Goodbyes and Readings

So, the past week has been interesting.

Our flight to California leaves on Thursday morning, i.e. about 60 hours from now. All of our furniture and all of our stuff (including, unfortunately, my laptop charger) has been packed into boxes with miles and miles of gray paper and taped up and loaded onto a giant truck (tall enough to snap several low-hanging branches of the tree outside our house), and is tooling across our great and extremely wide nation at this very moment. Our cars have both been picked up, leaving us to drive my brother-in-law's car - and I have serious gratitude that the car is available to us, so we don't have to pay for a rental, but MAN. The thing has the turning radius of a yacht and smells weird enough to make me slightly carsick all the time.

Since Friday, all our big tasks have been wrapped up and finished. We're staying at Matt's parents' house, and they're away for the weekend. We've decided to treat the last few days as a vacation. We spent Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of last week packing and fraying our nerves, and I know exactly how much work awaits us when the boxes start getting opened, so a brief guilt-free vacation seems like a dandy idea. I've set aside my work for the time being, and we're hanging out on the breezy porch by the water and eating good food and spending gluttonous time with each other, around seeing friends whom we'll very much miss.

Last night we sat outside after dinner and took the air before bed. We were talking about our early memories when I looked at the dock and saw that, without us noticing, a blue heron had landed in the pool of light thrown by the lamp down there. It nicked its head back and forth, neck doubling and redoubling, the fingers of feathers on its breast ruffling in the light wind. As we watched, it stalked to one end of the dock, peered over the side, and did nothing for several long minutes. Then, in no hurry, it went to the other edge and gazed fixedly at the water lapping against the pilings for so long that we gave up and went inside before it caught anything. I thought about how fishermen would likely be inspired by this heron's patience, the way it looked and looked and looked at the water, waiting. And waiting. And waiting. I wondered if it had babies to feed.

I taught my last yoga class yesterday afternoon, and it was a sad thing. My brain hasn't quite gotten that I'm finished with my yoga responsibilities; I don't have the stamped FINISHED feeling that I usually have about something like this. Perhaps I'm thinking that on Thursday, instead of taking a flight, I'll just have to head in to the Odenton studio again in the evening and spend an hour making jokes with my regulars. That was a much sadder class to say goodbye to than either of the Ridgely classes, but few of my regulars showed for the Ridgely ones. (They always desert slow-paced classes when spring hits.)

I also read Guilty Pleasures, the first Anita Blake book, and read/skimmed a book called Under Wraps in the last week. I didn't really enjoy either one of them. But they definitely helped me garner some insight on the urban fantasy genre, and I kept the receipt for both, so, score. I still have plenty of material for the next few days and for the plane flights: Ganymede, Plague Town, Just Cause, and the two most recent Sookie books. I read last year's Sookie book...last year, but I don't remember it well enough to jump right in to this year's, and yes, I caved and bought the hardback. Guilty. I kept the receipt for that, too, but by the time I'm finished with both books, we'll be a few thousand miles away from that particular B&N.

The point of that paragraph was to say that, having read these two books, I now feel confident about discarding all the rules for my KUFC book. I could keep doing research and reading books for another six months, but that'd just be dawdling when I know what I'm going to do. I can't wait to get started. I'm sure that feeling will evaporate a few chapters in, but for now, golly gee, oh boy.

Oh! And I also read a romance novel this week. I haven't read any romance since I was about 12, but I read the query for this one and it hooked my interest as surely as it hooked Kristin Nelson's, so I ordered it from Amazon and sped the hell through it. It was awesome! I'm definitely reading more from this author. It was great fun to read something for which I had zero expectations and be pleasantly surprised by how witty it was. Huzzah for totally anachronistic historical romance! And sexy sex!