General life update

[lighterthanair]

I saw my mother off at the airport today. She's returning to England. It was a sad moment, lots of tears, but I firmly believe that she's making the right decision for herself. She's got more family back there, more friends, more government support, and just as much chance of getting a job there as here. I support her decision. But it's weird to realize that at this very moment, she's over international waters, not even in the same country as me anymore. You'd think I'd be used to that, after all the time she spent in the States with my father, but that wasn't quite the same. It's a bit of a heavy feeling. I'll adjust in time, of course, but for the moment, it's still sinking in that I won't just be able to call her tomorrow and go out for tea if I want.

I decided against selling at the ren faire this year. I didn't give myself enough time to get stock together, and by the end, when it came to crunch time I just had too much stress on my shoulders to keep going. So I cancelled my table there. I still went to look around, and had a good time. I watched a wonderful belly dancing display, bought some polished stones, and some delicious strawberry-chocolate-mint homemade jam. I'm going to try harder to make things through this coming year so that I can have a table there next year instead.

I've started watching Juuni Kokki again. It's just as addictive as I remember it, and I have no idea why I never finished watching it the first time around. Also, after all this time, I still ship Enki/En-ou. I really wish that more of the novels were published in English, too, so that I could read them.

Catching up with my reading. I've just started Gwenda Bond's Blackwood, which I'm hoping will pick up soon, because with few exceptions, it seems like a standard YA supernatural novel at the moment. Admittedly, I'm not very far into it, so I'll give it a chance. Still have to write up reviews for Martha Wells's The Serpent Sea and Catherynne M Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which might just win some sort of award for the longest book titles in recent years.

I think I might spend some time this weekend making some more paper beads and bracelets. I had inspiration for a different style of bracelet than the ones I normally make, and I want to give them a try and see if they'll work out as well as I think they will. Also, I have a lot of paper strips cut for beads, and more magazine pages than that waiting to be cut into strips, so I really ought to make some better use of them. It'll give me a little break from sewing so much, too.

Speaking of crafts, I do have a whole bunch of embroidered bookmarks that I need to put a backing on. I made about 30 for the ren faire, but as I previously mentioned, didn't actually sell anything there. So now I've got a bunch of bookmarks sitting around. I'll probably list them in my Etsy store in a day or so, since there's been some people interested in them.

Been feeling the urge to do some fiction writing again. A friend and I have talked idly about giving each other writing challenges, the way we used to years ago. I hope something will come of it. I really miss having so much inspiration to write, having my fingers dance across the keyboard and having stories flow from my mind onto the screen. Hmm, probably should also go back and rework some older things that I wrote, too...