Apologies for disappearing like that.  Again.  Remember how I was getting ready to assess what needed to be done before Christmas a few weeks ago when I posted last?  Yeah.  I was behind.  Way behind.  And now I’m not!  Mostly.  Also, a great big portion of last week got eaten up by preparations for our now-annual Christmas party, which went off with hardly a hitch last Friday.  We had 39 people in our rather small apartment at one time.  It was hoppin’.  Unfortunately, despite my best intentions and the fact that I had the camera out on a table so I wouldn’t forget, I didn’t take even one photo of the entire night.

Saturday morning I would rather have not left my bed at all.  The week’s work was a little crazy on me, and I took the day off to cuddle on the couch with the magic blanket and the dog and a book.

Sunday morning went more or less as usual, with the usual church activities.  But the highlight, really, was the children’s mini-pageant.  It was hilarious–unintentionally so–thanks to the littlest kids, who proved to be an amazingly unruly flock of sheep.  I really hope someone got it on video and can post it on YouTube, because it almost made me cry, I was laughing so hard.

Anyway, the rest of the day went pretty quickly, thanks to our friends lending us their copy of LEGO Star Wars.

This morning I revisited the lame query letter I may or may not have mentioned on the blog before–it was still lame, so I ditched it and have the beginning of a (hopefully) less-lame version in the works.

I still need to wrap Matt’s presents, and mail some things for people who know their stuff will be a bit late, and buy stocking stuffers for Matt.  We usually do that in a shopping trip together–go to Target and split up for a half an hour, check out separately, and hide our purchases on the ride home so the stocking presents stay secret.  But that’s about it.

I’m looking forward to getting back to writing.  I’ve missed it these last few weeks.  It’s good to feel that way about my job of choice.

And that’s about all there is to it.  More soon!  Much sooner than two weeks.  I pinky swear.

Today has been one of those days. You know, the kind that start out with lovely intentions of rising when the alarm first sounds and gleefully attacking the to-do list like the ninja I sometimes am. And then gets derailed by sleeping in an hour and a half and puttering around not getting much done aside from thinking about everything I need to get done, and reading a book instead of dealing with it all.

It’s frustrating. I have an excuse, and it’s a pretty valid one too, but it seems lame when I type it out so I’m not sharing. :-P

But seriously, now. It’s time to shake things up a bit. Get things done. Now is the time.  Today is the day, and all that.

Thanks. I needed this pep talk. You’re such a good friend for giving it to me.

I have been lax in my bloggelation duties.

Yes, I totally made up that word.

No, I have not been lax in everything in my life.  In fact, I have gotten quite a lot of writing done and read several books and played quite a bit of Diablo 2 and rearranged the office and done other worthwhile things, I’m sure.  You should know by now that I can never remember many specifics very long after the fact.  I can hardly remember our wedding date (no, seriously, I had to think really really hard about it just the other day).

Suffice to say that I have been busy.

Also, I have not been very good at getting to bed when I really should, which means I wake up a bit later than I really should and don’t have time to blog before I start the day’s writing.  And I have finally placed working on the novel above blogging in the priorities.  That’s good, yes?  Yay noveling!  But it does mean the blogging has suffered.  Next goal: Getting to bed on time so I can do EVERYTHING!

But I digress.

The real reason for this post is to fill time before I have to pick Matt up from class and we go to a meeting at church tonight.  No, wait.  That wasn’t supposed to be the real reason.  I mean, it’s part of the reason, but. . . . I should stop babbling and wander around to my point.

My point is, where has been a recent addition to the Whitt Household!  That’s right, folks, something else for me to kill!

She’s a very pretty flower plant in a pot, and I’ve named her Georgette.  Here’s a picture of her (with Shiloh, who looks slightly annoyed because I made her sit there and stay while I took a photo and she can’t imagine why):

Yes, those are Matt’s psychoanalysis textbooks on the table.  No, as far as I know he is not psychoanalyzing me (we can all hope).

At any rate, Georgette was gifted to me with the instructions that I was not to intentionally kill her.  My friends know my track record with plants.  I did not feel it was appropriate to point out that I never intend to kill any of my plants.  She’s lasted out her first week and a half, though, which is pretty good in terms of flower-plant lifespans in this household.  I have no idea what to expect in terms of her annual life-cycle, though.  Will she bloom all the time?  How much water is too much?  Her blooms get wilty when I don’t water her every day, but are some of those yellowy brown leaves a result of too much water?  I just don’t know.

