Okay, I admit, I got a little distracted. If you're wondering what happened to me, well, here he is:
Yep, this little guy arrived five months ago. And about nine months before that, my reading interests strangely morphed from fiction to birth stories and baby development books. That said, I also finished writing that novel! I'm on my second edit. I even had an outsider read it. (That handing your precious novel over to an outside reader thing is not for wimps.)

It's a million times harder to write fiction now, just in case you're wondering. I have some windows when the babe's asleep or occupying himself by sucking on his hand or something, but those windows are few and far between. The thing is, though, hanging out with him is so hands down the best thing I've ever done that I'm okay with the strains it puts on my writing life. And now that he's a bit older, and his nap times a bit more regular, it's getting easier. Or so I tell myself.

Okay, so I let another two months pass without even a thought about the blog. I would apologize about this to my blogging audience except that lackadaisical bloggers like me do not have blogging audiences. I've been feeling the desire to freelance. I'm still plugging away on my novel; I've written close to 90,000 words, and the plot and multiple subplots, are nearing completion. I'm greatful I've had this time to write a novel, while working three-quarters time at another job. I know it is a luxury to write what you want. My parents are freelance writers, and they don't have much time for novel-writing, as they have to make sure bills get paid. Their lives are not cozy, not insured. Paychecks do not arrive like clockwork every two weeks. So why does part of me want to jump into that world, to see what I can make of my writing when I absolutely have to?

Maybe it's just been a strange two weeks. We returned from a trip to New York City, and we've been having trouble re-adjusting to our sleepy little city. How can it compare to sitting next to Naomi Watts at an Ethiopian restaurant in the West Village, or to walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in the drizzle, or to watching flocks of tiny canary-yellow cabs huddle at stoplights from the top of the Empire State Building? Even my beloved Oregon, at it's best right now, alive with spring flowers, so lush and abundant that I couldn't begin to explain such beauty, has seemed almost lackluster in comparison to that electric city.

Then I heard from a long-lost old boyfriend, and it was strange, because, by definition, this is a strange occurence. I would go into it here, but then I'd have to stop feeling so superior to the people who go into such things on blogs, and frankly, I'm just not ready to do that.

As usual, I'm trying to decide whether to move or stay where I am. My husband and I - we're a restless couple, always falling in love with every place we visit. "If we lived here...." is our favorite vacation refrain. So we're at it again, our wheels churning with what-ifs. So things are strange now, and the world is pregnant with possibilities.

Evidently January is gone. And half of February too. The crocuses and a few brave daffodils have sprouted and the rain feels rather more renewing than the dark December torrents of days past.

I discovered Virginia Woolf last night. She'd been hiding in my library. I'd never read anything by her - not a word, a sentence, a paragraph. In college I studied history, a rebellion of sorts from my parents - former literarature majors with rooms of dusty books who'd graduated to become impoverished writers with drawers of unfinished manuscripts. I am cursed with being a practical sort of person. In the same way that flower gardens have never seemed quite as useful as vegetable or herb gardens, literature didn't seem at all purposeful to me back then, with all its metaphor and imagery and allusion. Why dilly-dally with make-believe when there were so many actual things of importance to examine?

Now, history was practical. What could be more relevant than what happened yesterday? The more recent the better of course, so it had to be American twentieth century: the suffragettes, the Great Depression, the world wars, the Atomic bomb, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, civil rights, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran Contra.... It still gives me a zip - all the things humans have done, all the layers of civilizations built one atop the other. We humans are so busy, like carpenter ants, building and tearing down, fidgeting with one thing or another - be it roads or bombs or symphonies. Strangely now it is the ancient history that excites me more though.

But literature - I think it's been my true love all along. It turns out history may have always just been my mistress.

It's the last day of 2006. I'm ready for change. Perhaps the new year is as good a time for that as any.

Books I may be reading in the new year:

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
The Family that Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max
The Ghost at the Table by Suzanne Berne
The Uses of Enchantment by Heidi Julavits
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
The Last Season by Eric Blehm
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

Books I've read lately:

Booked to Die by John Dunning
Providence of a sparrow by Chris Chester
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin (half of it)
Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
Radical Simplicity by Jim Merkel
Slow is Beautiful by Cecile Andrews
Quiet People in a Noisy Year by John Remmerde
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen

I want to build a house. I often become distracted by new projects as you might have gathered from my last post. New interests assert themselves now and then, and then they are all I can think of for weeks. And yes, for one fleeting moment, the blog was one of these interests. I started designing templates and imagining the most poignant blog in the blogosphere, but well, hmmm....anyway.

So now building a house has strangleholded my imagination, preferably out of earth - earthbags or strawbale or cob. The only problem is the land, the building codes, oh and my wee lack of building skills. I love the idea, though, of sculpting a house as I would a teapot, creating my own shelter as a piece of art. I took a hand-built teapot class a few years ago, and made five lopsided, and yet sort of attractive, teapots. No, this does not mean my house would be lopsided and sort of attractive. Teapots are hard, okay. The point is I like working with clay.

I was thinking that Americans who were like me 200 years ago - and by that I mean, ahem, varied in their interests - might have had the upper edge. Afterall, on the frontier, people had to build their own houses, make soap, milk cows, garden, take care of babies, etc. I think I'm just having trouble adjusting to this new-fangled specialization of labor thing.

On a happy note, I hit 48,000 words yesterday in the novel I'm writing. The typical novel is between 60,000 words and 100,000 words, so I still have a long road in front of me (not to mention the editing process, where I'll probably delete many of those precious 48,000 words), but it sort of feels like I'm getting somewhere at this very moment, so hurray for that!

Oh yeah, and I'm taking a Spanish class and trying to learn how to sew. I didn't have much patience for knitting or crocheting, which everyone else seems so enamored with these days, and for some reason - to be honest, I sometimes wonder what that reason was - sewing sounded like fun. It is a little fun and a lot hard. The directions on the "very easy" pattern I'm trying to use confuse me to no end. "Bias tape, what's that? Oh okay." "Pin the what to what?" "Oh damn, I should have cut that piece on the fold?" I've now become extremely impressed by the craftsmanship required to create all clothing. Yes all. Even halter tops and mini skirts.