WordPlay

(first posted at agent Lucienne Diver’s blog)

It always happens this time of year–everyone one does it. The little trade-offs to incorporate the holidays into our busy schedules. The decisions: what doesn’t get done so we can have the fun?

I’m always determined to get those seasonal cards and letters sent. I want at least a small tree! And oh, please, some cookies! A party or two…some thoughtful shopping…the chance to gleefully examine my choices for a new holiday CD…

Did I mention cookies?

And, as it happens, to me, the very best holiday is one in which I have some silence time for writing.

Not that I want it all or anything.

Well, this year I have it ALL, all right.

Because this year, I’m also moving. Not actually on Christmas (my personal seasonal holiday), but all around it. (Because that’s so much better, right?)

So instead of writing cards, I’m packing boxes. But hey, I’m *thinking* about cards…about what I would have said…about all those people who don’t yet have my new address…oops…

Instead of decorating a tree–because, seriously, do I have the faintest idea where those decorations are, anyway?–the weekend before Christmas is scheduled for a big UHaul adventure–all the extra corral panels I can spare from the horse set-up, the agility gear (you really don’t want to know how much an A-Frame weighs), and the various bulky barrels, pallets, hoses, dogloos, etc, that we can fit into the UHaul without…well, without hurting ourselves. Because we are but middle-aged writer and geek people, y’know.

On Christmas, we plan to christen the new home with a dinner event–three of us, family, pretending that the smart way to learn new appliances is to use them on a holiday feast.

Er. Feastlet. Maybe.

And then commences the packing in earnest, and shortly thereafter, while everyone else rings in the new year, we begin the process of tearing down the barn. It looks like this one, but is a little shedrow of two stalls, one of which holds the hay. I had it built when we moved to this state last year (over the holidays, but that’s another story and I know, I know, you’d think we would have learned but it just happened, okay?) and now it will be unbuilt and moved, a week-long process.

Sometime during that process, Duncan the Lipizzan will be shifted from one property to the other, and I’ll be camping in the new place with dogs until the weekend, at which point some fine strong movers with their fine strong muscles will load all remaining items into their truck and deposit them at the new place and we will then stare numbly at the boxes, and maybe giggle a little hysterically.

Are you still waiting for the part about the muse? Well, here it is, and you may laugh: I’m also finishing a book. Demon Blade, the first of a new Nocturne series. It’s been an astonishingly fun book to write, fast and clean, with characters who know what (and who) they want. And yeah, I could be sensible and throw my hands in the air and say, “Well, I’ve got to PACK, don’t I?” Or I could maybe manage seasonal cards, or get some fancier wrapping on those gifts.

But. I am greedy. And my muse is greedy. And we want this book! So I don’t think of it as being Scroogish. I think of it as The Muse Wins.

But really, that’s the way it should be, don’t you think? My muse certainly does, and I have to admit…when push comes to shove, she’s the boss.

PS Happy Holidays, Lucienne. I, um, don’t think I’m getting cards into the mail…

PPS
Oh, and by the way…book on the shelves! But for some reason, I’m not sending out my usual postcards…

It just came time to move the feed barrels out of the barn, yes it did.

Due to certain logistics of the property, the barn set-up has always been untenable. Every possible factor added up to the certainty that the hay stall would, at some point, be left open. “Come inside, Duncan Horse, and eat up all the goodies you can find!”

Duncan eats hay, hay pellets, and beet pulp pellets–there’s no rich grain hanging around.  Plus he’s not one of those horses who gorges; even free-fed, he eats modestly and then stands there humming.  So the risk factor has always been pretty low, even if the door just plain got left open permanently.

Except.

This past summer, Duncan colicked badly in the unusual heat; the first vet who saw him labeled him Dead Horse Walking.  I’m so glad that vet was wrong!  But it means Duncan is now forever a horse of Colic Potential.  The benign pellets are now, in their way, a threat.

That meant all my existing barn security routines ramped up to DefCon Colic levels, including a lot of stress–because the barn is completely obscured from view until one is upon it, and facing directly away from the house at that; there’s no way to casually check its status.  Nonetheless, DefCon Colic measures all worked, so far as everything stayed routine.

But now the barn area is slowly being disassembled for moving, and routines are blown away.  And yesterday…

Well, he wasn’t in there very long.

So today I faced off against the two big garbage barrels full of pellets (150 pounds when full…these weren’t quite).  Twenty yards of hauling made it pretty clear I wasn’t going to make it to the house with them.  But desperation is indeed the mother of invention, so you may now amuse yourself with the mental image of me grabbing up the old rope that the property’s previous occupants had left buried in the ground (some of it is still there, too deep to get out) and hitching myself up like a sled dog.

Mush!

Hey, the pellets are safe.  My horsie is safe.  And for the first time in a year, I don’t have to wake up in the middle of the night and wonder, “Did I close that hay stall door–?” without having any way to check besides suiting up and going out into the cold.

Now, someone please tell me I’m not the only one to beat myself against the “Did I remember to [insert crucial task]” meme this way!

Ooh, today I get to bake cookies.

I used to bake a fair amount. Then, when the gluten restrictions hit…less so. And since we’ve moved? Not so much.

Combining households with little to no time to plan, combining kitchens, taking a very long time to do either (still not really done yet, since we’ve known for ten months that we’d be relocating right about…now–and we are)…that put a damper on all cookie activities. It’s not really a functioning household.  Not truly a functioning kitchen.  It’s on hold and it has been.

And now that we’re packing in earnest again, and traveling to and fro across the valley and through the pass to the new home-in-preparation (really, we need a Tardis), we’ve come up against the second holiday season in a row that…isn’t.

However.  Tomorrow I’m going to an agility holiday gathering.  And I shall have COOKIES.

So today I am baking in my token holiday effort.  I expect it to smell good.  I expect to watch the stove like a hawk, because I haven’t done cookies in a gas stove before.  And I am allowed to TASTE ONE!

Yummmmm.  May you all have cookie days this season!