Georgette sits on the TV table near the porch windows because she seems to do better with a bit of light, and that’s the most consistent place for her to get it without being frozen on the porch.  I will keep you updated on her progress or decline, as the case may be.

Bob2, for those who are concerned, seems to be doing fine.  He’s still a bit sunburned from where I left him out on the porch this summer, and I’m not certain he’ll ever recover, but he seems to be plugging along just fine.

And now I will think about cleaning the kitchen, which is a mess.  Or maybe I’ll read a bit more. . . . Decisions, decisions.

I apologize for my slackeriness lately.  I promised photos and other semi-exciting news and absolutely failed to produce on either.  More than that, I waited more than a week to apologize.

I blame the paint.  No, seriously, I painted my brother’s dining room last week.  I’m fairly certain the fumes didn’t get to me too much, but the painting and surrounding activities (like spectacularly burning a batch of sugar to their nice saucepan–I really am going to tell that story sooner or later) sort of got in the way.  And then I was flying home and enjoying the company of my husband and our dog, and everything got a bit out of hand.

I live a wild life, can you tell?

At any rate, the writing is progressing and I got a satisfying amount of stuff done *aside* from the writing yesterday as well, so that always makes Betsy a happy girl.

Also, I’m working on reorganizing our LibraryThing so that I don’t have to use both LT and Goodreads (nothing against Goodreads, there are some things I like about it very much, but I’m trying to simplify) AND you will actually be able to access my 2009 reading list, the link for which has been nonfunctional pretty much since I posted it.

Finally, those of you who read directly from my website as opposed to through the various feeds have probably already noticed that the look of the website has changed–again!  But I’m a big fan of this one and it seems to all function properly and I have a feeling the new look is going to stick around for a while.

Now, time for a quick bowl of cereal, making some tea, and then writing!  So lovely to make progress.

A lot of my “free” time recently has gotten sucked up in preparation for the sermon I delivered this morning. It went well, I think, and I can now look forward again.

1) We got new phones! And unlimited texting! Whee!

2) I caved and joined Twitter. I am @betsywhitt over there. I suppose I should put one of their little buttons in my sidebar.

3) Things are good. I have very few complaints.

4) It is time for bed very, very soon.

It seems that every so often–sometimes longer, sometimes shorter–I find it necessary to step back and refocus. People who don’t know me very well laugh when I give them my standard self-description: tall, blonde, and easily distracted. “Easily distracted?” they say, “You read huge books in one sitting!” As if that’s the pinnacle of focus and attention. Seriously, people, I read books in one sitting (or as close as I can get) because if I don’t, I’ll get distracted, put it down and more than likely forget I ever intended to finish it. And because it’s a convenient way to be distracted from other things I’m supposed to be doing.

Sometimes I’m conscious of allowing distractions to edge their way in, and other times I look up and realize I have no idea how I got so far off track.

So I’m refocusing. Matt’s out of town again this week on a nice long wilderness backpacking trip courtesy of Solid Rock Outdoor Ministries, so I’ve got plenty of time and space to clear out the mental cobwebs.

Family: Happily, one of the aspects of my life that hasn’t slipped much lately. Goal is to maintain and deepen time/interaction with family.

Career: Two aspects of this, the writing and the day job. As the day job looks much different now than it did 6 weeks ago, and looks more and more likely to disappear sooner rather than later, I can dedicate more time to the writing. In the current job market, I’m leaning toward investing myself in writing rather than wasting time and energy trying to find a nonexistent position. Regardless, I need to set short and long-term goals for my writing, and I need to find someone to crack the whip and make me stick to them once I set them.

Finance: We spend more money than we ought. We have a peculiar financial situation, and it often results in a rather lax view toward budgeting and savings. I’m taking steps to adjust our mentality on that, beginning with trying out the MVelopes.com service.

Health and Wellbeing: I caught up on sleep last week, and it’s a wonderful thing. I’ve also gotten myself swimming semi-regularly at the apartment complex pool. I’m working on setting up a regular time to take Shiloh to the dog park, which gives us both exercise, and I’m really really (really) going to recommit to my WiiFit schedule.

Recreation: Much of this also falls under exercise, since much of our recreation is active, but I’m making sure I block out time for reading. We also got an XBOX 360 recently, and Fable 2 allows us to log into the same game together and kill bad guys. I’ve STILL got a big unfinished quilt that needs to be completed. And I do very much like meeting people for coffee.

