Hard to Believe

Another school year is drawing to a close already. Yikes, how is that possible? It seems like just yesterday we were recovering from Hurricane Irene (was that storm downgraded? I think it might have been, but I'm still calling it a hurricane. So there.) and had no power, intermittent water outages, a refrigerator full of spoiling food and a little boy terrified of the dark. The week before school started, I took the kids to stay with my in-laws until civilization was restored. It seems like just yesterday. Was it really almost an entire school year ago?

In just a little over a week, I'll have a sixth grader and a first grader under my roof. A sixth grader. Holy carp... How does the time go by so fast? It's insane, how it speeds by.

We had the pool opened last week and little by little, it's coming together. Thanks to a very mild winter, there wasn't too much ick in it, although there is a lot of sediment. It can only be vacuumed a bit at a time. Then it gets doused with chemicals (the part I really don't like all that much. Not big on chemicals) and the next day, second verse, same as the first. Hopefully we'll get a good summer out of it. In the last few years, we've had to replace the pump, have it relined, have the lining fixed after Irene, and have had a bunch of little things go wrong. Anything having to do with the liner is a complete headache, because it usually requires draining and refilling the entire pool. It's a 35,000 gallon pool. It takes five days of nonstop hose-running to refill. Blech.

My spring planting is just about done. I have two flower boxes on the pool fence that are bursting with color - red, white and purple pansies this year. The purple ones are beautiful - they look all velvety and the color is amazing. Last year I waited too long and all the pansies were gone, so I ended up with snapdragons, which just really didn't work too well in the boxes. Lesson learned.

My tomato plant is producing - there are four tomatoes growing, with about half a dozen flowers to go. Yay! Fresh tomatoes all summer. And once the basil is ready - fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil all around. I also planted two other herbs, but I can't remember what they are and the packages disappeared. I think it's parsley and rosemary, but I can't swear to it. Hopefully, I'll recognize them when (if) they sprout. What I think is parsley has come up, but it isn't quite recognizable yet. As for what I think is rosemary, that hasn't come up yet, but if I remember correctly, it takes a while. Guess we'll see.

So we're gearing up for the change in pace. I've got a bunch of books loaded on my Kindle for summer reading while the kids splash in the pool. Our vacation is planned, and now it's just time to wait. We're doing a Caribbean cruise this summer, which I'm totally looking forward to. And I'm sure we'll hit the Jersey shore a few times as well. The Boy's been asking about going to the Boardwalk, so that's somewhere in the cards as well. It should (hopefully) be a fun summer.

Bring it on. I'm soooo ready for it. :D

The End

It's done! It's done! The first draft of Windemere is finally done. I missed my self-imposed deadline by a week, but who cares? It's finished.

So now I can take a few days and relax (and replace my almost-empty toner cartridge) before I begin doing revisions. Whew... I need those few days, I've been writing like crazy for the last week, trying to get this finished.

I'll probably print it out and look it over this weekend, just give a real quick read-through, and mark a few notes, but the most intensive revising won't come for a few days. I need the time to let my eyes and brain recharge, so I can really see what needs revising. And I'm going to enjoy my little mini-vacation. Yay.

The school year is winding down now, the kidlets have nine days left. Then, I'll be the mother of a sixth grader (how the %#$^ did that happen???) and my baby will be a first grader (and will go full-day in September. What am I going to do with all that free time????)

It's funny how the pace just seems to slow - I can feel it even before the school year ends. Things just sort of wind down a little. And I don't have much planned this summer. We are doing a Caribbean cruise, but that's the only planned trip we have. Mostly, we're just going to laze around the pool, and maybe go down the shore a few times. That's it. That's what summer is about and why I love it. The pool was opened on Tuesday and because we had such a mild winter, it's almost crystal already. There's some sediment that needs to be vacuumed, but that won't be a big deal. Last summer, it took nearly two weeks to get the pool ready, because of all the snow, etc. Not this year. It'll be ready in another day or two.

At the end of the month, the hubs and I'll celebrate our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Fifteen years. We began dating right after the NY Rangers won the Stanley Cup (so close this year, but go Kings!) and now here we are. Fifteen years. Two kids. A home. A dog. Life is good.

I have a few projects ready to go over the summer. And I'm in the planning stages for a new book as well. This one's a little different. One I've wanted to write for a looooong time. I'm going to get out of the Regency era for a little while, since I've always wanted to write a book set in the Old West. But otherwise, I'm keeping a very light writing schedule this summer. I'll be into edits for Windemere before long, and Musa's birthday is coming up in October, so keep an eye out because I'm sure there will be some sort of contest going on.