I Love the Smell of Diesel Fuel in the Morning

Yes, just a play on words from Robert Duvall's iconic character in Apocolypse Now. However, it's pertinent in my little world these days.

So naturally you remember the trees that were downed in my yard in June. How could you forget? Well, we worked on them for quite some time, but then the weather (which none of us in the contintental US could escape from) turned rather warm. So all labor ceased on the removal of the trees.

But then came the monsoons. Which flooded my basement. And my mother's. So, more work there to deal with. 26 straight days of rain. I kid you not.

And then, because I had nothing to do one morning, (big fat HA!) I decided to rip up the rug in my bathroom. Yes, I know, EWWWW, but I did not put the rug there, the previous owner did and I decided to take it out because, well, EWWWW.

But what I found when I ripped up the rug (which by the way was very nice and only a few years old) was that the bolts on the bottom of the toilet that were hinged on the floor, were loose. So much so, the toilet was barely hanging on to the drain. Needless to say, there was a puddle of water on the floor under the toilet, the rug was moldy, and damp, and just EWWWW.

So, I had to scrape the linoleum up to allow the floor to dry, which means that I need to put a new floor in my bathroom. (Which was my intention of ripping up the rug in the first place, but now I need to figure out how to make the floor level.)

Let this be a lesson to all of you. Make sure the bolts are tight under your toilet. (You know those little cap things under the bowl, well, lift those up, the bolts are under there.)

And then, after all that, the weather finally gave way and my father decided it was time to move the big stumps the boys couldn't break or saw, up to the last remaining pile on the street. He fired up the John Deere and I pushed, rolled, fulcrumed, heaved, and hefted (how's that for action words) those ##%^&*#$ stumps into the bucket and he took them up to the street. Needless to say, I breathed in a lot of diesel fumes and was very ill for the remainder of the day.

Fun times in North Carolina this summer. (I bet you all thought I was living a charmed life down here, didn't you? Sitting on the couch, eating bonbons, watching the soap opera channel.)

As for other news, writing news that is, I wrote a short story. I'm very happy with it (well, I will be after revisions) however, I'm not sure I'm going to publish it. I mean, I will, eventually, but it's not my usual short story. It deals with religion of all things, and the supernatural, and why I wrote it, I'll never know, but it got stuck in my craw and I had to write it. So there.

I've also been working on the Not So Secret Project Story for the winners of the auction at my daughter's school. It's coming along, after how many needless hours of research into the French persecution of the Catholics and the Nobility during the Reign of Terror (1789 - 1795 or so). I can't tell you how many hours I logged and then I barely used any of it.

BUT, big but here, no matter how much I say it was needless and useless, it was still worth it. What little I did use, added value to the story because it's true. And the facts were valid. I even went into the Lithuanian side of the whole thing (because there are two Lithuanian princesses in the story) so hopefully, this will all be worth it when it's done.

As I said, it's not my usual Regency romance, but there is a romance embedded within it, and I'm hoping it turns out the way they want it to. I'm not really sure what they expect because neither of the women read Regency romance, so who knows. I'm just writing what they dictated to me. Pirates, kittens, handkerchiefs up sleeves, and teaching.

Hey, I'm thinking that would be a great meme. Pirates, kittens, handkerchiefs up sleeves, and teaching. Anyone want to play?

I also had the astounding revelation of the opening to another story I'm going to start working on this fall. I mean, I had the idea for the story, but really nothing else. But then, just as I was going to sleep one night, the first four lines came to me, so I jumped out of bed and wrote them down. For once, I did the right thing instead of trying to remember it the next morning. So yay for me.

So, that's it for me. Work, work, and more work. But the trees are gone now, we can finally cut the grass, the basements are dry, the laundry is done, and I'm sitting in my little writer cave pounding away at the keyboard.

I'm not sure when I'll be coming back to this blog full time, or even IF I'll come back full time, but if you want to read other things I'm babbling about, I post every Thursday on my Robynne Rand blog and every Sunday on my Anne Gallagher Regency blog.

How about you? What have you been doing this summer? And if you're going to tell me you spent a month at the beach -- listen, you know I love you, but I really don't want to hear it. You'll just make me cry.

Anne Gallagher (c) 2013