Where I am

The short answer is that, among other things, I've been busy fixing up the inside of the house. What start as a simple organization project (I honestly believed that all I was going to do was clean out a couple of closets), turned into a long-overdue overhaul of the entire house, involving three rooms being completely repainted, and two others having their trim finally painted (after starting that project a dozen years ago and never finishing it), replacing cracked tile, refinishing some patches of ceiling, and finally, buying furniture for rooms I should have furnished years ago. Here are a couple of "after" pictures from the makeover blitz:

 The new library. This was mostly an empty room.

The bedroom, which, while not empty before, was a mishmash of junk. Less so now.

I suppose I should have written about the process, but the truth is that while it was going on, I was working at something of a fevered pitch and didn't want to stop to chronicle it on the blog. Suffice it to say that I more or less turned the whole house upside down, gave it a couple of good shakes to get rid of the detritus, and then put it back together again in a more orderly, cleaner fashion. It felt good.

I've also been reluctant to blog because I am at present working on a longer writing project and want to put as much of my creative energy into that as possible. This means that posting here may be sporadic for a while. I am not shutting things down, though, as spring is blowing in on her dusty wings, and that means gardening. Gardening, for some reason, always seems to lead to blogging for me. So don't worry that I've dropped off the face of the earth. I'm still here; I've just turned inward for awhile.