Personal: I am learning about the care and keeping of cacti (turns out they do best in steady, diffused light, not direct sunlight, so Bob2 is back in the office) and I am contemplating installing a window-box-style herb garden on the porch railing, if I can be reasonably assured I won’t kill them all. My writing definitely counts in this category, too, for a variety of reasons.

Friendship: I generally operate with a bit more distance than some people in terms of friendships, so once I plug back into my “usual” sources of information and communication, there’s not much of a course correction that’s going to happen here. There are a few people, though, who I want to be better friends with, and I’ll be intentional about getting together with them.

Community: For all intents and purposes, the church congregation serves as our community. I’d love to get more connected in the neighborhood and the town eventually, but right now it’s just not possible. I’ll be keeping an eye out, though, and laying the foundation to move on that when the time is right. Meanwhile, maintaining relationships with people in the church, our small group, etc., are the standard.

Household: Goal is to do a general sweep of the house every night to tidy up – clean the kitchen, run the dishwasher if necessary, put the stuff that always lands on the dining room table away, corral the dog toys, find the remotes, etc. Once a week laundry and vacuum, and we’ll be cutting back drastically on eating out.

Spiritual: This one’s between me and God, but it’s definitely part of my consideration in refocusing and being deliberate about how I spend my time.

Maybe I should just rename my blog. Something like “One Million Reasons Betsy Doesn’t Blog Regularly”. That would be appropriate.

Since my last set of excuses, work stuff has gotten sorted out (which required quite a few hours of meetings to finally settle on, and will probably be completely reworked again this week), but it made this a rather stressful week. Add some . . . hmm. We’ll call it “excitement”. That’s a nice word that can encompass both good and stressful things . . . from Matt’s half of our world, meetings, a dinner with friends, two barbeques, and the usual church obligations, and I’ve felt a bit stretched this week.

This week looks much the same; dinner tomorrow night with folks who are becoming good friends, band rehearsal Tuesday, going-away shindig for friends on Wednesday, and preparation for a weekend retreat from Friday midday through Sunday. Plus my usual work stuff, a resolution to get my tush back in gear on the manuscript work, and putting together the kernels of ideas that will grow into the sermon I’m preaching in late August at church.

Bob2 was looking rather sickly after several weeks out on the porch railing, so we brought him back inside, since he seemed to thrive there. Fingers crossed that I haven’t killed another one.

Speaking of being busy, I should get ready for dinner tonight with our small group so when dessert comes out of the oven I’ll be ready to get in the car and head over.

I haven’t felt much like blogging lately. There are times when I’m doing interesting things, or funny things happen to me, and I have a lot of fun relating them to whomever happens to stop by to pay attention to my little corner of the world, or at least what I tell of it here.

There are also times when not much out of the ordinary is happening, or when I’m not in the right mindset to spin ordinary things as funny or interesting. Sometimes that’s because I’m just not feelin’ it (and with depression, it’s hard to tell when one of those days will come) and sometimes it’s because I’m just plain busy with mundane things like work and running errands and doing laundry and flying across the country to help with a family tragedy. Incidentally, that last is the main reason for the last week’s worth of silence.

Also, I’m not really that funny of a person. And there are only so many funny things that can happen to a person in a given amount of time. I don’t know if that resets every few months or what, but sometimes it seems like I use up my funny quota and I have to wait until the program resets before I can have more. Because really, there are only so many jokes one can make about laundry before it gets really, really old. At least, there are only so many in a household of two adults plus a dog. I would imagine that adding one or more children to the mix would add a commensurate level of adventure to which stains might be found, how they were acquired, and various descriptions of attempts to clean them. But really, people, I live a pretty quiet life. I suppose (until I use up my quota) I have a knack for giving stories a humorous spin, but that’s really all it is–spin.

Holey shamoley, I just about had a heart attack. You see, I’m on the plane flying from Syracuse to Chicago (O’Hare, thanks for asking) and although I have a novel, I’m not particularly interested in starting it right now. Although I have manuscript pages printed and ready for editing, my brain just isn’t settled enough to concentrate. I tried working my quick crossword puzzles (I like the quick ones–they make me feel smart) but lost interest more or less as soon as the plane left the ground. And I have my AlphaSmart, because I entertained pipe dreams of lots of lovely time to get work done and maybe even write a scene or two, but again, my brain is not cooperating. So I’m writing a blog entry which I will post when we get home, either tonight or tomorrow morning, depending on where I stashed the cable I need to transfer things from here to there. Anyway, the near-miss on the heart attack was the captain coming on the super duper loud speakers to say something or other, which of course I didn’t pay attention to because even though it was muffled by my headphones, he scared the cheese out of me and I had to stuff it all back in before the flight attendants noticed the mess.

