all the things

Where were we? The last week has been a confusing muddle of emotions. There's the book, there's my grandmother, and there is the upcoming chaos of Holy Week when you are Anglican and your husband happens to be in the choir. Palm Sunday includes the morning service and an evening dinner to which I am bringing a couple dozen hard-boiled eggs (and I need to check how long to boil them because lately, every time I hard-boil an egg, it comes out soft-boiled, which makes me feel like an idiot). Thursday through Sunday are booked for various services, mostly in the evening, and I have no idea about whether J. is expected to be at the contemplative services earlier in the week.

I got new glasses, which I'm still adjusting to. The slightly different shape of the frames and the unscratched lenses mean that I feel a bit disoriented. Everything is startlingly clear, but the edges of the clear vision are different than what I've been used to for the last five years. The old glasses are getting new, unscratched lenses once we figure out where we want to buy them, and then, for the first time in my life, I'll have a spare set of glasses.

E. is putting garbled syllables together in clumps that sound suspiciously like sentences, which makes the linguist in me very happy, and makes the parent in me frustrated because I still can't understand what she's saying, even if the intonation is spot-on for English sentence structure.

The book has been sent off to several reviewers; I'm half-way convinced they're all going to give it a single star, or no stars whatsoever. And I need to find a few more bloggers willing to review it and I haven't pulled myself together enough to . It's time to get back to work on Book 2, and I'm considering doing a short story project, too, just because. I need the practice; if I'm going to improve as a writer, I'll have to write more. The latest writing project has been a journaling thing that I have no desire to publish, so I need to change gears and work on something else.

We're driving down to Portland in a couple of weeks, so I've been trying to plan ahead for that. I actually found myself buying foundation at Shopper's today. It took ages for me to find the kind I wanted (something that wasn't hideously expensive and that also functioned as sunscreen), and then even longer to find a colour that I think will work. Naturally, none of the testers were in the colour I needed to try. I hope you appreciate that I'm actually going to wear makeup to your memorial, Grandma. You always commented on how nice I looked when I wore it. And now I have to do a few trial runs to ensure I won't look like a raccoon. Sigh. Stage makeup was fun back in high school. Regular makeup has never been fun, except for when Grandma let me play Beauty Parlour in her bathroom with all her makeup, when I was small.

And with that, I'm done for the day. Everything aches and my child is running around wearing nothing but a diaper and a swimsuit top.