If anyone is curious, we’ve been in an intra-eclipse phase. There was a total eclipse of the Sun at the New Moon on August 1st, and there is a lunar eclipse at the Full Moon tomorrow. Intra-eclipse periods tend to be marked with upsets, reversals, paradoxes, over-emotionalism, crises and just plain weirdness. I don’t know about anyone else, but this one has been hitting me especially hard. My life has just been insane for the last two weeks, especially this week.

My sister Jill and her family have been visiting up at the lake, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time with them. In consequence, I haven’t been getting much work done–most days I haven’t even partially highlighted one thing on my to-do list, which is distressing. I’ve gotten a little more writing done, but that’s all. The hardest part has been that nothing has been planned, partly due to the weather and cancellations of things. I’d wake up to a phone call or message on my machine and suddenly my entire day was changed and I was running off.

On Monday, I joined everyone up in Nashua, unexpectedly, because they changed their plans due to the weather forecast. Monday I usually get laundry and errands done, while Tuesday is chores and more errands. This Monday, I did the laundry, hung it all inside for the umpteenth time this summer because it was raining, went up to Nashua and did abbreviated shopping for myself, then drove up Rte 3 and met my dad and sister, et al for lunch and a movie. Trouble is, I really can’t eat out any more because my diet is now so restricted, and I’ve recently cut down my food intake overall to about a third of what I was eating. So, I just ordered a little side dish of vegetables–and then didn’t finish it, because it seemed to have some kind of sweet sauce on it, and in restaurants, that means corn syrup.

We all went to see “Dark Knight.” I hated it. I’ll talk more about that later.

Then we went to Staples for all my niece’s and nephew’s school supplies. That was successful for them, but in the course of fussing over whether I had a discount card they could use, I lost one of my own receipts. I keep all my receipts and I hate it when I lose one, so I was very disgruntled later on when I got home and couldn’t find it.

On Tuesday, I got up, changed the litter boxes and bunny cage, took the trash and recyclables to the transfer station, baked a blackberry pie for my sister from scratch (blackberries from my yard, homemade 100% whole wheat crust), did my workout and went up to the lake for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Alas, my brother-in-law had doleful news. He had brought his sailboat out a couple of weeks earlier, planning to keep it at the lake here permanently. It’s about thirty years old, and while he was out sailing that afternoon, the entire housing for the mast broke. My dad called a local guy he knows who does bodywork on cars and it appears that the sailboat might be repaired. But my b-i-l was seriously bummed. Anyway, I had supper with everyone and played a 3-1/2 hour D&D adventure with my 13-year-old nephew DMing (he’s actually pretty good) and got home quite late.

The pie, at least, came out perfectly and was a huge success.

The sailboat disaster was only one of the jinxes that hit the lake this summer. To begin with, I have never seen the lake water so high at this time of year, because of the constant rain that we’ve been having. There is no beach, but there is a concrete slab, with a boathouse occupying one side of the slab. Normally the water is about six inches lower than the slab. Right now, the water is an inch or two over the slab–so the whole boathouse floor is awash, and the docks are floating. It makes it a lot harder to even get to the boats, or to swim and whatnot. And, a few weeks ago the paddleboat sprung a leak and foundered, from being washed against rocks because of the high water and the fact that some people have been roaring around in motorboats in the cove and making huge wakes. My dad had to get a neighbor to help him get the paddleboat out of the water, and then patch it, so that was a big mess.

When my sister’s crew are here in August, they like to go do this giant corn maze, and sometimes I go with them. We tentatively planned to go Wednesday morning, but the Maze was closed on Tuesday, and we weren’t sure it would be open. I would have to get up an hour early to drive down there and meet them, because they wanted to do the corn maze at the start of the day. Not only were they doing a lot of water skiing and other recreational water things, we’ve been having thunderstorms just about every single day. As often happens when I have to get up early, I didn’t sleep at all–I think I got one hour of sleep. I got up early, checked the Maze’s website, and saw that they were closed. So, no Maze, and I had an IPNE Board of Director’s conference call at 6:00pm. I was so exhausted all day from lack of sleep, I couldn’t get much accomplished, and the conference call ran for 90 minutes. I decided I was not going to get up early a second time and would skip the Maze this season.

On Thursday, I got up to a message that, because the Maze was closed again, my sister’s crew was planning to go pick blueberries and do mini-golf, and they weren’t leaving the house until noon. So, I showered and collected my stuff and drove up to join them. We had a fine time picking berries, although as always, it just felt so rushed. I wanted lots of blueberries for the freezer and I felt like I had to pick as fast as I could to finish before the kids got bored. I picked two buckets in the time it took everyone else to pick one! And I’d have liked to have relaxed and admired the stunning view and played with the goats they have, and so on. But we were off to play mini-golf (this is also a traditional outing for the August visits: blueberries and mini-golf). I got at least two gallons of blueberries, however, and I bought a five-pound jar of local raw honey (yes, I will use it! I bake and cook with it) and some the farm’s own tomatoes. Mini-golf is nothing I would ever do on my own, but I go to be sociable.

After we got back to the lake from all that, I went running home, decided that I could squeeze in my workout, did that, gulped down some food and went running up to Townsend for my dad’s band concert. The kids were supposed to be sitting in to play with the band, and my 12-year-old niece was going to guest-conduct a short number. Well, my niece conducted–and I videorecorded the whole thing with my digital camera–but my nephew had balked and refused to play. So, when I arrived, there was much tension in the air because my sister was furious with her son.

So far today I haven’t heard from the lake crew, but I know the Maze is closed again. They can’t open if the ground is soft and muddy, and I know they got rained on yesterday and last night. But it’s really nice today so I’m sure everyone is out water skiing–which I do NOT do. In fact, it scares the heck out of me to even watch people water ski. I don’t think small engines and water are a safe mix under any circumstances.

Meanwhile, this week my e-mail has been going berserk because IPNE is trying to hammer together plans for a big event in November. I have not been connecting with anyone about the panels for Pi-Con one week from now, and one of the forums I’m on has completely blown up into huge arguments thanks to one new member who walked in and instantly got upset with what people said to him. So, I’ve barely managed to read, let alone reply, to all my e-mail, and I’m avoiding this forum altogether!

Both the new proofs for Mortal Touch arrived from Lightning Source. The adjusted cover looks much better, and the dustjacket for the hardcover edition came out really well–it looks so professional! But, man…am I going to be glad when the Lunar Eclipse is over tomorrow!