A week has now passed since my wife moved out. We talk on the phone every night, of course, and she stops by once a week to bring groceries, though when she gets here, I have to put on a mask and go outside while she brings them in (and she wears a mask and gloves), and then we can talk on the porch for a bit, while staying ten feet apart and wearing masks. This past week was a little busy. I had a Skype meeting at 0900 on Monday. My Summer 2 courses were also doing finals this week, and so I had to get all that wrapped up and post grades/handle paperwork. This coming week, I actually don’t have anything school related to do. I’m going to give myself the week off before I had to jump into planning my virtual classes for the fall semester. My wife is doing as well as can be expected, though her district had four teachers test positive for the virus this week after being at in-service with all the other teachers. (The students won’t start back until the coming week). Rather than telling teachers who have been around those individuals to quarantine, the district is just acting like it didn’t happen. I guess that’s what happens when the district leadership thinks the virus is a hoax. Despite how they claim they are following CDC/State guidelines, they posted pictures last week of teachers not social distancing and not wearing masks.

Enough of that. My birthday was Friday the 14^th, and it passed with little fanfare, though I did get my new masks in the mail. One of them has a picture of Mashka and the other a picture of all the Grand Duchesses. I’ll probably not wear them (since I have masks of better quality), but one day they might make a nice collector’s item. My wife did stop by on my birthday for a few minutes. My buddy Paul the Possum showed up after dark to say “Happy Birthday”…okay, actually it was to eat the leftover cat food. With Molly’s Song ready to go back to the editor, I have turned some attention to the sequel. However, the novel that I planned to write over the summer has kept nagging me. Initially, I think I was to start it on May 15^th and I’d be finished with it by now. Home issues intervened (remember the whole roof and re-wire thing?), and so I had to shelve it. For whatever reason, perhaps because I’m alone and I have nothing else to do, I was struck with a sudden bolt of inspiration. This has allowed me to steadily knock out 5K-6K words a day, almost double my typical writing output.

In a way, I’m okay with this as I hope to be finished with the first draft around the same time I get Molly’s Song back from the editor on Oct. 8^th. When Molly goes out on submission, I can turn to editing the other book and also writing Molly’s sequel. It’s an ambitious plan, I guess, but it is one that is workable.

I apologize for the short post, but I don’t have much exciting to report from the week.

Until next time, take care of yourselves. And each other.

L.H.