I’ve been quiet lately. Mostly that’s because although I’ve gotten things done, they haven’t been very interesting. I’ve made minimal progress with the manuscript revisions, which is really frustrating. But the time hasn’t been a waste.

I researched options and interviewed several people for the job of training Shiloh more extensively. Not only is it part of my 2010 resolutions list, but it’s also becoming rather important for optimally enjoying our life with her. We’ll be moving forward with lessons and daily training homework in a few weeks; until then both our chosen trainer and we have rather hectic schedules.

I also researched our options for getting better TV for less money, and tried to enact changes on that front, but the dastardly tree outside the office window is directly in the line of sight for both satellite companies, which means we’re stuck with the stupid cable company. All that took about five times as much time as I would have hoped, and in the end we’re not saving any money or getting better service. Stinky stinky.

The recent experiment on whether I can pull off the full-time writer gig have yielded their results. It seems that I go through natural spurts and dry spells of lots of writing and then none at all, and those happen regardless of whether I’m also holding down a day job. Thus, it makes no sense for me to not be bringing in money regularly. Thussity thus, I’ll be putting out feelers for part-time job opportunities. I’ve got some ideas of places to start and am not in a huge hurry, so I feel like I’m in a decent position to find a job I’ll like and be able to stay in for a long time.

Otherwise, I’ve been reading, taking care of various chores and tasks around the house that generally get put off and are nice to take care of, and doing all my normal church things.

Decent progress, but not interesting. How’s your month going?

Last week, we visited Matt’s family in central New York. Once again, I took the camera and once again, I took no photos with it. I need a camera grafted into my hand or something. At any rate, it was a good visit, full of conversations and laughter and visiting and cuteness (the latter mostly on the part of our niece Tori, who is 19 months old). It was a good visit, and it was good to come home at the end.

But what I’m really writing to tell you all is that Shiloh can now (informally) be known as a working dog! More accurately, she will be doing one of her favorite things, and I will be paid to get her there and keep her under control during the one day we have been contracted for.

And now it’s time to play LEGO Star Wars with Matt, so that tantalizing tidbit will have to hold you over until I write out the whole story tomorrow.

It’s been a busy month and I think the best way to sum it all up is in photos.  Let’s go, then.

We decorated our tree on December 6th.  Pretty, yes?  I liked it:

We also decorated our windows and porch with lights, and appropriated the community bushes in front of our porch.  Viola!

And I did a LOT of baking. This is just one day’s collection, out of six or seven.

For Christmas, Shiloh got a new bone with real (!) meaty bits still on it. She also watched us carefully to be sure we did not steal her priceless treasure.

And I got a horse! He’s a bit small but, you know, we’re working in baby steps. His package dubbed him ‘Houston’, and he now resides on my desk in the office.

The next day, we used our Christmas money to buy a new (big!) TV. For reference, here’s the old setup:

Here’s the new setup, taken just a few minutes ago as Matt plays video games:

The big blue thing is still with us, it just traded places with what is now the media cabinet and is doing honorable duty housing baking pans and serving dishes in the dining room.

Pretty much as soon as the new TV was hooked up, we had some guys over for a gaming extravaganza. The boys had a great deal of fun killing Nazi zombies, and I did a great deal of cleaning in other parts of the house.

To compensate for all this television watching and video gaming, we went snowshoeing with some friends up near Brainard Lake.

For part of the time, we made Shiloh wear her booties. She doesn’t like them much, but they protect her feet from clumping snow and shards of ice in the winter, and from cacti and other prickly things in the summer, so we’re trying to get her more used to them. I wish I’d gotten video of the first few minutes she was wearing them. It was priceless.

Along the snowshoe trail, which in the summer is actually an access road to a reservoir, there were several signs which made one policy very clear:

Wait. What? No shooting, except for the people who would logically be shooting anyway. I mean, I realize there are plenty of mountain folk who go out and shoot cans or their friends or themselves in the foot, but do you really think they’re going to pay attention to a little sign? It made me laugh.

Nothing very interesting has happened since then. Video games have been played, laundry has been done, the dog has been walked. I’m trying to get back on the writing productivity bandwagon, but it’s been a bit stop-and-go. Not hopeless, just slower than I’d like.

Today I vanquished… er… assembled… this cute little table, which will help provide horizontal space that was lost when the TV cabinets got exchanged. See? Cute! Assembled! No missing or extra pieces! Go me!

And that’s the last month, in photos.

