July Things

How can July almost be over already? Oh, summer, why do you have to be such a warp-speed time warp? I thought this would be the summer that I sat on my front porch, watching the bees pollinate the flowers, but we don't have a front porch, and I let the marigolds on my deck die from lack of water. And, well, there's been a lot of other stuff going on.



This month has been very full (I'm trying to excise the word "busy" from my vocabulary—and my mindset—and if I look at it objectively, this July hasn't been nearly as busy as in years past, when I had to go to work every day and stuff). I spent a weekend, plus one bonus evening, in the company of alumni and faculty from my MFA program, which was lovely. We talked about things like point of view and revision, publication and rejection. Things that would make people in my normal life glaze over with boredom. I imagine it's like when my husband and his building buddies get to talking about dimensional lumber and R-values.

And I had a whole entire weekend (well, just from about mid-morning Saturday to Sunday evening) all. to. my. self. And it was so amazing to be the master of my own (very, very quiet) universe. I spent a great deal of the time uploading and backing up photos, in my Sisyphean quest to open up space on my hard drive. With no one else home hogging up the bandwidth, I got a lot done. I also read. A lot. (More on this month's reading Monday.) And I only left home to pick up Saturday night's dinner and I only cooked to heat up leftovers. It was glorious.



C and M returned Sunday evening and Monday I headed up to join E and Z at their grandparents' camp. The weather had turned cool and cloudy, so after lunch, we packed up and headed to their house, where we played games and then, the next day, headed to the coast where the boys tried their hands at seine-netting (they caught a few tiny fish and some shrimp, which they had fun eating for lunch).



We've also gone swimming at various lakes and ponds, made one more trip to the beach, and raised two monarch caterpillars, which is very exciting, since it's been years since we've seen monarchs around here. I'm almost done with my 100 days of learning to paint (I'll be talking about that in my next newsletter; don't forget to sign up here). I've gotten less work done on the book than I hoped, but more than I feared. And other than book work and all that photo uploading, I've spent very little time on the computer, meaning I've ignored blogs, both mine and yours (I'm sorry). I've also rarely gotten the camera out, which you know is out of character for me. So maybe I have been watching the bees just a bit, metaphorically speaking.



We leave for vacation in a couple of days, which means it's going to be quiet around here again, but if you want, you can follow along on Instagram @andrea.lani.

What July Things have you been up to?