and reading for at least an hour. Mmmm…

While Ken was working outside, I copy edited and caught up on some e-mail. I also sanded a few bumps on the walls of the library closet and wiped them down in preparation for painting. If we put the plastic over the floor tonight, I’ll hopefully get the painting done tomorrow. Then the next step will be mouldings. Right now, the plan is to get all the mouldings up, and the panelling painted and stained and up, by Estrella weekend (President’s Day weekend for you non-SCAdians). The holiday weekend will be devoted to putting in the shelves. Finally!

We’ve been watching too many home and garden shows, and I’m all excited about working on projects again. Mind you, I whined about how pitifully out of shape I am today, after my arms got tired wiping down a few tiny walls, and the back of my thighs hurt from bending over to clean the hot tub filter yesterday. Ptui. Wimps R Us.

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I promised an overview of January, didn’t I? Okay, here goes:

The maintenance plan for keeping the house clean and neat is working reasonably well, I’m happy to say. I’ve easily slipped into the habit of washing a few dishes or straightening while waiting for my tea to steep. A big “yay” there.

I’ve kept e-mail down to a dull roar, and had the Drafts folder down to a mere two at one point. Also good.

I’ve been flossing several times a week, and washing my face most nights, so the little things are going well.

I’m working on a few SCA projects, so all is well in that area.

Writing. Uhm. Well, 15K for the month isn’t bad, but it’s less that I hoped. It’s screamingly obvious to me that when I skip a day or two, I want to keep skipping. I really must be better about getting at least a few words out each day. I ended the month well, and have started this month well, so that’s good.

Exercise and diet. Let’s talk about this next month, shall we? Oh, okay, can’t escape it. I haven’t used the exercise machine or tried my Pilates DVD, but I have been stretching while I watch the evening’s Charmed re-run, and doing a little ab work and/or marching in place to get my heartrate up (and putting weights on my wrists and pumping my arms at the same time). But I need to be doing something more at least three times/week.

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Well, I sort of hit 500 words tonight, but it doesn’t reflect in the word count because I deleted some, too. Essentially I massaged the final scene of Chapter 9 to reflect the changes I’d made earlier. The chapter is still a little short, but it’s okay the way it is. Tomorrow, I start Chapter 10, which involves The Big Revelation and The Big Blow-Up. It should be fun. [evil grin’]

Most importantly, it was another evening of thinking eh, I’d rather curl up with Ken and get an early night. As it was, he got back up to look online at some places that Neil Peart had been, and we talked in between all of it, so it wasn’t like we abandoned each other. And I’m proving once again to myself (because I’m a slow learner) that it’s not such a huge burden to produce a few hundred words.

I’ve got a lot of errands to run tomorrow and copyediting to do, plus I fully intend to paint the library closet, and we have folks coming over for sewing night…but I’ll write. Oh yes, I will!