If they’re both women, can I call them stewardesses? Or is that universally politically incorrect now? Do I need to use a gender non-specific term when they are the same gender? These are the things I ponder as we fly over Lake Erie. Look! There’s Canada!

And now I think it would be best if I stopped, or else you’ll all just get a running commentary of the terrain between Erie, PA and Chicago. And everybody knows northern Ohio isn’t very interesting. Also, don’t tell the people who live there, but it smells funky. Seriously. I’ve driven through there tons of times, and it’s almost as bad as North Jersey. Don’t tell the north Jersey people, either. It’ll be our little secret. Me, you, the fence post, and the rest of the internet. Yeah.

See? I should have stopped typing at least a paragraph ago. Why didn’t you stop me? Why?? WHY???

I am a vain, fickle creature.

My blog stats did something funky about three weeks ago, and now even though I know people are stopping by, I don’t get any record of it with wp-stats, which is the widget I use. Which means I don’t pay as much attention, and I don’t post, and everything is really quite silly.

I think I know how to fix the stats issue (thanks Will), but unfortunately I have neither the time nor the burning inclination to do so at the moment. Still, I will try to be better about blogging. Because it’s fun, and I get to tell funny stories, and that’s good for me.

Things have been busy. I’ve been trying to catch up on getting things done that have fallen by the wayside in the last few months, and Matt is coming up toward the end of his semester at school, so we’re both a little bit brain-dead.

Also, Shiloh has turned into the neediest dog ever. If we’re sitting somewhere, she’s right beside us, looking at us mournfully, as if we don’t regularly pet her and feed her and take her for walks and, recently, at least once a week to the big dog park with WATER! To run in! I really need to remember to take the camera with us one of these times.

But still, she wants to be rightbeside us all the time, as you can see in this lovely photo, where she found Matt working on the floor and just made herself at home:

Silly puppa.

So I’m in Houston; no problems with my flight. I was moderately concerned as we took off, which was very odd, since normally I’m very comfortable and happy when flying. But a few weeks ago, a plane crashed on takeoff at the Denver airport, and though I didn’t think of it until the moments right before liftoff, I breathed a sigh of relief when we were safely in the air.

The guy next to me tried to flirt with me, but didn’t do a very good job. I wasn’t rude or anything, he just never did anything other than make comments he thought were witty and ask why I was flying to Houston. Honest. Then, in his last real effort, he told me that if he fell asleep and started snoring, I could just elbow him and wake him up. That was just under halfway through the trip, as drinks were passed out, and since he’d already been asleep and showed absolutely no tendency toward snoring, I just thanked him and refrained from further comment.

Then he noticed my wedding and engagement rings (it’s not like I was hiding them, and he was even sitting on my left), and he said, “Oh, it looks like you’re already married.”

“Yep, I am.”

Silence.

He slept most of the rest of the flight. His sister was sitting on my other side, and I think she was mildly amused. When it comes down to it, I was a little more than mildly amused, but I managed not to show it.

So now I’m waiting at the gate where the rest of my immediately family will allegedly appear in four hours. And I have four hours to fritter away. There are no out-of-the-way seats that also have a power outlet nearby, so I’m camped out in the middle of everything with my feet propped on my new carry-on suitcase, and I’m starting to lose circulation in my legs. I have two books with me, but neither seems terribly, immediately appealing right now. But I could read them and maintain feeling in my legs. It’s possible that they don’t seem appealing because I’ve seen copies of Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s new release, Glitter Baby, all over the place in the airport stores, and I’d really like to read it. So tempting to just go ahead and buy a copy. Luckily for my wallet, it’s a fair hike back to any of the booksellers’ from the gate area here. On the other hand, I do have four hours to fritter away.

Decisions, decisions.

Oh, I uploaded the final update of my 2008 reading list – follow the links at the top o’ the page to find the list of 167 books I finished this year.

Okay, putting away the laptop now to save my circulation. Toodles!