All’s quiet on the Western

All’s quiet on the Western front. I’m writing this to you from the back garden of my house where there is blissful silence.  It’s actually so quiet next-door at the renovation site, that for about 2.6 seconds I considered texting my neighbours (who have – very intelligently, fled the country for the worst of this) and telling them that if their contractor is billing them for today, he’d be a liar, but then some other part of me asked why I don’t ever want to be happy and keep ruining on opportunities for joy, and so I got a cold drink, put my feet up in the sunshine and let it go.

A big part of the book gets put to bed today, and soon the days left to work on it will be in the single digits. It’s such a crazy time. I sort of think that writers don’t belong in public at the best of times – but writers on deadline? We’re horrible, awful human beings who only care about one thing. If I had a dollar for every time in the last few weeks that I’ve told someone that I can’t do something because I am writing a book, I would be able to have a renovation like the one next door. If you gave me another dollar for every time I said it resentfully while implying that my book is the most important thing that could possibly be happening in the world, then I’d get a renovation like the one next door, and I’d be getting a contractor who showed up on a Friday. 

It’s almost done, and I can’t wait, and I’m so happy that the rally’s almost done for this year too. I don’t know what’s making the training so much harder to face this year (yes I do, I just didn’t want to mention the book again) but it’s been a challenge that I’m anxious to finish. Tomorrow and Sunday Jen and I will do our back-to-backs.  It’s two days in a row that you ride a century, and it’s a training landmark that I live in fear of  – which makes no damn sense, because the rally itself is six centuries. Jen and I had originally decided that when the time cam for the back-to-backs, we would make it nice, because we are smart.  We would ride a hundred kilometres away, then stay at a B&B for the night. One with a hot tub, and a swimming pool and we would go for a beautiful dinner and have this fabulous sleep and then ride the other hundred home the next day.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re going to do, because it turns out that we are completely delusional lunatics with families and full time jobs and people who depend on us and one of us is still nursing a bit and the other one is writing a book and a few days ago we came to our senses and pulled ourselves the hell together. Now we’re getting up early tomorrow morning, bolting 100k as quickly as we can, and getting home in time to finish work and make dinner and the next day we’ll repeat it. Done. Whammo.  After that, the training tapers off, because we’re so close to leaving. From here on, it’s about just maintaining our fitness and "seat worthiness" (which is a nice way of saying that your bum doesn’t complain too much about hours in the saddle) and that means that crap like last Sunday never needs to happen again. (I’m still not over last Sunday. It rained so hard on us and we were so wet that every time I sat on my bike seat, it squeezed all the water out of the padding in my bike shorts and sent a flood down my legs and into my shoes. By the time I got home my feet were these little white prunes. It was pitiful. I really hope it doesn’t rain on the Rally.)

Until something gives around here, knitting and I are continuing our clandestine, sneaky relationship. Being with my knitting right now feels like having an affair – we meet quietly, when no-one is looking, and I take my satisfaction quickly and slink off, all while hoping that my editor doesn’t find out that we were together.  (Actually, I think the editor is onto us.)  I can’t wait for us to be together.

Soon my pretty. Soon.

A few gifts? You bet. How about this lovely thing?

It’s a handmade tree of life pendant from Wren, who’s really very talented, and I hope that  Eileen G thinks it’s as lovely as I do. 

Everybody know Jaala, from Knitcircus? She’s doing these sock yarn gradience  things,  two matching balls of sock yarn that change colour over the course of the ball? I think they’re great.


and Jaala has chosen two sets, one each to Angela W, and Natasha G.

Enjoy your weekend everyone. I’ll be on my bike.