It’s time for one of my favorite blogging traditions (how lame am I? please don’t answer). The first sentence from the first entry of every month during 2009:

• January – So I’m in Houston; no problems with my flight.
• February – I haven’t been doing a very good job of following the news lately.
• March – The kitchen is a mess this morning.
• April – Aussie writer Colin Rawsell has posted an excellent entry in his blog about depression and its effects on writers.
• May – I am a vain, fickle creature.
• June – Apologies yet again for failing in my blog schedule… I’ve uploaded more photos from the trip and made comments over on flickr, in the Utah album.
• July – I haven’t posted in quite a while.
• August – Made up a salad tonight to take to dinner at our friends’ house.
• September – For those of you actually reading this via my website rather than Facebook or a feed, you might notice that the blog is lacking in its usual visual charms.
• October – I have been lax in my bloggelation duties.
• November – It’s gratifying to go back and read things I’ve written here and think, “Huh, sometimes I’m pretty funny.”
• December – Well December has come in with a bang here–first of all, my sister-in-law delivered a healthy baby boy in the wee hours of the morning, so that makes me an aunt again!

Also, Jenny Rae Rappaport posted today about how for people our age (I’m within a year of her) the last decade was full of milestones and turning points as we went about figuring out what life’s about and how we’re going to get on with things. So here’s the list of momentous things (for me) that have happened in the last ten years, roughly in order:

1. Lived in Hungary for 4 months
2. Graduated high school
3. Went to four colleges
4. Still managed to graduate in 4 years
5. Learned to quilt
6. Learned to ski
7. Figured out I do like physical exertion, sometimes :)
8. Bought a car
9. Spent 5 weeks exploring Europe
10. Got married!
11. Moved 18 times
12. Lived in 5 states
13. Finally found Home
14. Got diagnosed and went on medication for depression
15. Got a Masters’ degree
16. Went into debt
17. Trained a puppy
18. Wrote two novels
19. Rewrote one
20. Figured out what in the world I’m doing

I’m working on a real update with actual information and maybe even photos that should go up before the weekend.  I know, I know.  You’re thinking, “Dearest Betsy, you always dangle these promises but you never follow through!”  Well, I’ll try really hard this time.  I promise.  Unless I get busy and forget.  Then I probably won’t try very hard, but I will feel really bad.

Also?  Thanks to Maggie Steifvater and her evil insidious blog posts about it, I am seriously considering some resolutions for the next year.  And by “seriously considering” I mean “I feel like I should but I have no idea what they should be so I’m thinking hard.”

That’s about all for tonight.

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.

Why is it that oversee and overlook are not the same? But something that has been overlooked is an oversight?

These are the sort of things I think about.

For the last few days I have had the niggling feeling that I must be behind on the various Christmassy things I usually do.  Things like buying Christmas gifts so they can be sent east to relatives in time for the 25th and sending out Christmas cards or, for that matter, having Christmas cards to send in the first place.  I have no concrete idea whether I actually AM behind, however, because I haven’t had the time to actually check.

Rather, I haven’t taken the time to survey the situation and determine exactly how far behind I am. I’m not especially looking forward to it, since I have a feeling it will produce a mild to moderate feeling of panic, but I recognize the necessity of the exercise.

So that’s my project for this morning: figure out what needs to be done, by when, and then get to work.  If I get that done, I’ll be working on a query letter for the manuscript.  My first attempt, last week, was Super Lame.  And I have an outside, unbiased opinion on that as well, so don’t try to tell me I’m exaggerating.  I’m not.  It was LAME.

Now, to find last year’s list of people who got gifts and cards….

Just because I haven’t posted any photos to make you all drool lately, here’s what Matt and I had for lunch, with Ritz crackers:

Well December has come in with a bang here–first of all, my sister-in-law delivered a healthy baby boy in the wee hours of the morning, so that makes me an aunt again!  I’ve only seen one photo, but Josiah Perrin Wright is definitely a cutie.

Also, on a less positive, I think I’ve identified the major side effect from which I will suffer while I’m on Drug D.  It is less disruptive than inability to sleep, but no more enjoyable, and falls firmly in the quarter of Too Much Information For The Public. I’m still debating whether or not to call the doctor now or wait a few weeks to see whether the effect fades as my body adjusts to the new drugs.

Finally, a few weeks ago I received a summons to jury duty for the county with instructions to call the magic phone number on the night before my scheduled date to be sure I needed to report.  I do.  I have to be there early, and I have to deal with rush hour traffic and the potential of snow falling overnight, and in general I’m having a good time being dramatic and grumpy about the whole thing.  I do not relish the idea of sitting in a room all day waiting to be picked or not be picked, especially since I have real life things to catch up on at home, things that I put off all last week because I was finishing my manuscript!  I suspect the chairs will be uncomfortable.  That alone should give me the prerogative to be grumpy.

At any rate, I will not be around tomorrow on any of my usual internet haunts and, if I get picked to serve on a jury, I might be scarce for a few days, juggling time at the courthouse with handling things at home that usually get done at a more leisurely pace.

So, if I’m not around, I wish you all a lovely week.

I’d like to extend my thanks to all those who serve and have served in the armed forces. I may not agree with the government on all points, but the individuals who serve our country deserve a great deal more than simple respect.

So, to those I know personally and those I don’t: Thank you. We owe you more than we know. You have my appreciation.