Wow, has it really been all that long since I last posted? Where has the time gone? Just the other day (uh, and now that I type that I realize it was the second of this month), I was bemoaning the fact that it was September already and that August had disappeared so quickly that I barely had time to register that it was even August in the first place. Now it’s September, and the month is already quickly slipping past me. I have the feeling that one of the reasons why it feels that time is going by so quickly has to do with the fact that I’m no longer teaching. When I was teaching, I would get the summers off, more or less, and therefore, there were chunks of time when nothing important was going on and I could stop and collect my thoughts, reflecting on the year so far as well as the year ahead. Now? It’s five days a week every week with minimal breaks such as this Labor Day weekend. Hell, I just typed that entire paragraph without realizing that I was typing so much. Where has my mind been?

Well, I can catch you up on where my body has been: work, work, work. The summer reading program may have ended in July, but it was still busy at the library up until school started for the area kids. After some delays, we finally found a winner for the Murder Mystery Writing Contest, and I was happy to see that for a first-time project, we had five entrants. Go us! Then there was that mural that I painted over the course of three days because our director was on vacation and I needed that time to get into her cubicle to paint so as to not be underfoot. Then there was all the preparation for this month’s displays: banned books month (a fake prison wall with fake prison bars and shelves of banned books with explanations as to why they’ve been banned in various places around the country) and a crochet club display (I actually crocheted several parts of the poster and then had to fill the display case with the class’ projects), not to mention the usual rigamarole of daily duties, made more difficult thanks to the plague that seems to be going around and keeping people from working. We even have lots of new signs all over the library informing patrons as to how not to drag their germs into the building with them and how to leave with as few as possible. Losing battle, mind you. Books are as filthy as money, if not moreso.

Around the house, I’ve mostly been reading comics, reading stories, trying to work on my own novel, crocheting, making project sheets for the crochet class, listening to audio books, and watching periodic films I rent from the library. Oh, and tea drinking. Lots and lots of tea drinking. Ian’s gotten into a hot tea kick lately, and I’ve been happy to indulge him and join in. We’ve actually finished off several varieties of sacheted teas and loose-leaf teas, meaning I’ll have to update my About page to delete all the teas I no longer have. I’d say we’ve gone through at least a half a dozen, if not more. The fact that I’ve been dragging my sacheted teas into the library to drink while on break also has added to the rapid depletion of variety in my tea chest (also known as a couple cardboard boxes where I’ve heaped up my tins and such). Currently, I’m enjoying a pot of a rich amber-colored oolong. The husband is asleep. No tea for him from this pot, I suppose. Maybe I’ll make some chai later, or mix some of the chocolate and caramel teas Sarah gave me for Christmas (Ian loves those, and I have the feeling we’ll be running out of several of them soon, so a shout out to Sarah for doing an awesome job!!).

Anything else going on in my life? Oh, some random tidbits: I got to fish an entire roll of toilet paper out of one of the toilets at work as well as clean up another roll’s worth of paper from the floor around the women’s bathroom at work last week. That was interesting. Uh, I’ve got ideas for two new novels: one of the ideas is something I’ve had in my head since middle school, and the other is the result of far too much soul searching and navel gazing. I might get into details on those later, but for now, they’re just scribbled notes somewhere around the house. Ah! We got new cell phones. They’re smart phones, which means they never exactly turn off, but they’re way more advanced and full of features than the sliders we’d been using. Technically, Ian may return to his slider because his main love for his cell phones is being able to play mp3s. Since the slider was a cell/mp3 player, it would make sense for him to use the old one. Since I use my phone as a personal assistant–calendar, alarms, notes, photos for reference, etc–it makes way more sense for me to keep this one as it has a qwerty keyboard and can even be used to type up Microsoft Word documents. Hell, it has sudoku and solitaire card games on it, not to mention the fact that the way it handles texting treats each separate number like an IM, giving me a history of all previous texts to and from a particular number. I love it! To say that I’m thrilled about my new cell is putting it mildly; I’ve already worn the battery down to nothing twice, and we’ve had them only ten days. ‘Course, Ian points out that the smart phones use more battery life as they never completely shut down all the way (save for the battery being run dry, as I’ve proven), so I’m gonna have to expect to plug the little brute in more often if I continue to use it for everything. I love my little Palm Centro, and whether Ian keeps his or not is up to him. I’m not letting go of mine.

Ah, anything else? I’m sure there is, but while I sometimes come up with ideas for things to post, I often forget to do so once I reach the house. It seems I always manage to have a lot on my plate at work, so time at home is spent without using my brain very much, as Ian would surely attest to were he not snoring away a couple rooms away right now. At any rate, I’m going to go back to what I was doing prior to all this typing: typing. I’m working on getting more of Book Two typed up so that it won’t be such an immense task when I do finally finish the thing. I’m curious to see where everyone’s going. So far, there’s been a lot of talking and exposition but little else. I fear I’ve lost sight of Solennelle and O a bit, and I’m hoping that the simple act of typing and editing might get some of the flavor back into my mouth. Perhaps a different type of tea will help. Enjoy your Labor Day (mine doubles as my wedding anniversary), and I’ll see you when I get around to it!