A Midsummer Night’s Balancing Act

Son2 will be back at college next month and how many good home cooked meals have I made? Not many. I need to change that. Son1 flies into town on Friday for a week’s visit which we’ll also have the pleasure of celebrating his birthday with him at home. This is a real treat. He deserves a party. His request for his homecoming – home cooked meals. I’ve got to step it up.

We finally purchased a new replacement car a week ago which has helped both my husband and I to move on from our accident in June. I’m surprised how much this one thing has affected us. There is no joy involved that a new car usually brings and my only criteria was the replacement had to be equal or better than what we lost. I needed this emotionally so not to feel the other driver had taken more away from us. This has helped me to release some emotions but I need the closure only the tying up of loose ends will bring and this hasn’t happened yet.

I’ve also been wanting to change my blog over to WordPress, get a new look and activate my domain name. It’s time to tap into the social media world which makes my head spin and overwhelms me. Lisa, at her wonderful blog, Amid Privilege, has been a mentor as Amanda, at Everyday Elements has. I admire them both for stepping into this fray fearlessly confident and competent.

I have also been working with the very talented Anne Harwell at Annechovie. I have admired her artwork since I found her when I began blogging and have commissioned a new pink martinis and pearls header design. My schedule and forgetfulness has held her up this summer but she has been nothing short of a saint. I am so appreciative of all these special ladies.

And of course there are the cookies. I have many ideas and techniques I want to try to create. I feel honored to get email requests almost on a weekly basis although I don’t advertise. Some requests I can fulfill and some I can’t. They have to fit between my work for our family business that positively has to be done on certain days and what I can push to another. Inadvertently, cookie projects mean my counters are sealed in plastic wrap which also means take-out only and no home cooked meals… yet again.

I love my iPad2! I just finished reading The Help and am reading The Dukan Diet on it. I was shocked when a message came up congratulating me on playing 1,000 games of solitaire! I’ve had it since mid-June. I quickly shut my pink cover and walked away mid-game. What a waste of time I’ve gotten into the habit of late at night. My Elizabeth I hardcover book is still waiting for my return. I am ashamed I have been seduced by Angry Birds and glitzy apps.

I continue to write for my community’s online newspaper. It’s something I really enjoy. The audience is different from here but writing for two blogs in completely different ways can be another balancing act.

For the next few weeks, I have a few cookies orders to fill and samples to make for my nephew’s wedding in Sedona at a winery in October. It’ll be here before I know it.

I’m attending a second concert at The Huntington Library in beautiful San Marino, the town which we were married in, and planning a backyard movie night as the last hurrah of the season.

I want to study Photoshop Elements more, buy and make friends with a new camera and learn how to work the mouse in my car so I can rock the Sirius radio with the windows down and the moon roof open all without help from anyone under 25.

I need to be a more thoughtful friend, sister-in-law and daughter-in-law and write those thank you notes from my birthday in June. I’m blaming it on the iPad and the thousand games of solitaire whether it’s truly to blame or not.

I notice the Boston Ivy on our wall is beginning to change color with the passing season but our sweet corn has yet to fully mature. I want to be like both of them right now. Unpredictable yet with purpose.

So, for the next few weeks I’ll be popping in and out but not with any planned schedule. I’m going to let the end of summer take me where it will.