hibernating

I never want to leave my house again.

I’m just kidding. (Not completely.) But it’s nothing too serious—I’m just hibernating. And there is really nothing I don’t love about it.

As if staying home 90% of the time were not magical enough, I discovered that my local grocery store has a to-go service. You go on the webs and click on the products you need and they collect all of it from inside the store and bag it up for you and bring it to your car at a time you choose. You neither need to leave your car nor step foot into the store. What?! It’s as though this were designed expressly for me! Thank you, Hannaford. You have, as always, my undying love.

This is how I experience the outside world now.

So, why the all-powering desire to stay home?

Well, the 2015 summer, fall and early winter proved to be long, long, long. Really stinkin’ long in that emotionally draining sort of way, followed by a straight-out busy sort of way. Okay, long story short (as if such a thing were possible ... ) we decided to move out of my grandmother’s house and back to our property out of town (100 miles away) in part because managing a property from 100 miles away is very stressful, and people who rent your house are either absolutely wonderful or totally weird, and when we got word that one of our tenants thought another the other was running a prostitution ring upstairs (I swear) we sort of just thought it might be a good idea to go back. We found no evidence of a prostitution ring but honestly I don’t 100% know what I’d be looking for even though before I had kids I used to watch CSI like crazy. (The Vegas one. The Florida one is ridiculous.) So I got the apartment professionally cleaned and let it go. Hookers aside, the decision to leave my grandmother's house and move away from family and friends was really painful. Luckily, a wonderful family (you know who you are!) has moved in and they love the house and are really sweet to my parents next door, and Mem’s house is being loved and lived-in and I am really happy about it! Even so, it was really, really hard. Then once the decision was made to move, there was the packing, the packing, the packing. The PACKING. Have you done this? I’ve done this lots of times and yet I always forget how difficult it is. Like labor. Which I never have to do again. I know we’ll move again but by then I’ll have forgotten how difficult it is. Anyhow, we moved the day after Thanksgiving (exactly) and then there was the unpacking (sigh) and Christmas and then it was January and all I wanted to do was stay home and not do any work whatsoever. Oh, and I forgot to mention, I published a book somewhere all up in there, too. So right now: hibernation.

You do too much. Go and do nothing for a while. Nothing. Lillian Hellman (I have taken this advice very seriously.)

Evidence of such: I started writing this post about 6 weeks ago with the intention of ending the hibernation at the time, so it seems that process took a bit longer than I had anticipated in spite of Punxsutawney Phil’s February prediction...

But I’m happy to announce that I am emerging like a beautiful butterfly! It was 70 degrees today and I think I’m ready to put this winter behind me. There are so many things banging around in my head to share with you—and I will! Stay tuned! (You must be so excited!)

Find my novels, THE MOSQUITO HOURS and TALKING UNDERWATER, online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. And don’t forget your local independent bookstore! I’m curious about something: would you like to stay up-to-date on news about my books as well as have my latest blog posts conveniently delivered to your inbox? Then subscribe to my newsletter! Click on that little box right over there on the right. See how easy I made that for you? (You’re welcome.)