Someone asked me yesterday how I found time to write, with the kids and the job and all the ongoing house finishing stuff. And the real answer is, sometimes I don't. I was doing okay in October, but then November hit, with holiday preparations and a rush of house-finishing stuff (because it's not as if it all needs to get done before my family comes for Christmas, but it sure would be nice). Shelves and benches and headboards and fencing and curtains and furniture and hanging twinkly lights and window cleaning and so many meetings with so many contractors and it's all going reasonably well, with only a few expensive mistakes and surprises along the way, but it does take time. So much more time than I'd anticipated. That's the biggest surprise of this whole renovation project.
And it turns out that they didn't do the first floor quite right (old reclaimed pine floors need several extra coats of tung oil, it seems), and so we're actually going to move out of our house for a week in December, reprise 2009 and go stay in Daniel and Anne's attic. Ellie will go stay with Jarmila. Disruption and chaos, and it means we can't put up our Christmas tree until December 19th. Usually I'm a day-after-Thanksgiving gal.
But I'm not really complaining. The house is really so very close to done. The last few weeks have been stressful, and it makes me super-cranky to have no time to write, but now I have a month-plus of writing time, and I'm planning to use it well. With any luck, I'll finish a draft of Demimonde before spring semester starts, and the madness sets in again. There are also theoretical plans to exercise daily, try to set some new patterns in place that might linger after the semester starts up again. Wish me luck!