Just a little pile of... stuff 

I did caucus last week, as did The Kid. She for Obama, me for Edwards. In our precinct, Edwards won. We had a really great time, other than the guy running the caucus was a total ass and, frankly, as the Obama Precinct Captain, he lost quite a few people to Edwards and Richardson as the caucus progressed. Other than *that* it was interesting and rather fun. 

I drove into Des Moines over the weekend and stopped to check my PO Box finding, for the second time in the nearly 3 years I've had it, that I missed someone's incoming book. I have no idea who it came from, but it arrived on December 11th and was returned to sender on December 26th. Since I didn't check the box until January 5th, well... It was long gone.

Dangit.

So, in an effort to stop this sort of thing, let me reiterate a few facts. 

I DO NOT LIVE IN DES MOINES. I live *near* Des Moines, yes, but I live in an unincorporated, semi-rural area that doesn't really belong to any town at all. In fact, I'm much closer to several small towns than to Des Moines and we spend most of our out-and-about time in one small town in particular. Our friends live out here in no-man's-land, my family, our school... and all the places we GO - like the grocery store, physician, pharmacy, video store, Walmart, whatever, are in the small towns. Now that the kidlets are gone, I drive into Des Moines maybe once a month, give or take. That's about it. Really. I was in Des Moines right before our anniversary, about 4 days before the mysterious package arrived, and I checked the PO Box then. I gathered up what was there and, sadly, did not know that there was something else slated to come.

So, please, please please please, tell me if you're mailing a package to my PO Box, ESPECIALLY if I need to sign for it - as I needed to do for the two articles I missed. If it's oversized or has delivery confirmation, the post office holds it and I don't know it's there unless I happen to check the box while the 'hurry up and get the package!' note is still fresh. I don't want to put my home address out in cyber land because I really don't want perfect strangers showing up at my front door and getting bit by the dog - she hates strangers - and I don't want to get a PO Box in the small town we live closest too because, well, I'd be pretty dang easy to track down from there (Oh, yeah, she's that writer lady, right? Well, heck, just take this highway here and turn right at...) and we go right back to the strangers getting bit by my dog problem. I do, however, want to be in contact with readers, fans, other writers who need books reviewed, whatever... I just need to know that something is coming so that I can make a point to drive into Des Moines to get it before the post office sends it back.

I will try to remember to drive in to DM on Saturdays, I will, but I know how flaky my life can get and with my luck this will happen again. 

Gak, I'm whining too much. But, really, it totally blew my Saturday. The kid and I went out to run errands - including few things in Des Moines that we'd piled up to do - and ARRGH!!  Hurry hurry hurry to the post office before they close in the vain hope that the package wouldn't have been sent back... It's gone?!? NOOOOO!!!

Deep breath.

Let's see.  Caucus - check. PO Box grumble - overly checked. Um... Quilting.  

I sewed three quilts over the Christmas holiday - all for presents - and am about to start a fourth. So far so good there. I've also decided not to do a Block of the Month quilt this year. Frankly, I didn't like the design of two of them, and the third... well, Bill's tolerant of my fabric addiction, but paying $25 a month for the blocks, hand-dyed fabric or not, is just too dang much. That's a $300 quilt top, and, um, it's pretty, sure, but... no. Too expensive. I am going to keep sewing though. If nothing else it relaxes me, and I have a ton of fabric that I really should use up. At least a little. So I can go buy more. ;)

I'm slowly working through a book called Trauma and Recovery by Doctor Judith Herman and, oh boy, it's knocked some pretty nasty stuff loose. It's been a very productive yet incredibly emotional few weeks for me and for the first time in what feels like forever I'm *thinking* like a writer again. I'm still having a really hard time creating fiction - as you can probably see from the length of this blog post, I'm able to type-type-type without any problems, ha ha - but hopefully this light at the end of my incredibly dark tunnel isn't a dream or an illusion.

And I'm dreaming. Without benefit of sleeping pills. And while they're often tense dreams, they're not horrific/violent/traumatic and I'm not waking up screaming. So that's all plusses in my book!

I think that's enough rambling for one day. I better head downstairs and cook supper.  Have a great week, everyone!