I can’t believe I spent $60 on a scarf, holy shit. (worth it)

We should really take Maggie in for a checkup.

A woman jogs by barefoot while I wade through the yard in scuffed rain boots.

Oh, my new Graze box is here.

Game of Thrones is still taking up space on the DVR. Maybe I’ll watch, I hear it’s good.

On second thought, I’ve got Pirates of Dark Water. Time better spent.

Skyrim Skyrim Skyrim

Why can’t I rock a bandeau? Summer blows.

I don’t read enough.

I don’t write enough.

Poop bomb.

I should totally post this on my blog.

The good? I received 25 rejections, which means I sent stories out almost twice as many times as last year, with helpful feedback to boot as well as one rewrite request (which I intend to get to as soon as this moving business is behind us).

I can’t say I’ve made any resolutions for the new year. I’ll be happy if I can make it through the first couple of months without ripping my hair out. I will keep writing, and reading, and saving. And what needs to get done will get done. Maybe, if there’s time, I’ll make peace with my demons.

From yesterday’s journal entry: I feel anxious and don’t know why. I just want to run until my legs give out. But I have nowhere to go.

Jobs to do. Stories to write (and rewrite). Sick cats, a sick dog. Trying to move. A month became six months became a year.

Money going out. Nothing coming in.

To say I’m overwhelmed would be an understatement.

To anyone waiting to hear from me, please accept my apologies. I haven’t forgotten you.

I just have to hold my breath long enough to find the surface.

 

WTF?

As some of you may know, we’ve been slowly — very slowly — moving into our new place for the past six months. It’s taken a lot of trips, and a lot of money, and there’s still the fence to put up and the porch to close in and the animals to move. This afternoon, we packed a few boxes and headed that way only to find the back door swinging in the breeze and the siding underneath knocked out.

They made off with most of the copper wiring and an auger that’d been sitting on the porch. The back door is so damaged it won’t even close, it’s being held shut with a bag of cement.

The cops were called and a report was made. We doubt we’ll hear back from them anytime soon.

They think it was someone we knew, someone familiar with the house. We think we know who’s responsible, but how does that help us now?

Next step is to see how much our insurance will cover, if they’ll cover anything at all.

We have four weeks. What else can go wrong?

Now, Cujo and Baby are big dogs — they carry almost 300 pounds between them — but there’s no way they did that. One, I’ve never known them to flip the furniture over, even though they could. Two, they couldn’t have flipped it other, pushed it against the wall, scrape it past the door, then flip it forward, up and over another chair without pulling a shit-ton of junk (cardboard boxes, a small trash can, their water bowl) along with it. Neither could the wind, for that matter. If the wind had been strong enough to pick it up and toss it, that would be one thing. But then we’d be talking about wind capable of lifting something that weighs more than I do yet leaves papers and cigarette butts and spindly tree branches behind.

The dogs were scared. We were paranoid. Stuff like this always happens when we start packing. Three houses and countless cases of furniture moving, pipes bursting, and photos vanishing from their frames. My mother blames it on gremlins she’s only read about. I blame it on ghosts I can see.

That, or the bench was drunk. I just hope the tread marks were worth it.