And it’s only Tuesday, too. It’s also Red Hat evening, for the ladies of the small group who are in the habit of sampling the delights of a select restaurant, on the evening of the third Tuesday of the month. Hey, I need a social life, or so says Blondie. It’s about the only darned time I do eat a restaurant meal – and the informal rules of the club are that the person whose’ birthday falls in that month picks the restaurant, and that it be a reasonably priced one. So an evening out in the offing tonight – although it will be a goodish drive over to the venue for this evening.

Otherwise, it’s been kind of a mixed bag; this morning I had an email from the California realtor who is listing the once-wooded and now-possibly-wooded again acreage that I own in Julian, California. I’ve been trying to sell it for almost three years now, and the realtor finally had a good solid offer for it, which he wanted to run by me. Well, the offer is for $5,000 more than I paid for it myself, which I am perfectly happy with. The last serious offer was for $10,000 less – and that I considered a bloody insult. So … when the check is in my hot little hand, then I will go to my ranch realtor friend and sometime employer, and see about a couple of acres in the Hill Country. I did up a brochure for him yesterday, with pictures of a little place in Frio County – not that I want that place, but it is something like it that I would be looking for. Meadows dotted with large oaks, a water well and two tiny and rather ramshackle appearing cottages on it. Something like that, I told him – something small and unpretentious. If it’s structurally sound, repair and renovate the house (or houses) and if not, tear down and build something like it. I wouldn’t be interested in a big house, either – just a small one with room for a little guest cottage or two. So, if the sale goes through – then, one step closer to my dream Hill Country retreat.

The Tiny Publishing Bidness has a couple of clients on board, and a prospective big project in the offing – but my business partner, the original owner of it – has not been entirely well this year. She’s in her eighties, and this week is going in for treatments. Both her mother and her brother died rather painfully from pancreatic cancer, and so of course she is dreading the same fate. Naturally, her mind is not the least focused on work. Still, she is in better shape than one of Blondie’s regular employers, another sweet elderly lady living around the corner. (Blondie cleans house for her once a month, and is on call for errands and to drive her to doctor appointments when the sweet elderly lady’s daughters are not available. She has not been well either; and has been hospitalized for several weeks. Her chronic problem is back again, and she is not strong enough for chemotherapy … or anything, really. She was released from hospital, into home hospice care, and it’s a matter of just waiting, now. Blondie is gutted, of course – she is very fond of both these senior citizens.

The friend that Blondie was going to go into business with – to found a little art enterprise which would eventually support both of them – that one fell by the wayside, although we both rather saw it coming. The friend loves drama, having that traditional artistic temperament. We thought that she could at least focus on business matters sufficiently to be able to avoid inflicting the drama on Blondie … but nope. All is not lost, though – Blondie is going to forge ahead with the origami art, and set up a website of her own, and go through all the hoops and requirements of getting the sales license, and setting up a boutique business of her own.

And I am just fiddling with the final format of The Quivera Trail – the next book, which will roll out at New Braunfels’ Weihnachtsmarkt in November. And as soon as I am done with that, and the other Tiny Publishing Bidness projects, I will start on the next book…
And that’s my week. Yours?