Hey, where have I been!

Ah well, you know how it is. You're busy being a writer, mother, house renovator, housekeeper, cook, part time teacher and and part time webpage builder and you think, I need more cash, I'll get another part time job, surely I can juggle everything else.

And then all the balls fall down and roll around the floor you just revert to spending your time picking up the noisiest balls.

It seems lately I never have meat, veggies and groceries in the house at the one time. Or if I do, then the house is a trough. When the house is clean, you can bet there's no food. Generally I only manage two shops a week and the meat and veggie shops don't take credit cards, and the meat shops don't open late so I'm always going to the simplest.

Unfortunately, I still can't buy supermarket meat and veggies and make one trip. Tough, old, watery. That applies to the meat and the veggies. I'm not sure what they do to get them like that. It must be a skill.

I think, if I could avoid supermarkets all together and just go to local shops, I would. With the Asian supermarkets, the fresh pasta shop, the grain and nut shop, the discount grocery shop, there are times when I can. I like those times. Generally they are early on a Sat morning when the local shops are buzzing. It doesn't seem to matter how cold it is, the sidewalk cafes are packed on Sat morning. I swear they're all just checking out the scene. I do it myself a few weekday mornings. Just go to the local cafe and see who's there for a coffee. But I have a bit of trouble if that's my only reason to get out of my nice cosy bed on a Sat morning.

Oh and the milkman delivers now. Locally produced milk, eggs, cream, butter, cheese, juice and bread. The food is fresher and my life is easier and it's delivered for exactly the same price as the supermarket shelf. Makes you wonder how they get away with it those evil, evil, supermarkets. And they'd charge more for delivery.

Now I'm trying to figure out other ways to simplify my life so I have more time for writing and the kids. For instance, there's no point in keeping any of my regular fish tanks if cleaning them means I don't have time to write a great novel or the kids turn out to be mass murderers. Mind you, there is always the crime followup novel... nah! So I'm keeping two natural planted tanks which require no work and selling the others. Most are empty at the moment anyway. Having decided a while ago to cut back.

There are no chickens at the moment and no homestay students. That's given me more time altho, replacing the chickens is still a plan and if the Homestay people stop trying to send me boys from countries where women do all the work and send me a nice girl, then I'd probably take them. Sounds a bit biased, I know, but there's all sorts of subtle implications that come into play once you have to live with someone, and with the shortage of homestay accommodation, it's easier to just say no, give me a girl, and avoid any possibility that some teenage boy is going to look at you like a lazy cow if you ask him to take his plate to the bench. Besides there's altogether too much testosterone in Hotel MacDibble, we need balance.

Now over at my Mentor blog, I'm celbrating that my mentee got published. What a good mentor am I? Or maybe not. Anyway, my mentor work is done she has now flown the nest.

At my Beast of Moogill blog, I've been talking about my efforts in marketing "How to Become a Children's Writer" which has had moments of reward and moments of disappointment effectively leaving me numb. Marketing sucks, which is something I knew and why I've never even considered self-publishing for a moment. I also got the most awesome review for my story "A Complete Refabrication" in Orb#7 and I quote: "MacDibble is another one of those rising Australian writers who is really starting to hit her stride in short story land. This one really stunned me with its originality and brilliance - it's about online "afterlife" communities for the recently-deceased, and the struggles of a wife and mother to hang on to a some kind of a relationship with her loved ones through a computer screen. It's sad and weird and funny, and made me want to both cry and cheer."

I really like that last sentence. I consider myself to be sad, weird and funny and that I made someone cry and cheer at the same time stuns me. I mean, that's what I ultimately go for... I just never expect to pull it off. It's like I wrote me and someone not only understood... they liked it!

Sometimes I stop writing like me because I don't think that it will find an audience, but to get a review like that, gives me faith in me.