COVID, fires, smoke and moving—just some of the many excuses I have for not blogging or writing. To be fair to myself, we moved from Northern California, after selling our house, to Southern California and the process of putting a house on the market one weekend before COVID shutdown, prepping for sanitized prospective buyers, packing, negotiating with inspectors and buyers. loading up The Really Big Truck and then shoehorning the contents into a Much Too Small storage unit, took a lot of my writing time. And, since I was no longer in Northern California, I had to give up my column at California’s oldest newspaper as well as all the articles and reviews I do freelance. So, I don’t have any deadlines or assignments, both of which move my writing muscle.

Instead, as we are temporarily vagabonds living at our daughter’s house, writing has taken a back seat—way, way back—to Frisbee mornings with the dog, cleaning our daughter’s house and doing her yard work, feeding everyone, helping with schoolwork, house hunting (lots of that), and keeping the dog from chasing anyone who leaves the living room to use the bathroom or go upstairs. And finding things. Things we packed and now we don’t know where the box is; things we unpacked and put somewhere in the house and since it’s not our house, we don’t have an internal map of where things might be hiding and so backtracking to remember where you put them is sometimes beyond us.
​
No houses to hunt today, dog is Frisbeed out, house is within acceptable hygiene standards, grandchildren are in virtual school, and I am free to write. It feels like something I get to do, instead of something I’m supposed to do. It feels quiet and productive and non-fattening—almost as good as a long soak in a hot bath with a good book. I am the good book today.