While I'm not ready to make it official yet, I do think my blogging days at the Herald are reaching an end. Suffice to say, after a staffing change, I'm left feeling that their blogs are very far down on the food chain, and it's no longer worth the time or effort to keep mine updated. I have many other areas that need my energy and attention at the moment - we recently moved again (yes, I know, and it makes it a grand total of twenty times in twenty years for hubby and I), and we're trying to weed through things before moving them in an effort to downsize. Our friend and former housemate is okay with our stuff still being in her huge basement for the time being, but I don't want to take advantage of that for too long. I'm also doing NaNoWriMo for the first time ever, after many years of good intentions, and I really want to hit the goal of 50K in 30 days (you can watch my word count climb here).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Traci York or Kate Wiggin
Faerie Mystique
Lee, NH
(603) 292-5622

Local Witch Shop Virtually Opens

Seacoast, NH - July 14th, 2007 - Ribbon cutting is a challenge when the doors of your shop exist only in cyberspace. However, Faerie Mystique owners Kate Wiggin and Traci York anticipate the day those virtual doors become reality. Together with webmaster Kylen Wiggin, these hometown witches are hoping to cast their spell on the internet.

I've been inspired to work on my stories again. I have a friend who attends a local writing group, and she encouraged me to join. Given that I haven't written anything recently other than blog entries, I decided to dig up stuff from my fiction writing classes at UNH back in 198...cough... cough... ahem... 7... cough... cough. I even brought in an original copy to illustrate how ancient they are (written on Eaton's Corrasable Bond, no less). Strangely enough, they not only liked them, they also didn't discourage me from submitting them to various places for possible publication. I wish this was the part where I could say I'm now a paid author, but I haven't gotten that far yet. *grin*

Not with this blog, mind you - just a certain topic that won't go away, no matter how many times I kick at it and yell for it to leave me alone. Of course, I'm my own worse enemy - we just passed the three year anniversary of Dewey's death, and I thought it would be a good idea to post a brief rundown of my side of the story, along with the emails. After many discussions with some very smart people, I decided it was time to put the story to rest once and for all.

I just realized that I haven't mentioned anything about our move on this blog, so this might seem a bit out of the blue, but we are in our new digs, and are in the process of cleaning, unpacking, and adjusting to our rather unconventional (yet awesome) living arrangement. Given that I tend to wear my rose-colored glasses more than I should, I will attempt to keep my enthusiasm about this to a reasonable level, but I have to say that in the short time we've been here (we drove away from the apartment in Rollinsford on February 28th at 11:57pm), things have gone amazingly well.

Strange to think that almost eight years have gone by since that fateful day in April 1999 (the 29th, to be exact). Sure, I had other flirtations before you (alt.tv.xena, alt.tv.ally-mcbeal, rec.arts.sf.tv, alt.fan.tom-servo) but you were my first true love. From the moment you first appeared on my screen, I knew we were destined to be together. Then when VenomSoup shouted out that you needed rescuing, our fate was sealed.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that heavy, but once the scissors detached my ten-inch pony-tail, it certainly seemed to lift a heavy load off my neck. I’ve wanted to get rid of this hairy albatross ever since my out of control frizzies began getting caught on my pocketbook strap, but I kept postponing in the hopes that I could hit the 12 inch mark (what I thought was the donation limit for Locks of Love), and therefore making the hair that was annoying me into something positive for a sick child. However, while giving my neighbors daughter a ride to school Wednesday morning, a long strand of hair got caught in my seat belt strap - as I pulled it over my shoulder, it snagged and yanked, and I had a momentary flash of doing a Demi. I decided instead that when in Gloucester to pick up my eldest from her early birthday sleepover at Nanny’s, I’d make a quick dash to my old salon and get my caterpillars ripped to boot, since I've discovered that if I don’t pluck for more than a day, the follicles stage a revolt and take over the top half of my face. The only thing that will beat them back into submission at that point is hot wax.

When my eldest was first eating solid food, we discovered a yummy snack called puffed corn. Very simple ingredients - organic corn, and air. It soon became a household staple - while other kidlets were munching Cheerios, my kidlets were addicted to their "puffs". Over the years, it became harder and harder to find them - every Shaw's supermarket used to carry them, then only the one in my old hometown of Gloucester kept them in stop, until the only place I could find them was at the health food store on Main Street, Gloucester.

Way back in the beginnings of this blog, I tried out a "Dear Internet Geek" kind of thing. Now, instead of waiting for people to post questions here, I've decided to go ahead and give some examples of things friends and family have recently asked me to find for them. Feel free to chime in with your own posers.

We had a very nice New Years Eve. Totally and completely different from what we planned, but still a happy time was had by all - for the most part. You see, the universe at times has a very strange sense of humor, and sometimes it seems my purpose in life is to amuse it by making plans.

Instead of making resolutions, I'm simply stating my intentions for the coming year. There are things that I really want to focus on, and I get the feeling once I have these firmly in place, life will start being less "interesting".

For many years, December was a time of stress, fighting, guilt, and all around yuckiness (though most of it existed solely in my psyche). This year, even though we had to wait until almost the last minute (the 22nd) to do the bulk of our shopping, hubby and I got to do it together, and we had an amazing time. When all was said and done, there was enough under the tree to make the kidlets happy, but not so much that our overcrowded apartment spontaneously exploded.

However, given the level of discomfort and downright pain, I may not be flashing my new pearly whites too often over the next few weeks. Silly me, I assumed that I'd just pop them in and be good to go. After only a couple of days, and a few hours (okay, more like six total) of wear, I have two sore spots on my lower jaw, and feel like Winthrop Paroo.

At the moment, I have no idea when my "permanent" teeth will arrive at the dentist, let alone how we'll come up with the few hundred dollars still left to pay on them. My van wouldn't start this morning (on a day that I bring a neighbor's daughter to school), and our front tire keeps going flat. Which in turn means that we will most likely miss a big gathering of my internet RvB friends in Concord, unless we can resolve this in the next few days. Our budget has been stretched to the limit, and this week we start paying almost $50 per week for our insurances. The Patriots and the Celtics both tanked recent games. Oh, and even after getting off my duff, my blog is still only at number nine. Yet I've been in the best mood the past few days.

More accurately, my apartment is once again clutter filled. It's not to the point that my home was at the height of my PPD (post-partum depression) - for those RL friends who remember that wonderful bit of insanity, take heart that it isn't that bad again. Yet. But if I don't do something about this soon, there are stacks of Tupperware that I swear are planning to overthrow the household and kick us out on the street...