Beyond the Crux: And Summer Begins

We branded for Val on Sunday and then she put the cows out to pasture. So, we’re through with the daily feed chores.

Yesterday we worked for Ursula landscaping, and now we have the rest of the week off to catch up in the studio. We have a lot to do. On the weekend we fired a kiln-load in the small kiln and it overfired. Ben spent hours painting a beautiful platter for a fundraising event in Nevada, now it’s a dull clay pigeon; a lot of the color fired out to a murky clear mess.

So it goes . . . and we try not to take it personally.

I’ve been writing with pencil and paper (my favorite method) during the hour it takes to drive to town to work at either Val’s ranch or for Ursula; and I have gotten a remarkable amount done. Soon I’ll be ready; as soon, that is, as I have time and both physical and mental energy to write it all out on the computer. I have it completely mapped out (minus all the nitty gritty details that make writing so much fun for me), so I still feel like I can get the entire book written by the end of next spring. It may take another year (with a cooling period included) to rewrite and finalize the novel or it may take only a few months, but that will depend on our schedule and what we’ll have to do to still make a living: I’m not sure how much work Ursula will have for us this summer. But since we did work in January and have our steers paid for by working for Val, I think we’ll be fine and I can write more.

But I will have to start writing publishable articles. I’m also toying with the idea of trying to self-publish some short stories to sell Amazon. But I have a lot of work to do before I’m ready for that.

In the meantime we’re enjoying summer weather, and spring weather and maybe we’ll even get a little return-to-winter weather now and again before summer decides to stay. I won’t mind, we really need the moisture.

And It’s all good. Since we don’t live where we would have flooding, tornadoes or hurricanes, the weather is the least of our worries these days.