Tad Williams

Daughter of the Household has herself a Dymo Label Maker, and she likes to leave a few messages around the place.

The dogs continue to be a horrifying fact of life.

Yes, I know that is a disgraceful couple of pics to include, but it's illustrative of the insanity and besides, a few of you may be brought to tears of nostalgia when you see that the beagle puppy of Shadowmarch days has done nothing to reform his dinner-party manners.

Jupiter the cat is pretty Zen by comparison:

That’s me – leastways that’s what my brain feels like – how long is it since I blogged, maybe even a couple of weeks? I am overwhelmed with putting thinking-time into the marketing of Ordinary Farm, and spend a great deal of time devising strategies, which is OK except for it then puts pressure on writing time and mommy time. I’ve been having an adventure with this marketing, this HC, stuff, so I feel guilty for resenting it, but there you go, I bloody do resent it.

I’ve had lots of blog and Twitter moments slip by me before I can catch ‘em. The only thing to record, a touch blearily, is that I’m pulling together a big chunk of first draft A Witch At Ordinary Farm; and, um, we got a treadmill on account of it would be really good to have around. And yes, we’ve been using it.

And Tad is working working working on Shadowrise and it kind of keeps on demanding more.

My house is dissolving, it’s all around me, there’s a sort of muddle descended on everything, and I can’t attend to it, I have to write and work and be a mom. But there’s stuff everywhere, like futons not put away and great heaps of clothes left untouched for a week. The animals love it, and I suppose it all adds to the possibilities for fort-building, so the kids are pretty down with it too.

So now the family room when it comes to TV is mine and Tad’s bedroom. There’s a work-out space in the family room. The guest room has become, holy hosannahs, my own, my very own sweet little room for work. In there I’ve got a card table with a computer, and candles and stuff on the table (all right, it’s girly stuff, you got a problem ??? – I’m channeling Nenah Cherry, because Tad’s been playing that 80s single); and above that there’s a view all the way up our hill, so it’s all very cosy and hobbity, at the bottom of the green stuff looking up into the sun. When I walk inside I just sigh with the sense of peace that’s there.

What is it about blogging that it brings up old advertising jingles from the dustiest grimiest depths of my memory? Does anyone else have anything like that? All these old ad jingles, in my case from the 1970s (UK, of course.) So the above title is a pun, unrecognizable I’m sure, sorry about that. Anyway, photos from the past few days around here:

Tad talking with me in the office at night...

We all went outside in the evening and Daughter of the household found mud....

The dogs, as ever, got busy too...

Or bathed...

We all went to the Steinhart Aquarium...

I had a Buddy Holly moment...

This portrait is pretty radical. I started out looking at the eyes and head only, and was seized by this young woman as a model for a character in our Ordinary Farm books named Carmen Carrillo, except for the eyes, which are too intense (the eyes, if anything, are Tyler’s eyes – he’s the youngest sibling in the main characters.)

Then I noticed the gang-tattoo necklace, and its horrible and silly statement, which doesn’t quite mean anything.

(Work is a drag. Publishing work, I mean. It gets into my writing and it screws with everything. It’s a story I will tell at some point. Though not now, because right now I’m living it and it’s a drag. )

Anyway, thought this porttrait very fine, and I’m off to look at more of Carrie Villines’ work at Art@Gawker.

I propose a toast to Michelle Obama, our Fabulous First Lady:

First, for creating a vegetable garden on the White House Grounds.
Second, for bringing back sleeveless dresses to Washington...
for reminding The American Woman of her right to bare arms.