Top Ten Reasons My Blog Has Been Languishing

10. It's been hot this summer. Everything is languishing.

9.  My friend Paula was visiting from Chicago -- I was busy with her and Ramona was busy with Paula's daughter. I begged to accompany was forced to go with Paula to a cool old furniture shop and consider buying a gorgeous cedar chest that I don't really need.

8. I didn't buy the cedar chest but the mental wrangling took all my energy.

7. We had a bat in the house. Eeeeeek! We had a bat in the house! The screaming, the running, and the  feelings of disgust took all my energy (and just after I'd regained it following the cedar chest incident. Not fair.)

6. We have been shopping for a car for our teens. We've made do without a teen car so far, but we're finally all going in too many directions.

5. Visiting used car dealers should qualify us for an enormous discount off our time in purgatory. (This doesn't technically qualify as a reason for blog languishment. I just had to say it.)

4. We've been finishing up various summer activities: a cool "outdoor classroom" hosted by the Game and Parks Commission (in which Ramona romped in a delightfully big mud puddle), horseback riding, the water park before it closes. I'm trying to remember the meaning of the words "cook dinner" and we've been adding and dropping classes at the college for Betsy's early enrollment: Spanish! No, French! No, Spanish! (We've just registered, and this is crazy, but pick a language, and call me maybe....)*

3. I had to clean out a closet and put up some new curtains in the dining room because, you know, when you're writing a book it's easier to invent unnecessary organizational and cleaning projects that make you feel you're accomplishing something than it is to stare at the screen and ponder just the right word for that sentence in chapter seven.

2. On the subject of writing, a book, well, I'm writing a book -- and I have only so much room in my brain/time at the computer, and often I've spent it all on the book, which leaves my poor little blog out in the cold (or is it languishing in the heat?) If I spend entire days and nights at the screen, Ramona looks like this:

and asks, "Mommy, don't you love me anymore?" 

1. I wonder if that cedar chest is still there....

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*To be fair to Betsy, a fair amount of the switching was my doing, covering bases in case one or the other of the classes doesn't take off due to low enrollment. In other words, I'm making my daughter look indecisive for comic effect. This is totally unfair of me, although (in all fairness to me, as long as we're going for fairness) she did waffle a little, due to various considerations.  But it's my blog and it's hard enough to find things I can share about my teens without violating their privacy, so when I find something I can say, I say it. Even though I fully expect to hear, "Mom!"