It is Saturday, it is snowing, it has been since 9am.  It is now 4:45 and 5 inches (+/-) has accumulated.

If you want to know what I think (and I am going to tell you anyway) it is way too early in the year for this.  It is not even Halloween yet.

This snow has pushed me into working today.  Of course, it is not like I don’t/can’t work on NewNeedlepoint.com 24/7.  I sometimes do (and sometimes, for increasingly long times, I don’t work here at all).

I am not complaining here (yes I am but about the snow).  After all, we are in rural southest PA (Lancaster County).  Not exactly Minnesota (sorry, Karen & anyone else from there, it was too good an example to pass on)

Ok, I am doing replacement books today.

Or perhaps I mean can’t get anywhere from here.  I am struggling to get all the little bits & pieces associated with this move all tucked up & stitched down (how’s that for a needlework reference?).

All these unlisted gems just sit here and glare at me, I think they think I am a laggard.  (now I am imagining what books & canvases think of me).  

Usually the issue is where to start but I know where to start.  Do the replacements first, for the books or canvases that sold, then begin with the new canvases, then the new books, then the other books.  See?  Simple.  

So why haven’t I gotten further?  Because every time I sit here in my lovely, bright and big new office I think of something else that I have forgotten to do.  Or a piece of forwarded mail that needs an address update arrives or the phone rings or Jack wants to be fed (he can be quite pushy) or something.  Then, once again, I am off on some tangent (and one tangent leads to another & another).

I think the best way to get past this hump is to list 1 book, just 1.  Break the ice, sort of or maybe part the fog or  substitute any confusion and distraction metaphor you are fond of.

What else?  I am reading, as always.  I finished my Lee Child’s Jack Reacher series reading project (up to date anyway).  I alternated them with nice gooey Regency Romances so all the elbow breaking & head butting did not get to me (Jack Reacher’s favorite strokes in a fight).

I still maintain that Tom Cruise is the absolutely wrong actor to play 6 foot 4 (ish) inch  cagey & laid-back Jack Reacher.  Besides, I dislike his smirk, all the way back to Risky Business, his first movie, I hated the smirk.

The only movie I really liked him in was Rainman, where he more or less stepped aside and let Dustin Hoffman do it all (and he did).

I have been reading all over the place since then.  I read Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex which I found an odd book, indeed.  An even odder book was The Manicurist byPhillis Schieber.  it never really jelled for me.  Is it an extra sensory powers story, a family story, a coming to terms story or what?  I never did figure it out and finished the book feeling that it was somehow incomplete. (0r maybe I did not get it, which is always possible).

Then I read a reference to Madame Bovary somewhere or other and I barely remembered the story besides what everyone knows about Madame Bovary anyway, so with the easy magic of my iPad and the Kindle store (I love it) I DLed the book and re-read it.  The story was different from how I remembered it.  More and less, if you know what I mean.  I had much more sympathy for Emma Bovary this time.

That got me going into the whole re-reading books I remembered but did not remember.  I had read, many times each, the slightly supernatural mystery/romance novels of Barbara Michaels.  Then she began writing an Egyptian Archeology series as Elizabeth Peters (neither of which is her real name which is Barbara Mertz) featuring Amelia Peabody/Emerson.

I read many of them and enjoyed them until the focus of the book became mostly their son (Ramses) and his perfect, beautiful, rich, ex-goddess wife.  I just could not stand it anymore and stopped reading them…anyway I am drifiting here.

I could not remember much about the 1st book in the series, Crocodile on the Sandbank, except that I enjoyed it.  So I am re-reading that.  I have not yet been drawn in.  If the *magic* doesn’t happen soon I will move on.

So, look for some replacement titles for sold books to show up on NewNeedlepoint.com (remember it? ).

I have to compliment my web store (not myself, mind you, the store has a life of it’s own).  It has held up well during this move and renovation.  Despite my neglect, I have been getting (and filling) orders steadily all this time.

I want to thank everyone for this and apologize for my sometimes sloppy shipping during these (past) confusing weeks.  

As I said , I’m back.

I think it has been a month or more since I last wrote this blog. That is odd since I really do enjoy writing here. Sometimes I am a little reluctant to begin since it takes me many hours to do a blog entry, if there are pictures, but still….

I burned out after the move. The contractors were all still here for 2 weeks (+) after we moved in but that was just finishing up stuff. The job was essentially done (although why they waited until the day before move in to paint doors is beyond me).

It was a big job, 12 + weeks. There are still small things to do but they are K doable (when he gets to them, which is another way to describe eternity).

The move was hard, with some nice people helping, on one day, I packed it all. There is a lot to packing up a home, even though I have done it many times, it still surprises me.

The move day was horrible, torrential rain & wind for a move that took 11.5 hours.

Unpack was harder too. The movers had quite a bit of my stuff in storage, it has been there for 14 months. I had actually forgotten some of the things I had. Not completely forgotten but sort of.

It was the unpack that took me down. Day after day or hard, tedious exhausting work while still maintaining a home of sorts. K went to work every day and I unpacked.

Finally I was done, all that was left was to nag (endlessly) K to do some of the stuff I could not do myself.

It was then that I had my (much deserved) melt-down. I had/have all this work to do for NewNeedlepoint.com but I could not seem to begin.  I was so tired, so very tired.

Anyway, I pottered around for a week or so and now I am, I think, ready.  

I wanted to start by showing you some before & after pictures of the renovation.

my new, bright and spacious office, before remember I had been working out of a 9X9 bedroom with 1 window.

Before

and 2 pictures of after

The kitchen

The kitchen floor (linoleum)

Kitchen done, all new tile too:

The family room/living room before, a big zero  (with our color test stripes on the walls, we ended up not using any of these colors)

I know much of the difference here is from my stuff but the brighter ceiling, walls and tiled floors make a difference.  Also taking down the wall between the family room & the kitchen made a huge difference.  What is really odd is that the former owners closed that wall in.  Originally, it was open.  

The master bedroom was a deeply depressing room.  with only one window (a patio slider to outside) it was a dark & dismal room.

and the hideous vanity.  The tiny room where the bathroom sink etc is 4 ‘X 5.5′ including the vanity.  It had 3 doors.  The door from the room, the door into the closet, which is off this tiny room and the door leading into the main part of the bath.  You had to close the door to the room to open the closet door.

I had both the door to the bedroom & to the closet removed.  I left the door to the rest of the bathroom in place.  The space works much better now.

OK, you can’t tell from my picture but the vanity is bird’s eye maple, handmade by the cabinet guy.

I also took the Laundry Closet, which was in the main part of the master bath (stupid place for it) and turned it around so it opened up in the back hallway, where is should have been.  The doors on the old one did not open wide enough for from front loader machines, we added more then a foot to the laundry closet doorway, not it works great.

So,  my last picture is a pissed off Jack yelling at K in the garage of the new house.  He did not like any of this including being closed in a bathroom for the load & unload (just what was needed, Jack underfoot and trying to escape) not to mention the car ride in his much hated cat carrier.

Not his best or cutest face.

So, I am back.  I still have all the canvases from the Baltimore show to kit & list and piles of new & rare/used books.  This might take me all winter if I do not get going.  

So far, I am not *going* too hard but I will improve.  It is good to be back.  I missed you ( my 2 1/2 readers)