Bicycles, House Renos, & (Some) Writing

It’s a quiet morning. I’m sitting in my office, which I have yet again rearranged after moving back in post-ceiling repairs from a damaged pipe. The windows are cracked open to let in the cool(ish) morning air, and the birdsongs. The sun is shining, yet our yard is still cast in shadows from the tall trees that surround us.

It will be a hot one later though.

House Stuff

Spring, and the start of summer, ended up being another house sprint for us! After hibernating all winter, we hit the ground running by tackling the garage. Well, first the pipe in the upstairs ceiling broke, and leaked through my office ceiling, which was actually a blessing because it was localized and easier to fix. Chris cut out the drywall, while I foolishly thought I could work through this (it was dusty and nasty). Then the hole sat open for several days before he tried to patch it. He did a decent job, but he’d never worked with drywall before (did I mention, it’s nasty stuff?). At this point, I caught on and moved items out of my office, and covered furniture in sheets. So. much. dust.

“We” (my task was to help hold up the drywall, and hand Chris tools) patched it, and there it sat for several months, while we waited to get the garage drywalled. Our garage is unfinished, so we insulated it ourselves, then hired an excellent contractor to finish the drywall, and to finish patching my ceiling. In the process of finishing the garage, Chris also got new gutters installed. The gutters came almost in time, and were installed about 1 week after a torrential 2 week downpour that saw us scrambling up to the roof during a break to clean out the clogged leaves.

Oh and during this, our lovely renovated master bathroom had issues with the ceiling paint and so we had to get that redone too. We won’t talk about that one.

So now the remaining chore is to prime and paint our garage! I picked out a gorgeous dark blue, and am so excited to see it finished (dark blue with a white ceiling and all that recessed lighting will be lovely).

I subscribed to some witchy sub-stacks, and received a delightful newsletter about the Cottage Witch. A Cottage Witch apparently focuses their magic on their home and the daily tasks, finding magic in cooking, cleaning, nurturing the house, the small things. I think I must be a Cottage Witch! My goal for this year was to find magic in the small, mundane daily tasks and I’m happy to say that our peaceful house is wonderfully conducive to this type of life.

I had dreams of a big garden, but other priorities took over, so I’ve cultivated a nice little basic garden out of containers. I grew my tomatoes and lettuce from seedlings, started back in April or so from egg cartons on the kitchen table. And I’ve been slowing planting flowers; we planted some rhododendrons and hydrangeas along the tree line. They are small now, but growing, and I’m excited for the future when they are tall and flowering. The amaryllis from Christmas I stuck outside after reading about how to preserve the bulb for next year. To my surprise, the bulb reactivated and it’s now sprouting one bloom, with another on the way!

All in all, our house is really feeling like a cozy, magical little home.

Biiiii-Cycles!

I finally convinced Chris that we should get bicycles! Ever since we moved to Asheville and I saw so many great bicycling paths and logging roads, I’ve wanted a bicycle. My mom has been riding a lot, and told me how much stronger it’s made her. That was the tipping point. When Chris goes in, he goes ALL in, so we now have amazing mountain bikes, padded shammies, all the goods. Our inaugural ride ended up being partially on a rooty trail, which was… exciting. Chris absolutely loved it, I gripped my breaks the whole time saying, outloud, “trust the bike, trust the bike.” It’s my little mantra.

The bike is excellent. The rider? Not so much.

But then we hit a lovely dirt road, surrounded by trees and shaded—much more my speed.

Living the Bicycle Life

I’m loving all the wooded roads here around Asheville, though being in the mountains we get a lot of ups and downs. Luckily, all the trees offer much welcome shade, especially as the days are starting to get hotter.

Yesterday, we ended up doing a long loop that unexpectedly took us along the road, which I did not love (this is a major understatement. I crashed out hard, poor Chris. To his credit, he did not pedal away from me). But then we turned off onto a quieter country road, that wound past a horse stable and pastures. We ended up in the woods on a mix of dirt road (yay for me) and packed dirt mountain biking trails that Chris loved, and I ended up walking my bike as I was too afraid to go fast. I’ll get there… maybe.

But I love bicycling! It’s like being a kid again, and it’s so much fun to tootle through the forest here. The other day we took a paved ride in the city, down by the French Broad River, and rode past a chonky ground hog who sat right on the side of the road eating a huge leaf, and remained unbothered even when I stopped to snap a picture.

Writing & Plotting

The Spring also brought writing energy. Editing The Wolf Queen helped get me excited again about Lishka’s world. I handed off WQ to Beta readers in January, then tried to ride that wave by finally starting the sequel to Lishka. I’d already had a decent chunk plotted out, and the first few pages written. Over the last few months, I’ve gotten the first 4 chapters written. That’s pretty slow, I know, but I also did some more thinking and plotting to help me see where I’m going. The sequel will have more points of views/storylines, so I started getting a little confused and demoralized when I tried to jump from one POV to the next. Finally, I sat down and drew out a timeline of the different storylines, which helped so much to get a good sense of each. My tactic will be to write one at a time, then weave them together, so I don’t loose the threads of each by jumping around too much. I also have to keep reminding myself that the goal is to get something on paper, and its ok if it’s not very good. I’m finding I enjoy editing, and the more I practice, the easier it gets. I just need something there to edit.

Yesterday, I sent WQ to my editor. I’m in no rush on this one—it will get published when it’s ready. But working with my editor always gives me extra momentum, so my goal is to get a decent part of L2 written, so that when I get edits back from her, I can take some of that energy and apply it to writing as well.

I suppose that’s all for now!