…even though I’m supposedly on vacation.

1. OMG! I am sooooo relaxed bored! Here I am at the end of my vacation rope! Yeah, yeah…It is true I needed some time off, but a whole week? I took five days. Give me a break. I’m not a European who is used to seven weeks of holiday each year!

2. I have knitted until my right arm is about to fall off.

3. When I wasn’t knitting, I was cooking. I have made: pasta casserole, two kinds of soup, breakfast burritos, peach-rhubarb bread, regular bread, roasted veggies with quinoa, cabbage salad, apple crisp, scones (twice!), and loads more stuff I can’t remember without getting up to look.

4. The sheets are changed, the kitchen is clean, and I’ve even started the remodel in the bathroom…okay, all I did was scrape out the sillicone around the tub and replace it, but hey, that was a big deal for me! If I don’t go back to work soon, I’m going to have to keep working on it.

5. I miss you all!

And now, for a bonus 5! Five cool things that happened while I was on vacation:

1. I met the wonderful (and kind, sweet, and friendly) author, Susan Juby for lunch. We actually had breakfast (French toast) because by 3pm when we met, they were out of all the good lunch stuff. It was really fun and I hope to hang out with her again some time. And if you haven’t read her books, what are you waiting for???? Get with it, people!

2. I went to the fruit stand to get apples and I had to go by the beach. It was half an hour before sunset and the light over the water was magnificent. I got out and sat on a bench on the beach and just stared across at the mainland and the snow-capped peaks. Beautiful.

3. Yesterday I fed not one, but two big bucks apple cores and peelings by hand. Just so you know, deer aren’t that fond of you trying to pet them even if they are tame enough to be fed by hand, but this one, who I call Piggy because he practically shoves his head in the apple bag if I’m not fast enough, let me scratch him under the chin. Twice! This is an older shot, but cool anyway!

4. See the picture above? That was me being adventurous. What do you think of it for an author photo? Would kids think I’m cool or just some old fogie their parents’ age trying to act cool?

5. I’ve gotten about ten hours of sleep each night.

I actually did pretty well in the no computer/no reading attempt. I lasted all the way until Wednesday without reading and then as soon as my husband left the house for Boys Night Out, I grabbed a Diane Mott Davidson mystery and read it straight through. He came home in the middle, but by then I was so into it, I just kept reading! And while I did stay off the computer for the most part until right now, I did read emails each day as they came in. However, you all knew I was “away” and so after the first or second day, I hardly got any anyway. And I didn’t send any, except one about a reservation I needed to cancel. I did give in and listen to Stephen Colbert’s audio book, but it was a lot less like a book and more like a shouted monologue.

Part of the reason I took this vacation is because I needed it, but part of the reason is because my husband had started substituting the word “workaholic” for “work ethic” in regards to how much I work. But I ask you this…on an average day, I write 3 hours. On a good day I write 5. On an excellent, and extremely rare day I work 6-7 hours. Tell me…what other job in the world can you work 3-5 hours per day and have people call you a workaholic? I’m just sayin’… I have to go now before my husband wakes up from his nap and finds me on the computer and take the peach-rhubarb bread out of the oven and knit some more.