It HAS been a while, hasn't it?

I guess updates are in order…

First off, my mom has recovered completely. She’s back to her feisty old self (which is not nearly as old as her 92 years would seem to indicate). Once she was treated for the UTI, she came back to herself very quickly. That said, having my brother living back in the old homestead with her has been an adjustment for both of them. I think it’s still in the working-the-bugs-out stage, and I hope they can learn to live together in relative respect and harmony. Fingers crossed.

As to the rest of the last few months? Well, it hasn’t been a bed of roses, but it IS looking up. Maybe replacing my lost Ganesh keychain with another, more garish image of Ganesh has resulted in the removal of some recent obstacles, or maybe it’s just the passage of time and the swells and troughs of life, but I’m in a hopeful place right now.

Despite a very shaky employment situation, I remain employed (for now) and Jeff has a contract gig that will last through the end of the year. We can take some nice deep breaths and do our best to plan ahead.

We’ve made some home improvements, both planned (our lovely new balcony railing, which has made the balcony an actual living space after all these years) and unplanned (a clogged and leaking pipe that ended up setting us back by four grand… yep, four GRAND). But here’s the balcony:

And I’m making yet another attempt at getting into better shape, which includes workouts on our new cross trainer (lordy, but is that thing big—and we chose that one specifically because it was “space-efficient,” sigh) and restarting my on-again-off-again running program. I realize that I will need new running shoes in the very near future.

Jeff and I are still practicing our jigs and reels and tin-pan-alley stuff every night, and we’re tossing what is in the process of becoming a novel outline back and forth, each adding something and shepherding it along…

So that’s where things stand now: who knows what the future will bring? It’s been such a crazy year on all fronts that I have given up trying to figure out what comes next. There’s a certain calmness and strength to taking life as it comes, isn’t there?

Still... I’m still hoping to snorkel off the Big Island sometime before I get too old to stay afloat!

And I'm really going to try to keep this blog updated a *tad* more often!