Faucets Ate My Wednesday

I had plans for my day off on Wednesday. Lists of things to do. Long lists. Including writing, plus a bunch of household chores. The list started out with: replace bathroom and kitchen faucets. This should have been a fairly easy task. (Really, just read the boxes the faucets come in.) I've done my own minor plumbing for years--I can fix a toilet like nobody's business. And the REALLY OLD pipes had been cleared away after I moved in (and, you know, broke them trying to replace the bathroom faucet the last time).

But NO.

The bathroom faucet took about 5 hours. FIVE HOURS, people. Most of that was trying to get the old faucet off. Things were stuck. There was copious use of WD40. I consulted the Interwebs (someone sent me a great link to This Old House, which said use a hammer...which actually worked). Wrestling, then walking away, then more wrestling. There might have been cursing. But in the end, there was this:

This was the old faucet. See that drain thingy lying there? Broken. Also, it was a crappy faucet.

Everything got taken out from under the sink. No, it didn't all fit back underneath after. I don't know why.

After four hours, the old faucet finally decided to give up. The hammer might have had something to do with that.

Bare naked sink. I almost left it that way.

Look--the new faucet is so pretty! (The sink however, is filthy. I'll clean it tomorrow.)

 Like a sensible person (okay, a sensible person would have called the plumber after hour two, but nevermind), I gave up on the idea of doing the kitchen sink on the same day. I was tired, dammit. And the kitchen faucet was only sorta broken (it was supposed to rotate, and it had stopped doing it a year ago, which was inconvenient over a double sink, but obviously not impossible, because A YEAR AGO).

And then my pal Glen (you remember him, he built my new desk for me) came by to rescue me from the bathroom sink. Which I'd literally finished five minutes before he got there. So he said, "Let me take a look at the kitchen sink. It doesn't look that bad..."

Really, I should have known better. It mostly came apart easier than the bathroom faucet (it helped that there were two of us, and you know, he had the right tools--note to self: buy more tools). But when we had it put together, the LAST connection kept leaking, and we couldn't figure out why. We tried everything. Silicon tape. Plumber's putty. Filing down a rough spot on one of the connections. Finally, Glen thought to try using a washer (those little black rubber thingies that usually go inside a faucet--thankfully, although I don't have all the right tools, I have a wiz-bang collection of washers in every size and shape imaginable). It shouldn't have worked, but it did. Which is good, because by then it was 6pm, and I'd started on the first faucet at 10 am. *headsink*

The spiffy new black faucet and soap dispenser. It's a crappy picture. I was tired. So sue me.

So that's what happened to MY Wednesday. What did you do on yours? Do any good household repairs lately?

2011 in Review--Nothing But Good Times Ahead

I find it fitting that this is my 112th blog post of the year, since we are leaving 2011 behind and going into 2012. As with everything else; it is all connected.

I know that 2011 was a tough year for many people--it wasn't a breeze for me either. But as I look back on it, I mostly see the positive. I am, when it comes down to it, a fortunate woman, blessed with friends, and home, and cats...and with you, my readers. Thank you for sharing 2011 with me. I hope you'll do the same in 2012.

So what did I accomplish in 2011?

On the writing front, I wrote another book for Llewellyn (#6, the Everyday Witch Book of Rituals, which will out around October of 2012), along with many articles for my ongoing column in the Witches & Pagans Magazine and a bunch of Llewellyn annuals and almanacs. I finished one novel, the foodie romance Reinventing Ruby, and worked on a number of novels that never saw it to the light of day for one reason or another. (For those of you who don't write, the path is never as smooth as it looks like from the outside, believe me.) I finally listened to the requests of my readers who said, "We don't want to wait any longer for your fiction," and epubbed my first novel, Witch Ever Way You Can (with much help from my long-suffering friend and web-mistress, Robin Wright).

I spent the year getting to know my agent, the fabulous Elaine Spencer of The Knight Agency, and together, we expect great things in 2012.

I finally got to meet Elaine in person at RWA NYC in June, one of four writing-related trips I took during the year. (For someone who doesn't travel much, that's A LOT.) RWA was amazing, as was my trip to Salem in April for the New England Chapter RWA conference, where I got to meet one of my favorite authors, Lani Diane Rich. Both journeys also allowed me to meet up with a bunch of Betties, a group of women who first connected on Lani's blog and formed friendships whose depth has to be seen to be believed. (*Waves to the Betties*)My final trip was to nearby Albany with writer pal Nancy Holzner, where we had a lot of fun despite a less-than-successful event.

Of course, the first trip of the year was both the best and the worst: my journey to California in February, to bid my final farewells to my beloved Germambie (my maternal grandmother), but also to be together with both my sisters and my parents. That bittersweet time was followed by my visit to Pantheacon in San Jose, where I was much healed and comforted by the presence not only of my step-daughter Jenn (who lives there now), but also time spent with my adored Llewellyn editor Elysia Gallo, and many of my fans. As I said; the blessings far outweight the trials.

On the homefront, I spent much of the year doing a much-needed clearing and cleansing of my house; throwing away the old and unnecessary, clearing away clutter, and letting go of things that no longer worked for me. I can now see the floor of my barn, my entrance door is painted red, and the upstairs closets no longer hold boxes of things I moved in with ten years ago and never used. It feels good.

The five cats are all doing well, including Samhain, who is, in theory, dying of chronic renal failure, but who (thankfully!) hasn't seemed to realize it yet. I hope to have at least another year before she does. Two would be good. Three, even better.

I can't even begin to count the blessings of my life: a loving family, great friends, the best writing partner on the planet (yes, Lisa DiDio, I'm looking at you) as well as many wonderful writing pals, an agent, five cats, one very old but still-standing house, and a job I love most days. Don't get me wrong--there are plenty of things about my life that aren't perfect (you don't even want to know how long it has been since I had a relationship, or all the fun physical crap I get to deal with), but compared to people who don't have jobs, or a roof over their heads, or food on the table...frankly, I feel pretty lucky.

And then there is you. The folks who come here and read my ramblings. Who take the time to leave a comment, or go out and buy my books, or just show up. I thank you for this, and hope that, in the year to come, we can continue our travels together.

Wishing you a happy New Year, and (as my favorite author, Jennifer Crusie likes to say) "Nothing but good times ahead."

See you in 2012!

Wolf Mountain or What I did with my Sunday when I was supposed to be working

Yesterday was Sunday, and as usual, I had a huge list of things I needed to do around here, including finishing the dismantling of the garden, putting a second coat of paint on the stairs inside while it is still warm enough to have the windows open, making jewelry, and of course, writing.

Instead, I ran off to play hookey with my friend Ellen. She called me up in the morning and invited me to go about an hour and 20 minutes away to the Wolf Mountain Nature Center in Smyrna, NY. They were having a festival there, their yearly fundraiser, with shows featuring the wolves...

Their two arctic foxes...

And Native American drumming and dancing....

Besides which, it was one of the last of the glorious days--78 degrees out, the sun was shining, the trees were turning all sorts of lovely colors--and the male protagonist of my current WIP is a Native American named Wolf.

Seriously...how could I not go?