General Busy-ness: July 2014

Just like I predicted in my post on June and the fact that it was trying to kill me, life screeched to an abrupt halt on June 30. Max started day camp, Hannah's at overnight camp, and things slowed at work as people expected a quiet holiday week. This week is the least populated my calendar has been for longer than I can remember, and while June was a bit too much, this nothing much of a July isn't my taste either.

I've been doing some writing every day, only it's in the form of emails and letters to Hannah at camp. Sometimes it's twice a day if I use both mediums, and that is a lot of writing when you really don't have a lot going on. But I want her to get mail, so I make the effort, and today I was rewarded for that when camp posted a photo where I can see her reading one of my letters with a huge, unscripted smile on her face. Total Mom win.

Max has been enjoying the extra attention at home, though he misses Hannah too. We took him to the zoo this past weekend, and let him navigate with the map and climb all the structures he wanted. He fed a goat in the petting zoo, and actually wanted to put his face in the photo opp things with cut outs for your face. He's loving camp and happy to be with some school friends there.

I got meet a lovely little baby girl this weekend, too. Julie, Mike and Maya are going to be living in Boston again soon, and I'm so happy to have my best friend back in the area. I've missed just getting to hang out with Julie, and having them all as a more frequent presence in our lives again is going to be really wonderful. Especially wonderful since it now includes that sweet baby too.

The videos from all 32 performances of LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER are going to be posted online very soon, and I'll link to mine from here as well. I'm excited to get to re-live our show, even if I'm going to be doing some choking up in my own video, as I cried while reading my piece. I'm really excited to see friends from other cities, and to watch the impact of the Boston show spread further as our cast gets to share their videos. It's going to be awesome.

And BlogHer 2014 is just over two weeks away now, so I'm doing a certain measure of freaking out over that. I'm very excited to be going to the conference again, this time in San Jose, and I have a few goals in mind as I've already been scrutinizing the agenda. I'm excited to see lots of LTYM people from around the country, as well as other friends from last year's conference. I can't wait to room with Phyllis and Kimberly, and to see if we really do track down a mechanical bull. And, being me, I've tried to organize a pre-conference dinner with other Boston locals. But the freaking out is over how I can't really believe that it's been an entire year since the last conference. I came away last year feeling so motivated and thinking I'd grow the blog so much before attending again this year. And the truth is, things haven't grown much and have probably stagnated quite a bit. So I'm a bit disappointed by that, but hoping that BlogHer will help re-energize me and maybe give me some strategies for getting things done in this next year.

So, that's all the news from here. There's a summer storm rolling in, so I'd better get this posted and get off the computer. How are you?