Finished the rough draft of my 3rd novel on Friday; I’m really excited about that. I have 2 novels complete, including edits, 3 in various drafting stages, and now 1 with a rough completed. I’ll need to sit on it awhile before I can look at it with a fresh eye and be anything resembling useful at editing, but it’s a major step to have written that awesome The End.

Now it’s on to a short story that I started awhile back think I can finish pretty quickly. This one I think I’ll actually try submitting around to see how it goes…

It was a weeding the yard sort of day; not very exciting, but quite productive. Eventually I’m going to have a house with curb appeal, and that’ll be sweet. Now if I can just make myself vacuum on a regular basis.

Have you been watching Alex Reads Twilight? If not, here’s the first one, but if you want a good laugh you should check ‘em all out. He’s done through chapter 13 and they’re pretty much a riot.

We do things differently where I come from, but this is the second time now I’ve attended a Catholic funeral in New Jersey for my husband’s family. This time was worse than the first because it was for my husband’s 34-year-old cousin. He was a great guy. Always made me feel welcome. He will be greatly greatly missed.

But in Jersey (maybe it’s a Catholic thing? Or a… I don’t know some people who aren’t my family thing?) they do this thing where there’s a viewing, and the family goes and hangs out at it and greets people. This viewing was seven. hours. long. Maybe my generation just can’t admit that we’re dying, but time and time again, there I’d be casually conversing with my husband’s relatives. We’d be talking about vacations or, I don’t know, something mundane, and I’d get into the conversation, then I’d happen to look up, and I’d see… it (no offense Chris, but if there’s anything open caskets have taught me, it’s that that is not you lying there)… and I’d remember that I was laughing and there’s a corpse in the room not fifteen feet away from me. And it’s weird and suddenly I’m so sad. And it would happen again and again and again. For seven hours.

To me, saying good-bye to a body is a private thing. I don’t want witnesses. I don’t want semi-raucous crowds and that guy discussing the craptastic season the Mets are having behind me. I don’t want baseball scores. I want a moment to remind myself that I can’t go to this face for this person anymore, that he is somewhere else. And then I want to leave quickly to better remember him the way he was when I last saw him alive, laughing with me and Scott and Ernie as we failed to skip rocks across a river.  That’s Chris. Not this… this inanimate thing surrounded by nine-million crucifixes that also scream of death and the suffering of the world.

I know everybody deals with death differently, and some of the family seemed heartened by it – certainly, it was wonderful to see the extraordinary number of people that came to honor my cousin. Then again, there was my husband who I think wanted to crawl into a hole and hide, and there was his other cousins that pretty much did just that – we found them downstairs hanging out by the bathrooms just to get out of the room for the majority of the seven. hours.

But it’s over. We did it. Made it through the wake/viewing, the funeral, and the post-funeral lunch (that was much more what I’m used to – everybody gathering at a home or restaurant to eat together without, you know, a dead body in the room with you).  In addition, I met several of Scott’s relatives that I really liked. My husband has a wonderful family.

I wish them all – Honey, Ernie, Greg, Tom, Howie, the Cippolanos, the Hinsons, and all the rest – some sort of peace with the garish hole Chris’ much-too-early exit has caused. And I wish Chris a great time “living” it up wherever he is now. If there’s any justice in the universe, it’s some place amazing.

It is time once again for the annual “No, really, I can garden” attempt. This year it’s lettuce lining the sidewalk leading up to our house and flowers in the main bed in front of the windows. The lettuce that I planted a week and a half ago has started sprouting! Yay! The lettuce I planted two days ago has not, but then I hadn’t expected it to yet.

In other news, this might be the most awesomest video ever. OK Go and Syyn Labs rules. (And yeah, it’s real).

I’m trying to be a better housekeeper, and so like normal, I’m turning to a variety of sources to see what works.  So far I have further proof that my husband is particularly attuned to all things Eastern. After learning about how to feng shui the “traveling” bagua of my home, I noted how we were sending energy into Venice and then went outside and stuck a stick in the ground to finish a missing energy line (or something like that). This afternoon my husband hops online to tell me that the “pie-in-the-sky” business trip to Italy (to the Veneto even) suddenly sounds really likely and he’s looking up plane tickets. The sad part about this is that the only plane tickets he could currently locate were $2000, which means I can’t afford to join him.  So… I research, clean, energize, and put a stick in the ground, and my husband goes to Italy without me. FML.

I’ve also been continuing my love-affair with all things Norse, and I’m learning to read runes. They told me that in order to keep my house clean, I have to make a plan and stick to it with the strength of a wild ox, and then I will  find joy and success. Go figure.

Finally, I had to laugh at how my research for housekeeping has kept me almost constantly on house-keeping for Jesus sites. I didn’t know JC was so big into hearth and home, but apparently he is. And I’m never going to be a true success because I refuse to get up fifteen minutes earlier than my husband (according to an astonishing number of websites, the Bible says I have to be an early riser, regardless of what God and nature instilled into my constitution)  who gets up at 5:30 in the morning so that he can wander around the house in his underwear for 2 hours (you didn’t need that visual, did you >:) – would it help if I said he’s got muscles on top of muscles, ’cause he does. Re-visualize. Looks better now, eh?) . But other than that, I have gotten the most use out of a site created by a woman who homeschools her children because…. public school encourages Satan or something. I’m not sure whether to be slightly appalled that I am being electronically mentored by this woman or to remind myself that we can all learn from each other if we just open our ears and get past our prejudices. I think I’ll do both.

Saw it during the Olympics last night, and Scott and I about died laughing.