My Head is too full of things

I have fragments of half a dozen blog entries pinging around inside my brain. They are the result of my life being pretty eventful right now. I would love to give each of them the space that they deserve, but mostly I just need to clear my head so that I can survive the next week. So I offer up fragmentary blog entries in no particular order.

There is a beautiful post in which I describe taking Gleek to the local temple grounds. We went with the activity days group a couple of days ago, but the experience was a frustrating one for Gleek. She wanted to sit by herself and absorb the spirit of the place. Instead she had to bend her wishes to the needs of the group. I promised to bring her back on a day when she could be alone. Today was not ideal, but she needed it and so we went. We sat quietly. Gleek made rings and crowns out of grass blades. Birds chirped and flew nearby. It was the essence of peacefulness. Gleek was calm and happy. We could both use more of that. We’ll go back again. And I want to make the words reflect the beauty of the experience, but it is all fragmentary in my head.

I am now the owner of a cash register, which was not something I expected to ever be. This is merely one in a long line of things that I never expected to be, but ended up doing while in pursuit of something else. I haven’t opened the box yet. I haven’t had time. This is a sad commentary on how busy I am that I have a cash register and I haven’t even played with it yet. Instead I’ve been looking at the box and remembering fondly the toy cash register of my youth. I wonder if this one rings a bell when the drawer opens. Probably not. Sigh.

One week left in the school year. I’m glad. I’m ready to be done with this year. I’m ready to ditch homework and getting up at 6:30 am. I’m not even dreading the lack of quiet space in the house. I’m also looking forward to knowing for sure about class placements for next year. Mostly I just want to be able to ignore all the school stuff for a few months. (This post is just a repeat of things I’ve already said, so it’s probably best that it doesn’t get to sprawl out by itself.)

I’ve begun working on layout for Quest for the Tavern, which is an adventure module in the XDM system. Once again the text is delightful. Remembering how to work with a text heavy book did not take me as long as I feared. It is coming along nicely, but there is lots of work left to do. I’m hoping to have the first pass on layout done by the end of the weekend. This will give us a page count so we can decide what to add and eliminate.

CONduit is next weekend. I’ve got two panels, a reading, and a signing. Most of it is scheduled for Saturday. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. I’m particularly excited about my reading. I’ll mostly be reading essays, but I may do a short story as well. Hopefully I won’t be reading to an empty room. Howard will be on the other side of the country attending Balticon.

I’m really longing for unscheduled time. I have so many things to do that it all fills up. We have a vacation scheduled in Mid June and a another Mid July. Hopefully I can find some more calm in my daily life once we’ve finished out school and opened pre-orders.

Pre-orders open next Tuesday. That’s another thing I am simultaneously feeling unprepared for and anticipating.