Wow, it’s been forever since I posted! But a lot has been happening IRL, so perhaps I can be excused for my appalling lack of attention to this blog. Perhaps.
First, and foremost, the summer of joy: I sold a story!!!!! My first ever published story, “MarsBound” will appear in the anthology Ages of Wonder edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Rob St. Martin!! It will be published by Daw sometime in 2008.
Then we paid off the house! WHOO HOO! Happy, happy, joy, joy! Dancing in the streets! (Well, on the patio, but that’s outside, so it’s sorta like the streets.)
But then, in August, things took a dark turn. I got sick, for one, with shingles. This is a disease that is hopefully disappearing, since the advent of the Chicken Pox vaccine. You see, when you have Chicken Pox, it gives you a life-time immunity from ever getting it again, but that comes at a price: the virus stays in your system, hibernating in nerve clusters. Shingles is a re-activation of the virus, and–because it’s living in your nerves–can be quite painful. It’s not life-threatening, but if it flares along the nerves in the face, which mine did, it can damage your eye.
Then a previously-crowned tooth broke, requiring a new crown. Then another previously-crowned tooth got an abscess at the root, which required a root canal. Then that tooth broke, too, cracking the root and requiring an extraction and a bridge. All of which cost thousands of dollars, only a small portion of which was covered by insurance.
Then our 28-year-old washer/dryer set started making noise, and then the dryer just quit altogether. So we bought a new set.
The very next day after buying it, our 18 year-old truck had yet another mechanical malfunction, and given the shape it was in, we decided it was time to replace it. So we bought a used truck that was only 8 years old.
We have now used up all of our emergency fund, and are thousands of dollars in the hole on the credit card.
So, of course, when it got cold the furnace started making an awful racket, then stopped kicking on at all. (Although we could still kick it on manually, so we didn’t freeze.) Hundreds more dollars to fix. (Thankfully, though, we didn’t have to replace it, just fix it. But still. Hundreds of dollars!)
Then, after Steve said “Well, there’s not much else that can die on us, right?”– the gods laughed, as they directed that deer to jump in front of our car as we drove up to visit my folks.
Still waiting for the repair estimate from the shop, but the insurance will pay most of it. Less the $500 deductible, of course.
But, hey! I sold a story!!!! So, it’s all good. Sorta. Mostly.
